“You are going to pay for what you’ve done,” Kim said victoriously.

If they had recorded the entire thing, I was done. I would go down for his murder even if he didn’t take a single sip of that water. I couldn’t hide behind my dark humour and matter-of-factness any longer. That wasn’t how my story should have ended: rotting in a jail cell. I was adamant that all of my actions were justified, given the context. I still didn’t feel a shred of remorse for any of it, even after all their persistent yapping.

I just hated the feeling that these three weak women had conspired against me and led me down this path without me knowing. They had planned every step and watched me like a rat in a maze as they poked and prodded me to get me to this moment. I would have done anything to have my revenge on them there and then, but I wasn’t in charge anymore.

The more I realised I’d lost control, the more the anxiety came rumbling back. I could feel my heart thumping through my chest and the familiar prickling at the back of my neck. I started hyperventilating violently, and instead of helping me, the three women almost started laughing as Yvonne stopped the recording. I crawled towards my bag to get my tablets, but Poppy kicked it further away. I could barely breathe anymore; all the anxiety and stress of the situation had hit me all at once. Poppy got her phone out and called the police, and I lay on my back, paralysed, waiting for them to arrive.

“I loved you, Harry,” I whispered to myself.

In the end, I knew I wasn’t the woman he left behind.

It was her.

EPILOGUE

KIM - AFTER

Harry? Come here!” I shouted playfully. Harry made his way over to me, giggling as he walked, but at the last hurdle, he tripped over, almost falling into the water of the pond I was squatting next to.

“Careful, Harry! You will hurt yourself,” I said, ruffling his hair playfully.

Harry, completely unperturbed by the fall, simply stood back up and started running around again. I wanted to show him the frog that was sitting by the side of the pond, but he was more interested in stomping around in the mud beside it. Even at three years old, he looked so much like his father, and it was uncanny. I thought it would have been difficult looking into the eyes of my son and seeing my Harry in them, but I saw it as a beautiful reminder of what I once had. I decided to give my son Harry’s name as soon as I looked into those eyes.

Not a single day went by without me thinking of Harry and the life we could have been living if she hadn’t taken him away from us. I refused to use her name. On the rare occasions that I was forced to mention her, I would only refer to her using a pronoun. I wanted my son to live his entire life without ever hearing that name if I could help it.

I tried to remember Harry how he was that night before he lost his life, the hope in his eyes and the sheer happiness he felt. Or the brief relationship we shared, which was the happiest of my life. I tried to drown out the negativity and focus on the present. The thing that got me through it was our son; he was an endless supply of love and affection, and I adored spending every waking second with him.

“Mummy, come look!” Harry shouted.

I followed Harry, and he had found a frog on his own, a great big slimy one, casually chattering whilst sitting on a log. I held Harry tightly as we entered a staring competition with the frog on a log, and he gripped back onto me lovingly.

“Aunty Kim, what have you found?” Freya interrupted.

“It’s a frog! And it’s sat on a log!” I enthused.

“Wow! That’s amazing!” Freya said with her mouth agape.

“Freya, come on, let’s go and find more frogs!” Harry suggested excitedly.

They both started running down the path together, holding hands. It was such a privilege watching them explore the world together. We all made an effort to come here at least once a week and walk the coastal trail near Filey. In some small way, I wanted Harry to be closer to his father, and I wanted to feel closer to him, too.

“Don’t go too far!” Poppy shouted from behind me.

“I don’t think they’re going to listen,” I remarked.

“They are going to be trouble when they are older,” Josephine laughed.

“They are trouble now,” I jested.

Freya was the perfect likeness to Harry, too. They both had his eyes and hair, and you could tell they were siblings. My son didn’t know about what happened to his father at the hands of her, and neither did his daughter. They were too young to understand that part. But we told them all the amazing things about Harry, and we spoke about him every single day.

After her confession at Filey Brigg, we took the recordings and all the evidence to the police. It was painful dredging it all back up again, but we finally got Harry the justice he deserved. She had pleaded guilty and was put in prison for a very long time. It was ruled that she was unfit to care for a child, and after a lengthy legal battle, Poppy and Josephine happily adopted Freya. They were natural parents, and we all instinctively banded together and walked the journey into parenthood as one big, unconventional family. The shared trauma and grief between us could have had a negative effect, but we refused to let that happen. She kicked up a stink, obviously, but there was little or nothing she could do behind bars.

I moved back to Filey to have Harry; I wanted him to grow up in the fields and on the beach like Harry and I did. Yvonne was incredibly supportive and even helped me put a deposit down for a house on the seafront. We had an amazing life, and I felt truly blessed to have everything that I had. But one thing was missing, and it was the love of my life. I hoped he was somehow looking down on us, watching young Harry grow up, and he was proud of his little family.

We approached Filey Brigg viewpoint, and it still brought back bad memories for me, although I’d decided I wouldn’t let her stop me from returning to such a beautiful place. It may have been the place where Harry lost his life, but it was also the place where he decided to start his life again with me. They had erected barriers since Harry’s death in an effort to make it safer. Harry and Freya were leaning against them and looking into the North Sea.

“Can frogs go in the sea, mummy?” Harry asked.

“No, love. They prefer a pond,” I answered.

“What if they use armbands like I do?” Freya asked.

“No, it’s too salty for them,” I explained.

We all leaned on the barrier and watched the waves crash against the rocks. I would have given anything for Harry to be here with us. It goes without saying, but I still hated what she had done to us, and not thinking about her required constant effort. Her jealousy and selfishness had done way more damage than she had realised. What she had done would affect us for the rest of our lives and the lives of Harry’s children. I knew she was paying for her crime, but I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t enough.

We made our way back to the car, and we said our goodbyes as we split up to return home. We lived in a three-floor townhouse overlooking the beach. We were just getting into the holiday season, and the number of people visiting was starting to increase. I parked the car where I usually did, and Harry and I walked inside our family home together, hand in hand. When I opened the door, there was a letter waiting for me on the doormat, and Harry picked it up and handed it to me.

“Can I go and play now?” he asked.

“Wash your hands first, please,” I instructed.

I opened the envelope, and there was a single piece of paper inside. It was a handwritten letter stamped by the prison in which she was currently residing.

There was once a whore from Filey,

Who was living the life of Riley.

But when his wife gets out of prison,

She’ll realise she isn’t,

And her survival was looking unlikely.

Her skills were slipping, and it didn’t even rhyme properly. I’d received a poem from her every month since she was in prison, in addition to the occasional crazed rant scratched into a piece of paper. They were menacing at first because I had no idea how she got my address. But after a while, the menace faded, and I actually started being amused by them. They were a desperate cry for attention from a broken and lonely woman. Those little limericks she sent me were just to exert her control, even from behind bars, but I was determined not to let them work.

“What’s that, mummy? One of those funny letters?” Harry asked.

“Yes, don’t worry about this,” I said, scrunching it up into a ball and throwing it in the bin, “I thought we were playing?”

I wished that Harry could have been here to see our son growing up. The older he got, the resemblance to his father grew. He always looked the most like his father when he smiled. That cheeky, signature smirk that Harry was famous for. I know he wasn’t planned, but I knew that Harry would have been absolutely delighted, like I was. We spent the rest of the day playing like we usually did, and in the early evening, I put our son to bed. I read him his usual bedtime story, a captivating tale about a rabbit that played football.

“Did Daddy like football?” Harry asked.

“He did! He used to watch it at the pub with his friends!” I smiled.