Tom and Megan’s affair

Tom and Megan’s affair began in flirtation and private encounters, but its meaning changed as Megan came to want more than the secret arrangement Tom described. The relationship’s shift from a source of excitement and control into an unwanted attachment—and then a threat to Tom’s family life—helps explain the pressure surrounding Megan’s final attempt to make him face her pregnancy and their connection.

Beginning and Secrecy

Megan’s account traces the affair to the period after the gallery where she worked had closed, leaving her at home bored and restless. Tom had previously visited the gallery, smiling and flirting; she regarded that attention as harmless until she encountered him on the street while Scott was away and invited him in for coffee. She could tell he was attracted to her, and the encounter happened again. At first, she says, the relationship offered novelty and the pleasure of feeling wanted. She also valued the sense of control it gave her: she did not want Tom to leave his wife, but she wanted him to want to leave her.

The affair shifted between private settings. Tom later said that their first meetings took place at Megan’s home, where she was anxious that Scott might discover them. They then met at The Swan. In recalling the affair to Anna, Tom connected it with his earlier meetings with Anna at 34 Cranham Street, presenting both relationships as part of his past. These arrangements kept the affair hidden from Scott and tied its secrecy to Tom’s existing family life with Anna and Evie.

From Game to Obsession

Megan says she did not initially expect the affair to become a commitment. Over time, however, she began to imagine that she and Tom might be together. She could not identify exactly when that hope took hold; she noticed the change most clearly when Tom began to pull away. He stopped texting and answering her calls. What had begun as flirtation and a diversion became, in Megan’s description, an obsession intensified by rejection.

Tom’s later account agrees that the relationship began casually, but he describes Megan as the one who changed the terms. He said she began talking about going away together and starting over, and that when he was not available she became angry, called repeatedly, and threatened to tell Anna. His account casts her demands as a disruption he wanted to end; Megan’s account emphasizes the hurt of being ignored and her growing wish for the relationship to become something more. Their accounts thus expose a central imbalance: Megan’s attachment deepened while Tom insisted that he would not leave his family.

Disclosure and the Hidden Phone

Before her disappearance, Megan told Scott that there had been someone else. She lowered her eyes as she admitted it, and when she reached toward him he recoiled and called her an insulting name. Megan regretted pursuing the conversation in that moment, but the disclosure marked a break with her previous secrecy. She believed the confrontation had made her more determined to act openly and to make the other man face his responsibilities.

Megan retrieved an old pay-as-you-go mobile phone from a dark-grey shoe box labelled red wedge boots, hidden at the back of her wardrobe among carefully labelled boxes. The phone’s call log showed repeated unanswered calls in late March and early April, along with threats to go to Tom’s house and speak to his wife. Megan called again and sent an urgent message, then waited for a reply that did not come. The old phone makes the affair’s concealment tangible: it was a separate channel for a relationship she had kept apart from her life with Scott, and its history showed that Tom had already been avoiding her for months.

Pregnancy, Final Meeting, and Consequences

Megan’s pregnancy transformed the affair from an unstable private attachment into a question of responsibility. She wanted everything brought into the open and told Tom that, if the baby was his, she would accept his involvement. Tom later said he told her he was not interested and that the child had nothing to do with him. The evidence does not establish the baby’s paternity; the uncertainty itself was part of the confrontation.

Tom placed their final meeting after he had dealt with Rachel near Blenheim Road. He said he stopped Megan from going to the house, where she might have spoken to Anna, and drove her to Corly Wood, a place where they had sometimes gone when they had no room. He described her as demanding to be heard about the baby and threatening again to tell Anna. According to his confession, he struck her with a rock, then killed her after she was badly injured and tried to crawl away. His account presents the killing as an attempt to silence her, but the affair had brought him to the place of confrontation: Megan’s attempt to end the secrecy and secure recognition for her child met his determination to preserve his existing family life. The relationship’s private beginning therefore culminated in violence, with Megan dead and the truth about her connection to Tom revealed only afterward.