Lucy Greenwell

She had to pretend to have found you.

Otherwise, you were clearly her baby.

As I'm writing this episode, my phone lights up.

Is that Lewis?

It's Lewis, Jess's biological father.

I've wanted to speak to him for ages about Jennifer, about Jess, about why he allowed his daughter Chloe to be counselled by someone he'd had a relationship with.

And we've spoken once before, very briefly.

I then wrote to him with a long list of questions.

Now he's calling me to set the record straight.

We get talking and we go all the way back to the 1980s when he was with his partner, Debbie, but having an affair with Jennifer.

He says he knew that Jennifer was in love with him, but after a few months, he decided to call time on their relationship, out on the town, one Friday or Saturday night, in what would have been around May 1987.

He tells me he didn't notice Jennifer was pregnant.

By my reckoning, she would have been about four months.

I press him.

He may not have noticed, but did she honestly not mention it?

He says he didn't know anything about a pregnancy or a baby until Jess turned up in 2022, aged 34.

So her parents and siblings didn't know.

Her husband didn't know.

Lewis didn't know.

It seems certain now that Jennifer carried the knowledge of what she did all alone for more than 30 years.