Look What You Made Me Do

The note I mentioned a while back, the one that says, DM – Can’t do things for kids anymore, appears in my diary on 23 April that first year with Franc.

A little bit of digging through another pile of papers turns up a statement I wrote months later for Frances, my union rep, referring to that note: ‘Doreen commented that it was probably a good thing that I had been ill because my children needed to understand that I would not be “at their beck and call anymore” and it would get them “off my back”.’

The note sits above a reminder that on the same date I also had a meeting with an HR manager where my knuckles were rapped for breaching hospital protocol on data protection. On the day of my thwarted attempt to leave the world, and unknown to me, my second grandson entered it. When I went back to work I checked the hospital system because I knew the baby was due and my daughter wasn’t allowed to speak to me. I was desperate for reassurance.

I’m surprised it all turned so complicated so quickly. The period of time over which I became deeply and irrevocably entangled with Franc, experienced the deterioration of my situation at work, and was again separated from my children, felt like an agonizing eternity while I was living it. Who could bear that kind of pressure without cracking? Not me.

There was something else. Doreen had intercepted one of Franc’s faxes, and sent back a reply of her own, pretending to be me. It perhaps explains the two or three faxes I’d never seen – had she taken those, too? She must have thought that replying to one was a huge joke but I was in such trouble when I got home. Doreen hadn’t used my deferential tone. When I went home I walked into an ambush.

He reached into his jacket pocket and put a fax in front of me. The handwriting on it looked a lot like mine but it was in capitals. I never used capitals.

And so it went on for most of the evening until I cried and Franc decided I was telling the truth.

I took the fax to work next day and asked Jeannie if she knew anything about it. I checked all around the machine to see if anything had slipped behind it. Nothing. It never occurred to me that it might have been Doreen – but when she saw me searching she volunteered the information with a laugh, then handed over a couple more of Franc’s faxes. I wonder if she’d have laughed if she’d seen what happened. As it was, she did the finger-eye thing to let me know she was watching me.

Franc and I spent May bank holiday in the Lake District and it was lovely but then I’d never been there before, so our time away was, for once, free of his ‘paranoids’ and ‘bad thoughts’. When we returned home things seemed to be back on an even keel, so much so that I took Franc with me to a family dinner to meet my father and brothers. I don’t know what they thought of him, they never said, but he seemed to like them. He was on his best behaviour, which reminded me how much I loved him. We felt like a normal couple again. I was proud of him that night and allowed myself to believe that as long as I could keep things like this I had Franc back.

We’d already filled one notebook with our messages so I got a new one. Over the short week following the bank holiday our notes, letters and faxes flew back and forth. On the face of it, they paint a picture of a loving, caring relationship. Unless, of course, you can read between the lines. In the notebook for Tuesday 4 May:

Morning darling Franc

I know you didn’t sleep well – try to stop worrying about the house [and having to move] please! I’m sure it will all be fine.

Anyway, back to being without you for a whole day again – harder after our beautiful weekend away, and it was beautiful wasn’t it?

With the tenderest, sweetest, deepest love you can imagine.

Helen xxx

PS No gym tonight so the Sock will be home first.

Franc said he thought that the weekend had been beautiful as well. He said he had enjoyed spending time away on our own, just the two of us.

Home first and a lot of housework to do: very good.

See you later.

Franc

Next came a letter. At least I think it was a letter because it’s been folded into three as though it’s been put into an envelope and I’d asked him not to send me any more faxes.

The first part contained a mild rebuke that I no longer wrote letters to him. (He underlined ‘your letters’.) That puzzled me because it simply wasn’t true. Then he asked if perhaps ‘the excitement of the first period has gone’. He said he loved my morning notes though so I decided that maybe I didn’t need to worry too much.

I think you will be reading this letter at work so I will not write anything too . . . dangerous.

No bad news, don’t worry. I just wanted to say I had a wonderful weekend with you and I hope we will have some more others like this one.

Keep smiling

Love

Franc

Dearest Franc

Why didn’t you wake me and I would have gone into the spare room? I hope it wasn’t my fault! I panicked when I woke up and you weren’t there.

I will be home as soon as I can tonight to tidy the house etc. Take care, you must be so tired.

Yours, always and forever

Sock

xxx

On the 7th, Doreen had me in her office to point out that it was inappropriate to send or receive personal faxes in the office. She was perfectly pleasant about it and I apologized and told her that I’d explained that to Franc – who perhaps hadn’t understood – so there shouldn’t be any more.

Morning Franc

Love isn’t something that one can measure. I can’t say ‘I love you xxx much’, can I? All I can tell you is that my feelings for you are strong and true. I love you in an infinite number of ways and my love for you fills my soul and colours my days and nights. When we’re apart I think of you all the time and when we’re together . . . well!

Franc + Helen = complete bliss!

I love you now, always and forever.

Helen xxx

‘Darling Sock’, wrote Franc, telling me that although he didn’t have much time to ‘waiste’ writing notes, he loved me too, but just a little bit which, as he said, was better than nothing. Then he added,

And signed off ‘Franc’. No love, no kisses, just ‘Franc’. I was disappointed and hungry for the affection he used to show.

That week Franc took me to buy a pay-as-you-go mobile phone by which I mean I bought it because he wanted me to have one. I’d been wanting one for ages but I no longer bought things unless Franc was with me. Of course, it also meant that he could keep tabs on me. But because the phone was usually in my handbag, I didn’t always hear it ringing. In any case we were not supposed to take private calls at work.

On 13 May the first fax arrived at 10:24. In it Franc told me he was leaving in fifteen minutes to drive to Nottingham but I knew that; he’d told me over breakfast what time he was leaving. Then he accused me of not listening to him properly and of not understanding him. He finished:

I didn’t know what that meant. Alarmed and anxious I replied ten minutes later, although I knew I was breaking my promise to Doreen.

Attn: Franc

Sorry I didn’t hear the phone. No sign of the alleged fax.

I’m going to the gym after work so that will keep me busy.

Drive safely and dinner will be ready when you get back.

Love

H xxx

PS Please please don’t send any more faxes to the office. You-know-who is about.

Ten minutes after that, at 10:45, Franc replied. Of course I hadn’t heard the phone, he said, I never did – and I never listened either.

Do not understand your PS. Do not actually know ‘who is about’.

See you some time tonight.

Bye

Franc

Franc must have gone home before he went to Nottingham because when I went into the kitchen there was a note waiting for me:

Hi Helen

Note for you in your ‘witches’ book.

Franc

PS Bad mood – very bad.

There was nothing, no matter how small, that Franc would not put his own spin on, take offence at or find suspicious. And there was no possession of mine he would not examine in minute detail to find something to feed those suspicions. It was also typical that he would hide his accusations together with his ‘evidence’, forcing me to find them. I was guilty before I even knew what I was accused of.

My books were far too precious to store in Franc’s warehouse: my mother’s copies of John Buchan’s Book of Escapes, and of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Jamaica Inn; my favourite children’s books, the rebound seventeenth-century copy of City of London import taxes (whale bones for corsets 1/- per bundle) and my treasured first edition of Byron’s Works, Diaries and Letters. There were about ten boxes of them. Apparently, Franc had gone through every box and each of the books within. Like every other person I know who owns books, I have notes and letters, cuttings, pressed flowers and other mementos between the pages. A personal library is greater than the sum of its parts.

His excavations had struck a rich vein of information about my wicked past. I knew the book Franc was referring to: it was from a collection of research material I had gathered for a project about local pre-Christian rituals and customs. I had planned to write it up, perhaps into a book of my own. I had written to the author and she had been kind enough to answer my questions in a long letter, followed by another shorter one. These letters are what Franc found.

I don’t have them anymore. I probably destroyed them. It was easier to do that with something Franc fixed on, in an attempt to stop him going back to it over and over again, usually during the night, until I was desperate and aching, crying and exhausted with it, said something I shouldn’t and we had a row. It’s the same technique used by professional interrogators – hammer you with questions and accusations, deprive you of sleep and rest, food and drink, isolate you, confuse you, wear you down. I don’t believe there was anything incriminating in those letters and I still can’t think why they made him so angry. Perhaps it was that they mentioned my old house, which had an unusual name and history (and a connection to Stuart, although he couldn’t have known that); perhaps it was that the letter was from someone I hadn’t mentioned, or that I hadn’t talked about the abandoned project. Perhaps he thought he’d found proof that I really was a witch. Who knows?

In the bundle of papers I have in front of me there is a loose page torn from our message book and folded into four. The date is right: 14 May. It is the note Franc left for me the following day.

He began by complaining that I had left for work without saying anything or leaving a note but ‘after the argument we had last night’ he declared that my behaviour just completed the picture.

He accused me of being ‘cold’ when we were talking and ‘actually’, he said, ‘you were laughing at me.’

It seems to me you were not so bothered about my pain. Your face was saying that that was not my business so . . .

To get just a word from you was very difficult not to mention that you carefully avoided to talk about the two ‘personal references’.

Again he complained that I had not said goodbye, telling me he had got up when I left to check whether or not I really had gone. He couldn’t believe I would go without speaking again, that I left him in his misery. But I knew that if I had he would have carried on where we’d left off and I would have been late for work or not got there at all.

He said he did not know what to say. He hoped my day would be better than his. Perhaps, he suggested, I did not need him anymore. Now that I was ‘back on track’ perhaps I did not need to be as close to him as I used to be.

(And you used to be closer to me I can assure you.) Of course I am happy about that but it changes a lot of things. Where is the Helen so worried when I had one of my moods? Now you are laughing at me.

Again he said he did not know what to say or think, that my behaviour was incomprehensible to him. How could I treat him like this?

Again I think I do not know you. I am living with someone who I do not know. And every day there is a new discovery. And this makes me think there are so many (bad) things you have not disclosed. And this worries me. Because this makes me unhappy. And I am tired. I am tired of this unhappiness, of this situation with so many bad thoughts in my head.

He said I did not want to understand him. Why, he wanted to know, didn’t I say anything to make him feel better, why didn’t I care?

I know it is not true but then why?

Love

Franc

He was right. I had laughed at him because it seemed such a stupid thing to get worked up about. I was shaken, though. I decided it was best to ignore the whole silly business and carried on as though nothing had happened.

One day that week he showed me a photograph. It was of a girl standing barefoot on a beach – one of those European beaches where the sand is cleaned twice a day. I could see the tyre tracks. Her bare arms were thrown up above her head in golden sunlight – she was aflame with it. Her top had ridden up from her cut-off denim shorts as she stretched, showing a tanned flat stomach above the loose waistband. She was very slim, probably a size 6. Her face was hidden in a flurry of wind-blown dark curls. A broad smile, white teeth, clear skin. Laughing. This then, was Sophie.

More and more in my diary I see an entry struck through and ‘no’ written next to it.

Thursday 1 April – Lunch, Claire. [NO]

Friday 9 April – Dad visiting family? Shoulder of Mutton. [NO]

Friday 14 May – 7.00 for 7.30 p.m. Me and Franc. Maria’s leaving do. Chiquito’s. [NO]

And slowly these entries peter out altogether. My friends stop trying to arrange things with me when I bail so often. Franc doesn’t want to share me and I want to be with him as much as I possibly can. I am only reliable as far as he is concerned – to everyone else I’m a flake.

I have stopped writing anything in my diary I wouldn’t feel safe showing him. Also, after his ransacking of my books there is a tiny bat squeak of mistrust. I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t go through anything else. While I was busy covering my back I poured out Franc-pleasing billets doux into our message book.

Towards the end of May he went to Paris on a business trip and every evening he phoned at 8 p.m. sharp to find out what I’d been up to: how was work, had I been to the gym, what did I do there, how many cigarettes, was I eating, what was I eating? These conversations felt entirely normal – with no evidence of his ‘bad thoughts’. I was relieved that he made no mention of Sophie and an ‘I love you, Ellen’ as we ended our phone calls was, if not quite a hug, a great comfort.

He arrived home in the early hours of Thursday morning, slipping into bed beside me. His skin was chilly, the feel of him gave me goosebumps. He smelt the same, though – alert to any change I noticed these things now. He was back and I had missed him, but it had been a funny kind of missing. Mostly I had been afraid to do anything other than sit around at home and wait for him to call.

Good morning my Franc!

How completely wonderful it is to have you back. How I love to be in your arms and to be kissed by you. Perhaps it’s good that sometimes you go away because it shows me just how much I do love you.

Gym tonight? Will you come too? Phone me and let me know. If you want me to come straight home, I will do that.

I cooked the venison on Tuesday evening for tonight. I have taken the tagliatelle out of the freezer too. Will this be OK?

See you later

All my love

Helen

xxx

PS Call me!

We were moving to our new flat over the weekend and it felt like a fresh start. I was excited – I felt not an ounce of the dread that had accompanied the last three. Perhaps I felt that way because I hadn’t had to make any decisions this time; Franc had taken charge of everything. I spent the day cleaning Dave’s house and packing. The flat would be the first home we had chosen together. Except Franc chose it and Franc’s name was on the lease. For me, a new city-centre flat in a block of identical others was out of character. I am a country girl, born and raised. I’d spent the last ten years living in old houses, surrounded by open fields and as far away from other people as was practicably possible. It would be impossible to avoid other people there. The new flat was a two-bedroom box, full of anonymous flat-pack furniture chosen by Franc, assembled by him and Dave.

That said, the flat had its attractions: it was convenient for work and the gym; more importantly, it would contain my adored Franc; and finally it represented security after the recent peripatetic years. With hindsight (again) it was completely daft to think that – I had no legal right to be in that flat at all, my name didn’t appear on any of the paperwork. It was as though I didn’t exist. At the time I was so wrapped up in him I don’t think it even crossed my mind. I put a positive spin on things I wouldn’t normally have considered doing. I told myself that it was good to experience different lifestyles, even though I could see no trees from the windows, or the river, which was only twenty yards away. On one side I could see a car park, on the other a row of modern terraced houses and beyond them the taller buildings of the university. The flat was at the wrong angle for good natural light. What did come in was muted and opaque by day, dull orange by night. The stairwells were concrete and sterile. The front door had a security chain and a spyhole. This was not a home that invited me to love it.

I had taken the day off on Friday and when Franc came back from work there were boxes in every room but he had yet to say anything to confirm that we would definitely be moving the next day. Nor had he mentioned the van he was supposed to hire. We didn’t have much and a large Transit was all we needed. We were going to the theatre that night, so I showered and changed into a dress. I wore hold-ups instead of tights but they kept falling down because I’d lost so much weight. In the end I discreetly took them off and popped them into my handbag. I thought Franc might be cross but instead he laughed affectionately. Although he still said nothing about the move.

The subject didn’t come up on Saturday morning either. We had breakfast as usual and Franc carried on as though it was a weekend the same as any other, to be spent drinking coffee, going to the gym, watching football. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I was supposed to be doing. Eventually, after lunch I timidly said something, trying not to make it sound like nagging and it turned out he had been expecting me to book the van. I was sure he had said he would do it. Had he asked me and I’d forgotten? Did he write it in a note somewhere?

I phoned around frantically and found a van we could hire and collect on Sunday morning – from a garage twenty miles away. I kept apologizing, probably too much. Franc wasn’t pleased, more exasperated, and said why don’t we take some clothes over now in the car. I hadn’t packed our clothes yet. I was worried about creasing his designer suits – his Gaultier, Dior and Armani – the suits I snuggled when he was away so that I could imagine he was still there. I even sprayed his Acqua di Parma on my pillow.

Franc, however, had come up with a plan. I was to sit in the back seat of the car holding the tip of a broom handle. The passenger seat was folded down and the brush end rested on the dashboard. Onto this makeshift clothes rail Franc slid his suits, shirts and ties, still on their hangers. It took an hour to get across town and the broom got heavier and heavier. When we reached the flat Franc whisked his suits and shirts up the stairs and straight into the wardrobe. I sat there with my arms trembling as the weight was lifted. Only when he’d finished was I able to haul the bin bags containing my own clothes inside, shake them out and hang them up in the spare wardrobe in the spare room.

The plan for Sunday morning was that Franc would drive the van and I would take the car back. But he had a French licence and the van place wouldn’t let him, so I had to. On my own I’m a perfectly capable driver, but I was always terrified driving with a man in the passenger seat in case I made a mistake, real or imagined. Franc wouldn’t be in the van with me but he’d still be there, watching.

Although I’d driven plenty of vans before I felt anxious climbing up into the driver’s seat of this one and the weather was atrocious. I was to follow Franc, who would go ahead in his car because I didn’t know the way. I wasn’t familiar with this bit of the Midlands at all. The van was light with no load and skittish in a strong gusting wind, and the wipers couldn’t cope with the downpour. Franc’s rear lights winked through the spray, but they seemed to be getting further away. I wasn’t keeping up and I already thought I was driving too fast for that van in that weather. I couldn’t lose sight of Franc. He’d be angry if I got lost. On the passenger seat, my mobile rang.

And the bastard sped off into the rain, taking the middle lane and overtaking two slower cars. Just in time I caught sight of his indicator as he took the slip road. I executed a hasty manoeuvre that was not strictly legal and followed. There was a huge roundabout at the bottom and I went around it twice before I spotted Franc in a lay-by. As I pulled in behind him he drove off again.

The next day was a bank holiday, which gave us – or rather me – time to unpack and settle in. I enjoyed that part – the making-a-home part.

Dearest Franc

I found the notepad!

Thank you for my wonderful hug this morning before I got up. I need that, and you, so badly. I love you so very much – please understand how much you mean to me.

Always, your Sock

xxx

PS Imagine the biggest hug and the hugest kiss from me today.

We’d been living in the flat for a couple of weeks when Franc decided he was bored and wanted to learn to play golf. There was no suggestion that we could learn together so I went with him to his lesson and sat and watched while he practised his swing on the driving range.

The following weekend we made an exhaustive tour of the local golf shops so that he could decide what he needed to buy. It looked to me as though acquiring the right clothes was more important than a decent set of clubs. That golf comes with considerable sartorial excess was a large part of its appeal for him.

It was also the weekend of yet more royal nuptials. Given that I used to make wedding dresses I wanted to see what this bride wore. We were in a vast sports warehouse when I spotted a television, so I stopped to see the news, hoping to catch a glimpse.

Someone whistled and there was Franc, making a gesture peculiar to him. It meant, ‘Come here.’

Dutifully I trotted up, glancing back at the receding screen, which showed the happy couple just emerging from the church.

Any misgivings I might have felt about the flat soon vanished in the weeks that followed. The city centre was only ten minutes’ walk away and that meant Franc got far less fed-up and irritable than he used to when a walk around the shops meant a drive in the car. I liked the clean simplicity of it. To begin with it did feel like a home and I was sure we would do well there.

Franc’s mellow mood meant that when Nina invited us both over for supper on the last Saturday in June Franc said we could go. Furthermore he suggested spending the afternoon in and around my old stamping ground. I was surprised, but pleased. I didn’t think there was any hidden agenda.

We visited Quinn first. It was really good to see him but our conversation did not flow as freely as usual. There was an uncomfortable Franc-shaped elephant in the room and it didn’t drink vodka on a Saturday afternoon, smoke cheroots, kick its shoes off or eat pickles out of a jar. Nor did he have the faintest interest in a lively discussion about art, although I could see he wanted to observe our interaction. It felt a little uncomfortable. As we left, Quinn hugged me tighter than usual, and formally shook Franc’s hand. ‘I see you,’ he seemed to say.

Part of my justification for wanting to go to Nina’s was that when the girls and I moved from our large old house to the tiny new one, a quantity of our stuff ended up in her garage and attic. There were some things of mine that I wanted to bring back to the flat to make it feel more homey. Franc and Nina had only met once, when I’d fled to her place in April and he’d followed me. It hadn’t been the best start and I thought this was a chance to set the record straight, for her to see how good we were together.

I wanted to show Franc off. I wanted him to be clever and funny, charming and affectionate, just enough to make it clear how much we loved each other, and that our relationship was sound. There had been so much wrong in my life that it was important this new stage looked right, at least on the outside. I wanted to believe that true love existed for me too. Others seemed to have it so why not me?

As the evening progressed Franc adopted a shut-in impassive expression and I knew what that meant. He had a way of letting you know what he wanted without saying a word. We’d only been there an hour and had just finished eating when he suggested it was time for us to leave. But lingering after the meal is usually the best bit of dinner with friends. ‘Oh, Franc,’ I said, squeezing his hand gently, ‘there’s no rush.’ And I took some dishes into the kitchen where Nina and I laughed and chatted while we made coffee. We didn’t leave him alone for long.

An hour or so of stilted conversation later and I was forced to accept defeat – the evening hadn’t turned out quite the way I’d imagined it would. It wasn’t terrible but I was disappointed.

‘That’s quite a thing to do,’ said Franc as Nina fetched our coats. ‘To store all that stuff for Ellen and for how long?’

‘A year? Eighteen months? I don’t know but it’s fine. I have the space. We help each other.’

Franc was silent during the drive home. There was only the rhythmic thud and squeak of the wipers, the rattle of rain on the windscreen. I caught intermittent glimpses of his profile, eyes fixed on the road ahead, and I turned to gaze, mute, out of the window at the city sliding greasily past. I wasn’t sure what had happened.

There are some moments in life that come at you like one of those flick books, a frame at a time. When you go back over it you can stop at a specific point. I remember Franc unlocking the front door and stepping back to let me in first. I remember walking up the stairs and into the flat, dropping my bag down beside the sofa and shaking my coat before hanging it on the hook. I’d been smoking and drinking and I remember thinking I’d get a glass of water to freshen my mouth in case Franc wanted to kiss me as he often did when we came back from somewhere.

When I pitched unexpectedly towards the wall, I thought at first I’d stumbled. It was so quick I couldn’t bring my arms up in time to stop myself falling against it. My shoulder made contact first, then my head. My teeth rattled. My ears rang. I bit my tongue and drew blood. I remember a noise somewhere between a crack and a thump and a burst of coloured lights – I literally saw stars. I was wearing a loose cream jumper and a pale grey skirt with a side vent that Franc had bought me. The carpet was tabby-coloured and soft under my cheek. I remember keeping my eyes closed and lying very still but not tense, never tense. Fight, flight or flop. Experience has taught me to favour the flop. While I lay there I tried to process the fact that Franc had just landed me a wallop. He’d punched me on the side of the head, hard enough to knock me flying. I remember very clearly thinking, ‘I’ve done it again.’

It was quiet for a while and my eyes were still closed but I could feel Franc looking at me. I could only guess at what he was thinking but I hoped he was shocked by what he’d done. When I eventually opened my eyes, he helped me to my feet, stroked my hair, kissed my forehead and sent me off to bed with a little pat on my bottom. A bit later he came in with a couple of aspirin. He wasn’t so considerate that he left me in peace to sleep, though – we had to talk about what I’d done wrong.

As I told you, you are a bad girl!

I should have killed you before.

He said he hoped I would ‘be better’ later. The first time I read that I thought he meant my headache but now I wonder if he meant my behaviour. Everything he said, or wrote, seemed to have two meanings. I remember I begged him to help so that I wouldn’t keep getting it wrong and he wouldn’t keep being so cross with me.

Help? Well, I understand you want to be independent and you do not like to be told what to do, do you?

If you don’t think asking for anything you might need is so dangerous for you (as we could become too close . . .) please feel free to ask.

There are no stronger or more binding lies than those we tell ourselves. How could I believe I was in love with someone who did this to me? And I did believe it. I believed it so easily. I know it doesn’t make sense. I needed him (like a drug – the most common analogy people come up with). This was the love I’d read about ever since I was a little girl – feeling overwhelmed by it, the breathless rapture and longing, the self-sacrifice – exactly how it was described in any book I’d ever read, film I’d ever seen, song I’d ever listened to. I suffered for love exactly like the little mermaid or any other fairy-tale heroine. That is what we’re supposed to do. I’d ticked off what I felt against the checklist I’d assimilated and I got ‘mostly A’s. ‘Congratulations! You’re in love!’

In March 2016, a documentary was screened on BBC 4 looking at the inner workings of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), The Prosecutors: Real Crime and Punishment. The second episode, ‘The Proof’, dealt with domestic violence and showed the process for deciding whether a case could be taken to court and the perpetrator put on trial. All the cases covered in the programme were of women who had been victims of violent assault by their partner or ex-partner. The meticulous thoroughness with which each case was handled and the complexity of the process was a revelation.

As interesting to me were the stories of the women brave enough first of all to bring charges against the men who had done this to them, and second to take part in the documentary and go public with their experiences. The courage required should never be underestimated – doing this is a huge step and always deserving of utmost respect. One woman’s story in particular stayed with me, not for how she’d got there but for the way she reacted after she had appeared as a witness for the prosecution and learned of the subsequent harsh but richly deserved prison sentence for the man who had been her abuser. When she was interviewed outside the court she broke down in tears. ‘I can see in his eyes that he still loves me,’ she sobbed. And I knew, I just knew, she was going to take him back when all this was over and the whole thing would play on repeat. I suppose I would know that, wouldn’t I?