Page 75 of The Last One to See Him

She listens as Kate recounts the details of how she met Jamie, what she thought at the time was a chance meeting, and her words seem laced with honestly.

‘He told me he was separated,’ Kate says. ‘And I think because it was the day Ellis had moved out, I felt some kind of bond with Jamie. Like we were both a bit adrift. I had no idea about you still being…together – otherwise I would have stayed away from him. You weren’t even?—’

‘Jamie had affairs before you,’ Harper blurts out. ‘Lots of them.’ She hasn’t planned for it all to come out like this, but now she’s said it, she feels the heavy burden lifting from her body. ‘But they weren’t exactly affairs.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’d been together for years when I found out Jamie was cheating. Only, when I confronted him, I found out it was something completely different.’ Harper pauses to gather her thoughts – these are words she’s never uttered before. ‘He met these rich women in the gym where he got a job as a personal trainer. He’d start some kind of relationship up with them but all he was doing was taking their money. Jamie had got into a lot of debt, and lost the business. I never even knew. He had people demanding money from him. And these clients at the gym just threw money at him. He knew how to charm them, and I guess in return he gave them his company. But however you look at it, he was conning these women out of their money.’

Kate’s mouth hangs open as she clearly struggles to comprehend what Harper is telling her.

‘Jamie was very careful about the women he targeted,’ Harper continues. ‘He’d study them for months, making sure he knew every detail of their lives so he knew how to appeal to them. Whatever they looked for in a man, that’s what he’d become. He’d develop a relationship with them and somehow convince them to invest in his fictitious company. When really, the money was paying off his extreme debts.’

‘But what did he want withme? I don’t have much disposable income. I do all right with the practice, and we don’t want for anything, but I’d never have enough to give away to anyone.’

‘That’s what I’ve been struggling to understand,’ Harper says. ‘You don’t fit the mould of the kind of woman Jamie would have targeted. Of course you’re attractive, anyone can see that, but it was never about looks for Jamie. And the other three were all clients at the gym. Older. Forties. Fifties. And extremely wealthy.’

‘Why me, then?’

Harper shakes her head. ‘I wish I could answer that. I thought it must have been different for him this time. I thought maybe he’d fallen in love with you. That your affair was nothing to do with money.’

‘There wasnoaffair!’

‘But I thought there was.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of that photo I found of you on his phone. It terrified me more than anything. Not because I’m weak and couldn’t let go of him, but because Jamie and I had unfinished business. I wanted to hurt him how he’d hurt me.’

Kate gasps.

‘Not as in kill him. No, I wanted to pay him back for what he did. Not just because of the other women, but because he…it was his fault our baby girl died.’ Feeling the suffocating sadness as if it had only just happened, Harper tells Kate about Molly.

Kate comes over and puts her arm around Harper. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how heartbreaking that must have been.’

Harper takes a moment to compose herself. It feels strange to be comforted by a woman who until now has been her enemy. ‘That’s why I didn’t want him to fall in love with someone else. Because then he would easily have walked away and I would never have got justice for our girl. If he moved on with his life, then Molly would be out of his mind, and he’d be free. I couldn’t let that happen. That’s why I stayed with him. I wanted to punish him. Every day. I’d talk about Molly all the time, drive him crazy with it. And then eventually I was going to leave him and take Dexter far away. Until I realised that I couldn’t do that to my son.’

Kate stands again, walking across to the window once more. ‘You weren’t married, were you?’

Harper takes her time to answer. She’s never been honest about this before; it was just between her and Jamie. ‘No, but we were very much together,’ Harper says. ‘Jamie always said marriage was just a piece of paper and I agreed with him. So we never actually got married. But we felt like we were, and that’s what we told people.’

Kate sighs. ‘I knew that. And Faye confirmed it.’

‘It doesn’t take a private detective to work it out,’ Harper says.It’s just a piece of paper.‘But like I said, we were as good as married. We even had rings.’ Harper reaches into her bag and notices Kate flinch. ‘This was Jamie’s. And Dexter found it in your kitchen.’ She hands the ring to Kate, who stares at it but doesn’t take it. ‘It’s got an inscription. Look. That’s what Jamie and I used to say to each other. It’s just a piece of paper.’ Harper feels the sting of tears in the corners of her eyes. ‘How did it get in your house? It had blood on it!’

‘I’ve never seen that before,’ Kate says. ‘I swear. I don’t know how it got in my kitchen. But Jamie definitely wasn’t wearing a wedding ring that night. Otherwise I would never have slept with him. And the blood could have come from anywhere.’

Hearing her say those words forces Harper to picture Jamie and Kate, and it’s all she can do to push the image away. ‘Then we have a problem. It doesn’t make sense. Why would Jamie’s ring be in your house?’

Kate shakes her head.

‘And that photo of you on his phone I found months ago. That’s what convinced me you were having an affair. Jamie never kept photos of those women on his phone. Only yours.’

‘I can’t explain that,’ Kate says. ‘But why didn’t the police find it?’

‘Because Jamie’s phone was never found. Whoever killed him must have taken it. The police said it hasn’t been switched on again.’

‘Who else has been in your house since Jamie died?’ Kate asks.

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