Dear Carletta,

Thanks for your note expressing your eternal gratitude for the framed Polaroid of Elinor, Jack, you and I, depicting us apparently happy on our fifth wedding anniversary, and at a time close to your mother and stepfather’s twentieth.

At the very start of this reply to your note of thanks, I want to make it perfectly clear to you that my gift of the framed photograph was not intended to give you any false hope at all that we’d ever get back together. No, quite the reverse, which is why I’m addressing you by your stage name, Carletta, which you took when your singing career took off as soon as you left me.

You’re wrong in assuming that I kept the photo, of the four of us laughing and embracing in celebration of the love we once shared so long ago, for some sort of sentimental reasons.

The photograph was found in a skip. Not by me, of course, as I was well out of the picture by then, but found by Jack and he kept it until he passed away.

Your stepfather had that tiny Polaroid print encased in that magnificent silver frame, and left it to me years ago in his Will. He found the print when you emptied out our old flat before moving to Las Vegas with the new man in your life, remember your first agent Julius? Jack asked me to keep the photograph in his memory, the only member of your family that bothered to keep in touch with me (through a card and letter each Christmas).

I attended Jack’s funeral. I was afraid to breach your restraining order, of course, but apparently your World Tour won over any lingering respect or regard you might have held for the man who devoted his life to your upbringing and the happiness of your mother for so many years. I easily avoided Elinor at the funeral, dazed as she was with grief for her husband.

I only sent you the photograph after hearing that your crazy husband number five burned down your LA mansion when you decided to divorce him, and you announced through social media that you hadn’t a single photo of your mother Elinor, who died last month.

No, I don’t stalk you on social media or even saw it on the news, it was a professional friend of mine that passed on your plea for photographic memories.

I must admit, I didn’t keep that photo all those years for you or Elinor. I still cannot forgive her vile lies of my supposed violence towards you, the jury believed her damning testimony alone even in absence of any physical proof. But you of all people knew of my innocence but allowed me to be convicted and thereby financially and socially destroyed me in the action.

Jack was kind to me, Carletta, even after the other court case collapsed when I failed to prove that your first hit song, “Love That Never Fails” was my creation and not written by you and Julius, your then new music publisher husband. That was a global hit for you, but the court case broke me, not just financially but branded me a plagiarist which completely blighted my potential musical career.

Did you know that even after all this time I’m still an undischarged bankrupt? Still shunned by the music industry, although I’ve written over 200 unpublished songs? I still play, of course, it is in my blood, but just bass guitar for a local dance band in pubs and village halls, accompanying my lovely wife Becky’s fairly average but spirited vocals.

Becky didn’t know why I baulked every time at her insistence in singing “your” song, huh! Your bloody song! For many years I couldn’t tell her the truth about her favourite song, to challenge her understanding, against all the sworn evidence, that her favourite song was penned by me and dedicated to you when you were my bride. She may not sing like an angel, but Becky is one in every other respect; she saved my sanity, made my life worth living and continues to do so.

Jack’s lawyers sent me another letter, held back by them as instructed, until after Elinor’s death and burial last month. Jack apologised to me in this new posthumous letter, his devotion for Elinor’s lifelong happiness outweighed mine and natural justice. He trusted I had still kept that framed photo. Yes, it was in the loft of our tiny house, I hadn’t thrown it away. He begged me to unseal the back to see what else he found discarded in that skip.

It’s thirty years since I’d seen that music sheet, on which was written words and melody of the song I wrote for you when we first started courting, before we married, and well before you were seduced by stardom and Julius’ tempting promises of fame and fortune. At the bottom of the sheet, your effusive thanks to “My Darling Darren” for the song and promises of eternal love and kisses, signed in the name you were born with, one I cannot voice without sorrow.

It’s with my new lawyers, Carletta, so see you and Julius in court.

Your once-loving Ex-

Darren.