Stuart Blackhurst was the reason I left my office and my colleagues behind, and why I set up work from home, where Sean was more often than not close at hand. With him here, a few rooms away at most, I knew I was always safe.
An image enters my mind, unwanted: the hospital bed, the sheet, the teenage girl. When Lucy and James relived the allegation with me in this room, did they imagine the scenario in the way that I have, the way I have tried to erase from my consciousness for all these years? I still think about that girl, where she might be now – how Stuart Blackhurst might have affected the life she has gone on to lead.
I felt so sorry for her, as I felt so sorry for Lucy Green, the imagined daughter of ‘Lydia’. And now that girl is standing here in front of me, her beliefs lined up before her like ammunition with which she is intent on destroying me, and though I realise how dangerous this woman might be, there is still a part of me that pities her.
‘He spoke to me as though I was nothing,’ I tell her. ‘He thought he could intimidate me into silence, in the same way he had with your mother.’
This is all a waste of everyone’s time, Karen – you realise that, don’t you? She’s never going anywhere. Where would she go?
Lucy laughs dismissively. ‘Is that all you’ve got? Has it ever occurred to you that he might have spoken to you in that way because he could see what you were doing?’
‘What was I doing?’
‘Well, you and my mother were obviously working against him, whether you realised it at the time or not. She was using you as a witness, in a sense.’
‘Witness to what?’
‘This supposed abuse. Because no one else saw it, did they? Only you, because she wanted you to.’
‘No one else saw it because your father was skilled at keeping it hidden. He wasn’t the first.’
Lucy shakes her head, mirroring the motion by waving the knife slowly from side to side in front of her. ‘There’s something you don’t seem to have considered – something that contradicts all your allegations. Why would he even come to you? The man you’re describing would never agree to go to marriage guidance counselling. If he was as controlling as you claim he was, why would he have given my mother an opportunity to confide in you?’
Lucy looks triumphant, as though she has pulled out her trump card and brandished it in my face, leaving me with no defence in the argument. I wonder if this is the place from where all her belief in her father has stemmed: the fact that he came to marriage counselling, as though that alone is the mark of a good man and a loving husband.
‘See?’ she says, as petulant as a teenager and barely giving me time to answer her. ‘It proves he loved her. It proves that everything else is bullshit. He came to you because he wanted to save his marriage. He wanted to help her, but she was already intent on destroying him. She wanted you to believe her bullshit – you were her only chance of getting away with murder.’
I hear her words, but it’s James’s face I focus on. It seems so obvious now what has been going on here, yet beneath their act as a married couple it was all concealed so cleverly. I remember the session during which the sexual assault allegation was raised, and how I waited in the corridor to listen to them talk.
Tell me that girl was lying.
I heard Lydia’s insistence; her desperation to believe in her husband’s innocence. Josh responded to her instruction with a wearied reluctance, as though this conversation was one that had been repeated so many times before.
How many times do I have to say it?
As many as it takes for me to believe you.
She wasn’t a wife trying to believe in her husband’s innocence: she was a daughter trying to convince her brother of their father’s. The scale of the charade hits me in the gut, making me nauseous: the same roll of sickness that swept over me when the allegation was first mentioned. I had been there years earlier, listening to the same conversation. I had seen this before: confident, successful doctor, sexual assault allegation, abused wife. So why hadn’t I seen what they were doing?
Never, not for a moment, did I believe the past would be capable of returning to me in this way. And yet perhaps I should have seen it. How many times had my mind drifted back to the days when I was in the presence of those people? Lucy looks like Christine, I can see that now – the narrow nose, the sharp features – and during our very first session together, didn’t Josh look at me in a way that reminded me of Stuart Blackhurst, dragging me right back to that time and place, the expression on his face submerging me in memories? Something else occurs to me now. How many times did Josh criticise his wife’s memory, suggesting that she didn’t always remember things as they had happened? He knows. Though he may not have wanted to admit it before now, James knows what the truth is.
I see the doubt in his eyes, and everything continues to fall into place. All those times I thought of him as contradictory, never quite sure what to make of him. He was two people, Josh and James, and the two merged and blended, so that it was never clear even to him where one started and the other ended. When he spoke of Lydia’s questionable memory, he was in a way confiding in me. He doesn’t know what to believe; or he didn’t then, at least. If there is anyone in this room who can help me now, it is James. He is my only hope.
‘Your father was a narcissist,’ I repeat, keeping my eyes fixed on Lucy’s as I speak. ‘A dangerous one at that. He came to my sessions because he saw no wrong in anything he had done – in fact, it was an opportunity for him to show off the control he’d developed over your mother down the years. He was proud of the suffering he was causing. He thought coming to me would teach your mother that there was nothing she could do to stop him. He was a sociopath, Lucy, despite everything people might have thought about him. He managed to fool his colleagues, his family … he even managed to fool the police. But I saw the real Stuart Blackhurst – I saw your father for everything he was. I know none of this is what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.’
She steps closer, and I think for a moment that she might hit me. She doesn’t. ‘The man you’re describing could never love his daughter the way my father loved me,’ she says through clenched teeth. ‘He loved me,’ she repeats, tears spiking at the corners of her eyes, ‘and you destroyed it. You destroyed everything.’ Her face twists with a hatred that is venomous, her gaze boring into me. ‘The truth is,’ she says, spitting the words in my face, ‘you saw what you wanted to see. You’re the one with all the qualifications and the fancy letters after your name – surely you’re not so stupid that you don’t realise just how much your judgement of my father was influenced by what happened to you. Not every man is Damien Hunter, Karen.’
The words hit me, sending me reeling. Though I have spoken openly about my experiences within a controlling relationship, I have never revealed my ex-husband’s name to anyone other than Sean. Damien Hunter has remained an anonymous character in the articles I have written, not deserving to be named or given attention.
I reach to the windowsill to steady myself while she stands there looking victorious, a violent pleasure being taken from my suffering. I feel exposed. Just how much does this woman know about my life?
‘Drink your tea,’ she says, waving the knife in front of me. ‘Come on. A nice cup of tea makes everything better, doesn’t it?’
‘Whatever you believe,’ I tell her, ‘this has nothing to do with anything that might have happened to me. And you’re wrong about your father – people are capable of all kinds of contradictions. Do you think someone who loves his mother isn’t capable of killing a child? Or that someone who listens to classical music isn’t capable of violence? You’re a perfect example of how people can have two sides. You adored your father, anyone can see that, but you’re still able to lie and cheat and deceive.’ I watch as the smirk that has been fixed to her face slides away. ‘You realise what you’ve done here, don’t you? This whole charade, it makes a mockery of everyone who has suffered domestic abuse, men and women. Doing that to yoursel
f,’ I say, gesturing to her stomach. ‘It’s sick.’
She leans over me, the knife just inches from my face. ‘Drink your tea, Karen.’
She stands back and waits for me to pick up the cup. I glance at James, willing him to stop this madness. The fact is that no matter how crazy this woman might be, there is truth in some of what she says. I saw a narcissist in the character James played because that’s what I am trained to see. I mistook his confusion and his vulnerability – his anger with his sister and her manipulation of the situation – for violence and control. I was wrong. I admit that I was wrong.
But where their father was concerned, I know I made no mistake. Stuart Blackhurst was the most skilled sociopath I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. He knew that I saw through him – that I was the only person to see past the persona he had so skilfully created for himself – and on several occasions he made attempts to bully me into silence. I continued my work with the couple because I saw the situation that Christine was trapped in. I told her to leave her husband when I saw the danger she was in, and the possible future trouble that lay ahead of her. I was trying to help her, though I failed in my efforts. I have known for all these years that I failed her, carrying that weight with me like a lead lung. I failed her children, I realised that too.
And now they are here with me – they have been here with me for months – and I realise that nothing I can say or do will undo the years of suffering they have endured.
‘Your tea,’ Lucy says, jabbing the knife in my direction.
I take another sip, and then another when she makes it clear that she is in control here. I am a puppet, just like James, each movement carried out at her say-so.
‘Now say you got it wrong.’
He was a good man.
My mind flits back to that initial meeting with them all those months ago, and to that first strained conversation in which so much hostility was emptied into this room. Once again it seems so obvious what was going on, yet their performance was so convincing that I was unable to see through it. He was a good man, she said, and I sat there believing that she was referring to Josh: to the husband who was sitting opposite her, being spoken about in the past tense as though the person he had once been no longer existed. Yet all the time she was talking about Stuart Blackhurst. She was trying to convince her brother that their father had been a good man, and if he needed convincing of the fact, it is further evidence that James’s opinion is not fixed even after all these years.
I recall what she said about James when she was describing their ‘son’.
Beneath it all he’s just a scared little boy desperate for his daddy’s love.
And now his reaction to those words makes sense. She was describing him: the boy he was and the man he has become. She was mocking him, goading him; belittling him in order to shape him into the person she needed him to be: the person who would come here with her to perform this charade, all with the aim of seeking some perverse sense of revenge. And to begin with he played along with her game. He wore the right clothes, he said the right things; he occasionally slipped up, but I was too naïve to see it for what it was.
Just how controlled has he been by his sister over the years? She made a comment about sacrifice, about sticking by him through everything. I know enough of the care system to know that it fails too many children, and I wonder now whether Lucy played on his vulnerability and the threat of separation that must have hung over them. Was she the only person he felt able to rely on after his parents’ death? She was his sole source of stability and continuity: it seems reasonable to assume he would depend on her for security. He has been failed multiple times, and one of those times was by me.
But one thing I am sure of, now more than ever: James is not convinced of his father’s innocence. He never has been. And where his sister holds a hatred for me that is keenly embedded within her heart, I am unconvinced her brother feels the same.
‘This has gone too far,’ I tell him.
‘Say it!’ Lucy yells at me like a madwoman, her cheeks burning scarlet. Her brother flinches at the noise of her rage.
‘I got it wrong,’ I say. She steps back and away from me, smiling as though once again she has gained some sort of victory. She is right that I got things wrong, but not in the way she believes. I thought that Josh – James – was the dangerous one, but I was so far from the truth of it, and that has been my biggest mistake.
‘Do you feel guilty yet, Karen? Two people died because of you, all because you were too blind to see what was staring you in the face. You believed me, didn’t you? The abuse, the bruises, the fear. All of it. If I was able to convince you of my suffering so easily, surely you can see now that she lied to you as well? What did she tell you about him?’
‘I saw the bruises for myself, Lucy. I saw what he had done to her.’
‘You saw my bruises as well. What you choose to see and what is actually real aren’t always the same thing, are they? Everything she said to you was designed to manipulate you. The victim act, the lies, the tears. All of it was a performance.’
I am shaking my head. Her words are those of a fantasist; someone who has been so blindsided by her father’s charm that she is unable to see even the faintest glimpse of the person he really was. ‘To what end?’ I challenge.
‘Killing him. It was no act of defence, was it? She’d planned it. The marriage counselling, it was all in preparation for the final act of getting rid of him. She thought you’d be able to get her out of trouble – that with your glowing character reference and an account of my father’s so-called abuse, she could get away with murder.’
I am shaking my head, my eyes still pleading with James to try to gain some control over his sister. Yet I realise he can’t. Even if the knife wasn’t still gripped in her fist, he seems powerless where she is concerned. Whatever she might be, Lucy is the only person he has left in this world.
‘So why did she kill herself, Lucy? If all she had wanted was your father dead, why take her own life like she did?’
I can remember as vividly as though it was this morning that day I opened the newspaper and read of Stuart Blackhurst’s death, and though my heart held a breath before my brain absorbed the details, I already knew the circumstances that had led up to the event. Christine had told me the last time I had seen her that she was going to do it: she was going to apply for the divorce papers. I can still recall now the sense of euphoria I felt in my chest for this woman who had been so controlled and demoralised by the person she’d believed had loved her more than anyone else. The words I had spoken to her – the reality I had repeated until she could no longer ignore it – were finally being acknowledged.
You can’t stay with a violent man for the sake of your children. You may think that by holding the family together you are doing the right thing, but what are you teaching them about marriage if they see you stay with a man who treats you so badly and makes you feel the way your husband clearly does? Show your children courage and strength. Show them you are worth more than this. They may not thank you for it now, but they will realise in time that leaving him was as much for their sakes as it was for your own.
She was going to escape him, and I was the person who was setting her free. I would save her. I would save her children, in a way I wasn’t able to save my own child.
A month later, he was dead. Six weeks after that, so was she. She took a lethal cocktail of tablets that she emptied from various bottles in the bathroom cupboard, and was found lying on her son’s bed, a photograph of her children on the duvet by her open hand.
Before Christine Blackhurst took her own life, the police came to talk to me, as they did with so many of the people who had been known to the couple. I told them the truth as I had seen it: that Stuart Blackhurst was manipulative and controlling and that his wife had endured years of emotional, psychological and physical abuse that had been kept concealed from the outside world, in part by the skilled performance he played and in part by Chri
stine’s all-consuming sense of shame. It didn’t seem to matter to the police: I was one voice in contradiction of a hundred glowing character references. Stuart Blackhurst was a charming man, admired by his neighbours and respected by his colleagues. A false allegation of sexual abuse had been made against him: the girl had admitted she’d lied. Poor man, an allegation like that could stick, even when proved false, but he was supported at work – pitied, even – and everyone rallied around to ensure that his reputation remained intact.
There was no evidence of abuse against his wife – no reports made to the police, no photographic evidence of any physical injuries inflicted upon her. It was her word against his reputation, and what was she? Just a housewife and a mother; just a strange, slightly off-beat woman who had shut herself away from the world some time earlier. I owed her everything. Christine Blackhurst was me: she was what my life might have become.
Despite my best efforts to convince the police that it was manslaughter, Christine was charged with murder. She was released on bail and permitted to return home under a set of rules that restricted her from certain freedoms, one of which included seeing her children. I went to the house to speak to her, and remember being struck by how normal the place was, with no evidence of any of the horrors that had taken place inside those four walls. Her children had been taken into care pending the result of her trial.
She let me into the house, but only to hide from the neighbours the scene that would unfold. I see her now as vividly as I saw her that day in the hallway: still in her nightdress, her eyes dark and sunken, red-rimmed with tears. She had always been a slight woman, but further weight loss had left her frail and appearing a decade older than her years. She looked at me in a way that no one ever had before or ever has since, with an expression of such pained contempt, as though I was the root of all her life’s tragedy; which in a way I was.
They’re going to find me guilty. My children will be without a mother.
The Divorce: A gripping psychological thriller with a fantastic twist Page 19