Chapter 8: The Solicitor's Letter
The letter arrived on Friday.
Tom brought it in from the post and set it on the kitchen table without opening it.
We all looked at it.
Hannah's name was on the envelope, care of our address, which meant Craig had told his solicitor she was here.
Which meant he'd known exactly where she was all along and had chosen the letter over the phone call.
"You don't have to open it today," I said.
"I know." Hannah picked it up.
She turned it over once.
Then she opened it.
She read it standing at the table.
Her face didn't change much.
When she finished she set it down and pushed it toward me.
It said that Hannah had vacated the marital home without notice or agreement, that Craig was deeply concerned for her wellbeing, that he wished to discuss a path forward in good faith, and that if she did not make contact within five days his solicitor would be required to take further steps to establish her welfare and protect his legal interests.
It was written in the language of concern.
Every sentence performed worry.
Not one word of it mentioned the bruise or the phone or the photograph or the two years of asking for cash.
"Further steps," Tom said.
He was reading over my shoulder.
"It's a pressure tactic," I said.
"He's trying to make her feel like she's the one who did something wrong."
"Is it working?" Tom asked Hannah.
She looked at the letter.
"A little," she said.
"Yeah.
A little."
I had spoken to a woman named Patricia two days earlier.
She ran a legal advocacy service out of an office forty minutes away.
She had a calm voice and she did not seem surprised by anything I told her.
She had asked me to bring Hannah in as soon as she was ready, and she had said one thing that I had written down and kept.
"The moment he lawyers up," she'd said, "is the moment she needs to as well."
"We have an appointment on Monday," I told Hannah.
"With Patricia.
The woman I told you about."
Hannah nodded slowly.
"You don't have to do anything about that letter before then," I said.
"You don't have to respond to it.
You don't have to call him.
You don't have to do anything except get through the weekend."
"He'll call," she said.
"Let him."
She looked at me.
"What if he comes here again?"
"Then we do the same thing we did last time."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "He told Diane I'd had some kind of episode.
That I wasn't well.
That he was worried about my mental state."
I went very still.
"How do you know that?"
"Diane texted me.
On the old phone.
She doesn't know I have it, but she has the number from years ago and she tried it." Hannah's voice was level.
"She said she thought I should know what Craig was telling people.
She said she'd seen this before."
Tom and I looked at each other.
"Diane said she'd seen it before," I repeated.
"With Craig.
Yes." Hannah folded her hands on the table.
"She said he was married before me.
Briefly.
She said the woman left and Craig told everyone she'd had a breakdown."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Roz's messages," Tom said.
"The photograph.
What else do we have?"
"Patricia will tell us what we need," I said.
But I was already thinking about the other woman.
The one before Hannah.
May you like
The one who had left and been called unstable and had probably sat in a room somewhere with her mother and thought, no one is going to believe me.
I picked up my phone and I started to think about how to find her.
