Apparently I had wanted to go and kill the bloke, but hadbeen dissuaded by Sarah. Then we had tried to persuade Stacey to go to thepolice, but she had refused. She couldn’t face going through the wholeinterview process or a lengthy court case. So it seemed Liam had got away withit.
But he had reckoned without me, the time-travelling avenger,heading back to right another wrong perpetrated against my family.
And this time, I was going to make certain he would neverdare lay a finger on another woman against her will ever again.
July 2015
The day of the prom had arrived, and I had my plans allworked out. Just as I had with Tompkins, I’d had months to track down Liam andsuss him out. I didn’t like what I’d seen.
I stalked him on the internet, and tracked him down in reallife. I followed him around Oxford, watching what he did. Hanging out with hismates, he liked to play the big “I am”, bragging about his sexual conquests andhow great he was at football.
He claimed that he was having trials with a Premiershipfootball club and was going to earn £250k a week and shag whoever he liked. Hewas arrogant, egotistical and rude. As far as he was concerned, he was God’sgift to women, and they were his for the taking. He showed no signs of anyremorse at all for what he’d done to Stacey.
It made me so angry it was all I could do to stop myselfkilling him there and then. Sitting in the bath one evening I fantasised aboutall the ways I could bring him down.
The beauty of it was, if I really wanted to I could kill himas many times as I wanted. He’d be back again the next day and I could do itall over again. I could push him under a bus on Sunday and then slit his throaton Saturday. As I lay back and relaxed under the bubbles, I devised all mannerof grisly and evil plans.
Of course, I had no intention of actually carrying out anyof these plans, but I’m sure most people have had such thoughts in their darkermoments. I’d done so much good work up to this point to change my futuretimeline there was no point undoing it all again by risking spending the restof my life in prison.
So I decided to bide my time and wait for the day of theevent itself. Then he would be in for a shock.
On the day of the prom, Stacey looked stunning. Sixteenyears old, dressed in a pink, 1950s-style prom dress, she was set to be thebelle of the ball.
She had chosen her outfit to fit in with the school’s 1950s Greasetheme. When Liam turned up to collect Stacey he was wearing one of thoseclassic varsity-style jackets that frat boys always donned in old American teenmovies, red with white sleeves and a large letter “D” on the front.
He was polite enough at the door, addressing me as “MrScott”, though I couldn’t help but notice the insincerity in his voice. Throughgritted teeth I forced myself to respond nicely, even though every bone in mybody wanted to punch his lights out.
Some might have questioned what on earth I was doing lettingher go off with him, knowing what I knew, but I had to let things play out asthey had done before. Nothing bad was going to happen until he took her down tothe field, and then I would put my plan into action.
I could have simply stopped Stacey from going to the ball,but all that would have achieved would have been to make her angry andresentful with me, and it wouldn’t have put a stop to his ways. She seemed tothink he was the bee’s knees, the way she was talking about him all through theday of the prom.
I needed her to see exactly what he was really like before Iintervened.
The school was on the banks of the River Cherwell, with aschool field that was accessible over a small bridge. The entrance was not lockedso I waited until dusk fell and then crept in under cover of darkness.
It was vital no one saw me because Liam was going to be in asorry state by the time I’d finished with him, and I did not want any witnessesplacing me at the scene.
By 10pm, I had secreted myself by the side of the pavilionbehind an old water tank which provided perfect cover. I had about an hour orso to wait which gave me time for some final reflections on how I was going tohandle this.
How far should I let things go? If I was to intervene tooearly, Stacey wouldn’t thank me for it; too late and she’d be seriouslytraumatised. I had no choice but to play it by ear and see what happened.
It was a warm, moonlit night, and the air was still.Watching from behind the tank I saw them approaching, hand-in-hand, across thebridge. The still air meant that their voices carried easily and I could hearthe conversation from some way off.
As they grew closer, I crouched down a little further toensure I wouldn’t be spotted.
Stacey sounded happy at this stage: they were laughing andjoking together. He seemed to be acting like the perfect gentleman, but I knewit was a façade. At least I hoped it was. An unwelcome element of doubt hadcrept into my mind.
What if she had made the whole thing up? That he hadn’traped her at all, but she’d said he had because she was so ashamed of thepregnancy? There had been a similar high-profile case in the news in 2018involving a well-known popstar and an obsessed fan.
His name had been blackened all over the tabloids, until shefinally admitted she’d fabricated the whole story in revenge for him rejectingher. Mud stuck, though, and his career never recovered.
I swiftly dismissed these unworthy thoughts. It was not thesort of thing Stacey would do. She had never lied to me and I knew from thestate she’d been in over the past few months that this was no fake rape.
Sure enough, as they stopped behind
