This chapter takes place after the trial. For a summary of what's happened in previous posts, please see author notes.

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24th August 2023

The steady beep of machinery filters through into my mind, lifting me out of my sleep. The room around me is white washed. What’s that on my hand? It’s something sticky. I glance down. There’s a drip attached to me, what? Pale sunlight filters through the gaps in the blinds on the window to my right. Ah yes, I’m in hospital. Thankfully, and I don’t know how, given how packed the corridors were when we arrived, I’m in a room on my own. Perhaps they thought it would be better for my safety once Lucie . . . told them who I was, oh God, have the paramedics called the police?

I snap my head round as the door to my right opens. My ex, Michael, saunters into the room carrying a plastic Costa cup in his hand. I look back to the window.

‘You’re awake,’ he says edging closer towards me.

‘How long have I been asleep?’ I mumble. He wasn’t the first person I was hoping to see, but then, there’s no way I would want my daughter to be here right now.

‘Around eight hours I suppose,’ he says.

Has he really been here all this time?

‘Where’s Lucie?’ I ask.

He frowns at me. ‘Lucie, oh, she was the woman who came in the ambulance with you, wasn’t she? She said she had to go home but she said she would come back. So, tell me, Stacey, why the hell are you here in Romford?’

He sits on the blue plastic chair next to me. I shift upright in bed, the crisp sheets crumpling around me. His green eyes, the same green eyes I once fell in love with thirty five years ago, fix on mine.

‘I . . . it’s a bit of a long story,’ I say.

He hasn’t spent a single day at court, unlike me. He hasn’t seen the devastation on our son’s face, the sneer on the police officer’s. How can he understand why I had to do what I did? I curl my fists.

He nods and glances over to the wall ahead of me, then looks back towards me. ‘Well, the doctors ran some tests and they’ve said that you’re malnourished and severely dehydrated.’

‘I . . .’

Of course, for the last two weeks my mind’s been totally focused on the trial. I didn’t have time to think about anything else, certainly not cooking. I blink back furiously to fight back tears.

‘What were you doing here, Stacey?’ he asks. ‘Who is Lucie?’        

‘Um, I . . . I.’ I try to think of an excuse but nothing comes to me.

He sighs. ‘Stacey, I know you followed her from the courtroom. She was the foreman on the jury, she told me. You know this could end up having serious consequences for you if she reports this.’

What was the point in him asking me then, if she already explained who she was to him? I shake my head. ‘She’s not going to report me. She believes Joshua is innocent. He is innocent, Michael. I know it.’

Michael glares at me. ‘Stacey, you need to stop this. As much as I don’t want to believe it, we have to accept the facts. You’re going to cause more distress for everyone if you continue to pursue this. Stop this, now.’ He’s talking to me like he used to talk to Joshua and Rachel when they’d done something bad.

I turn away from him, my chest rising and falling. How can he give up on our son like this? Joshua adored him when he was young. What about all the football matches they went to every other weekend? Did they mean nothing to him?

‘Please leave,’ I say, tears prickling my eyes.

The chair creaks as he gets up. Out of the corner of my eye I watch him leave the room. I scrunch the duvet tight in my hand. It’ll have been his new bit on the side persuading him my son’s guilty. I say new bit on the side, she’s actually been his girlfriend now for ten years; they even have a kid together. She never did like the fact that he had children from another marriage. Joshua and Rachel both told me that she used to complain to Michael about them all the time, and would blame things going missing round the house on them, particularly if she couldn’t find a piece of her jewellery. Joshua came home in floods of tears one time and begged me never to take him back to his dad’s again. Of course, when they had their child, Abigail, little perfect Abigail could do no wrong.

There’s a knock on my door which makes me snap my head round. Please don’t say it’s Michael coming back. But it’s not him thank God. It’s Lucie.