Old Flame

Moving on for Ian Townsend was something he saw as a natural step after the collapse of his three-year relationship back in 2016, and he felt he dodged a bullet by finding out about his girlfriend's promiscuity and infidelity four days before his planned proposal to her.
Leaving the relationship behind in the forgotten basket, he met someone new, marrying her in 2019, then setting about the creation of a family with their first child three years later. Life was good, yet here he now was, divorced at thirty-seven with an eight-year-old daughter, running his grandfather's and late father's business, keeping his home together. His ex-wife, while they were never at war, managed her appearances across the three years of their separation, usually between cases which consumed her focus in full. Her focus, too, was now also set on a new threat, the source of which, she knew nothing.
The yearning for a little romance in Ian's life was a minor ache, yet a constant one, as he truly missed his wife's presence in the house, and therefore, the presence of intimacy in his life. The ache intensified after the flirty comments began appearing on various posts on the business Facebook page, at which point the ache became a blindfold to a darkened past, long-forgotten, yet an obsession so strong, it held across the years, and was now inching its way out of the shadows from behind, slowly closing in.