The Catch

A man whose story didn’t match up with the facts. A man who had reinvented himself at least twice, shedding his past like a snake shedding its skin, changing his name and starting again. Once when he was in his teens, to rid himself of his birth name and sever any connection to his real family – His dead family. – and then again after he came out of jail and split with his first wife. He hadn’t been in the forces, he’d been in jail. He had become Ryan Wilson and invented a brand new history for himself, a first-class degree and an officer’s commission in the army, and then somehow managed to blag his way into an office job.
Working his way up from the bottom, building his new identity piece by piece. Perhaps it had just been a case of applying for enough jobs until someone didn’t bother to take up references. Or perhaps it was a case of finding his true calling, a man who was handsome and charming, persuasive and charismatic – a rainmaker – and that was more than enough in a salesman’s business where the genuine rainmakers made their own rules. A man who had played her like a maestro. A man followed at every turn by disappearance and death: his mother and father, his sister. His great aunt. His foster mother. His first wife. His first wife. A chill spread over Abbie’s skin. He has been married before. And his ex-wife disappeared off the face of the earth.

Ryan knew them when he saw them: classic signs of psychological shock. Confusion, disorientation, inability to think clearly and decisively. Like a passenger on a sinking ship, unable to move, unable to take positive action, because they can’t grasp the reality of what’s happening. Waiting to be told what to do, waiting for someone in a uniform to rescue them, paralysed with shock until it is too late. Scientists called it acute stress disorder: the brain basically went into a freeze mode where it became detached, numb, with reduced awareness of its immediate surroundings. The common denominator in people who tend to surrender to death like lambs when things go badly, catastrophically wrong.

The woman in this picture, mid-thirties, tall, slim, long dark hair, straight eyebrows and a litte dimple in her chin. A soft half-smile for the camera, a hand on her son shoulder, the boy’s own a hand laid protectively over hers. She was pretty. Undeniably pretty And undeniably similar to Abbie. So similar that they could almost have been sisters. So he's married a woman who's the spitting image of his mother. Is that weird ?

And I knew it then, as I looked Ryan in the eyes. That was the moment I realised there was something not quite right about my daughters new boyfriend. There was something hidden in the dark shadows behind his eyes. Something off. Something very, very wrong indeed.

Just to be sure. I loved my daughter and I was worried about her: I was protecting her. I tried not to think too much further about the road I had embarked upon. I didn’t really like the person l was becoming, checking Ryan's social media and following him in my car. Attaching a GPS tracker to someone’s car without their knowledge... that definitely felt like crossing a line.