“Then I noticed the top envelope had my name on it. My real name, not Judith Broch but Julie Pike.

My mother had long since stopped using that name for me. She’d lived under an assumed name herself. The only person who’d be writing to me with that name, at that address was him. Or more likely, someone working for him.

Raymond Wayfield; serial rapist and murderer. My father.

I stared at that letter for a long time. The light shifted in the flat as cars went by outside. Blue whirling lights and sirens went past, setting off a series of thumps and a baby’s cries in the flat above. Still I couldn’t bring myself to reach out and open that envelope. As if by doing so I’d be letting that man back into my life. Into my reality.

As if he’d ever left.”