Chapter 5: The Man Who Wouldn't Let Go
I showed Claire the screen.
She went white.
"Don't answer it."
"I'm going to answer it."
"Mark—"
I picked up.
Silence for two seconds.
Then a voice — smooth, unhurried, the kind of voice that had learned to sound reasonable.
"You must be Mark."
"I am."
"I imagine today hasn't gone quite the way you planned."
I kept my voice level.
"What do you want?"
"I want what I've always wanted.
I want Catherine to come home."
"Her name is Claire."
A short pause.
"That's a name she invented.
I knew her before she invented it."
"That doesn't give you a claim on her."
"Doesn't it." Not a question.
"We were married, Mark.
In a church, with witnesses, with rings.
The same thing you were trying to do this morning before it all fell apart." Another pause.
"How does it feel, by the way?
Standing in a car park in your wedding suit while your guests eat cold canapés inside?"
Claire was watching my face.
I turned slightly away from her.
"Here's what's going to happen," I said.
"You're going to stop contacting Claire.
You're going to stop contacting anyone connected to her.
And if you don't, I'm going to make sure every threat you've made is documented and placed in front of someone who can act on it."
He laughed.
It was a quiet laugh, which was worse than a loud one.
"She told you about the threats.
That's sweet.
Did she tell you all of them?" A beat.
"Did she tell you about the photographs?"
I said nothing.
"I didn't think so." His voice dropped slightly.
"Ask her about the photographs, Mark.
Ask her what she gave me to make me leave her alone the first time.
Ask her why she was so desperate that she agreed to something she can never take back."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone.
Claire was already watching me.
She had heard enough from my side to know.
"Photographs," I said.
She closed her eyes.
"Claire."
"They're not what he's going to make them sound like."
"Tell me what they are."
She pushed off the car and walked three steps away, then stopped with her back to me.
"When I left him the first time, he followed me.
I moved.
He found me.
I changed my number.
He got the new one." She didn't turn around.
"The second time he found me, I was living in Edinburgh.
I had a job, a flat, a life that had nothing to do with him.
He showed up at my workplace." A pause.
"I was terrified.
I agreed to meet him once, to talk, to try to end it calmly.
He brought a camera."
"He took photographs without your consent."
"He said they were just — that it was nothing.
That he wanted to remember me." Her voice was flat.
"I didn't realize until later what he intended to do with them."
"What did he do with them?"
"He sent one to my employer.
I lost the job." She finally turned around.
Her eyes were dry, which somehow made it worse.
"That was six years ago.
I moved again.
I became Claire.
I thought it was over."
"And three months ago he found you again."
"Yes."
"And he threatened to send the photographs to me."
"And to your employer.
And to Lily's school." Her voice didn't waver on Lily's name, but something in her face did.
"He said he would make sure everyone who mattered to you knew exactly what kind of woman you were marrying."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"Do you still have any of his messages?
Texts, emails, anything?"
She hesitated.
"Some."
"How many?"
"Enough."
"Then we're going to a solicitor tomorrow morning.
First thing."
"Mark, a solicitor can't—"
"A solicitor can advise us on a harassment application.
And what he just said to me on that phone — that's a recorded call.
My phone logs everything."
She stared at me.
"You recorded it?"
"I always record unknown numbers.
Old habit from work." I held up the phone.
"He just told me, on record, that he has photographs obtained without your consent and that he intends to use them as leverage.
That's not a grey area."
For the first time since I had walked out of the chapel, something shifted in her face.
Not relief.
Not yet.
Something smaller than that.
The first edge of it.
"He won't stop just because of a solicitor," she said.
"Probably not.
But we're not trying to make him stop with a letter.
We're building a case." I put the phone in my pocket.
"He's been doing this for years because you've been alone.
You're not alone anymore."
She looked at me for a long time.
"You should be furious with me," she said.
"I am furious with you."
"Then why are you—"
"Because being furious with you and wanting to protect you are not the same thing, and I can do both at once." I took a breath.
"We have a lot to talk about.
About the wedding.
About what you should have told me and didn't.
About trust." I paused.
"But not today.
Today we deal with Daniel."
She nodded slowly.
Then the chapel door opened again and Rachel appeared in the car park, the wedding gown traded for a coat she must have borrowed from someone inside.
She walked toward us with her hands in her pockets.
She stopped a few feet away and looked at Claire.
"Two hundred people are asking questions," she said.
"Diane is running out of answers."
"Tell them to go home," Claire said.
"And what do I tell them about—" Rachel glanced at me.
"About everything?"
Claire looked at me.
I looked back at her.
"Tell them," I said, "that the wedding has been postponed.
And that we'll be in touch."
Rachel studied my face, trying to read something in it.
Whatever she found there, she nodded once and walked back toward the chapel.
Claire turned to me.
"Postponed," she said quietly.
"Not cancelled."
"Not cancelled," I said.
She exhaled.
One long, careful breath.
Then her phone lit up in her coat pocket.
She looked at the screen and her face went still again.
She turned it toward me.
A photograph.
Sent from Daniel's number.
No message.
Just the image.
It was a picture of Lily.
Taken this morning.
May you like
Outside the chapel.
Before the ceremony began.
