Invisible

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  The last thing I ever would have thought was that he was so cheery because he’d brutalized someone.

  Don’t think about it, don’t think about him, that way lies madness.

  He took me to the places where he’d raped those women, and got turned on by it. He wore those gloves and did things I thought were hot and horny at the time but that now make me want to rip my skin off in disgust.

  Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

  He said he loved me. Shouted it out in the courtroom for all to hear.

  I need to stop the madness. I need to take my brain out and pop it on a shelf, out of reach, until it stops working overtime with sick memories.

  Those huge hands used to hold me so gently. He murdered a woman with them, beat her to an unrecognisable pulp, then came home and made love to me, tenderly, lovingly, stroking my body with the same fingers that smashed life from someone else. He said he wanted a baby with me. We held each other, gazed into one another’s eyes. I didn’t see a monster, could never have guessed…

  Please don’t think. Please no more memories.

  He raped a woman because she looked like me.

  He raped a woman because she looked like me.

  He raped a woman because she looked like me.

  No matter how many times I say it, it doesn’t seem real. How does someone get over something like this? How do I ‘move on’ as my parents suggested. I don’t know. I wish someone could tell me.

  Monday 8

  When I think of that man my flesh creeps, and I find myself scratching, trying to tear away the skin he has touched.

  Wednesday 10

  The journalists are now camped outside my home constantly. I can’t go to the shop for a pint of milk without a photo and accompanying story running the next day in the tabloids, dissecting what I’ve bought and the possible hidden meaning behind it.

  I don’t bother buying the papers, of course, but it’s hard to avoid them when their headlines are stuck outside shops on little posters, or there is a huge pile of them outside the local garage when I fill up my car with petrol.

  Ah yes, my car. I’ve started referring to it as the cauliflower car now because it has so many dents and scrapes from people deliberately hitting it or keying it. They smash the windscreen too, or paint rude words on it. I can’t afford to get it professionally re-sprayed all the time so I just do it with an aerosol can I buy from Halfords. It looks bloody awful.

  I deserve everything I get though. And more. Because I loved a murderer.

  Thursday 11

  How could I not have noticed? How didn’t I realise that my husband was…perverted, twisted, demonic? Instead I just sat there wittering on about how bored I was with my life. I loved him for God’s sake! As much as it sickens me, I still love him. I just want to switch the feeling off but I can’t, it doesn’t seem possible, even though at the same time he utterly repels me.

  I’m appalled. I look back and realise that the good times coincide with immediately after he’s raped someone. It must have put him in a good mood, doing those unspeakable things to those poor women.

  Every time I think of it I want to vomit, my whole torso spasms, but there’s nothing to bring up because I can’t eat. How can I? Yet for all that, there’s a tiny voice inside me saying ‘he couldn’t have done those things.’ Of course I know he did, the evidence is irrefutable. I’m just in denial I suppose, because what does it say about me now that I know I have spent years loving a monster?

  Worse, I feel so bloody guilty. Not just because maybe if I’d realised what he was I could have saved a woman. No, the guilt’s mainly because I keep thinking about myself: what this means for me; how my life has been torn apart and everything is a lie; how devastated I am. And how I’m going to be stigmatised forever because of my connection with that man, when I haven’t even done anything wrong. I’m being punished for being a bloody idiot. I’m scared.

  How can I possibly think of myself when Daryl’s victims have been through so much. Stupid, selfish bitch, that’s me. Maybe that’s why I deserve what’s happening.

  My parents keep saying to me: ‘you’re strong, you’ll get through this.’ How? I don’t bloody feel strong. I feel like I’m falling apart. I’ve fallen apart. I’ve not just been shattered into a million pieces, those pieces have then been ground down into dust and scattered to the four winds. I don’t know if I’ll ever be whole again.

  Kim, who still calls me every night, tells me continuously: ‘At least you didn’t have children with him.’ As though it’s some consolation. But you know what? As awful as it sounds, as sick and evil as he is, I wish we had had kids. With a child, I’d have something to focus on, a reason to keep going. Someone to pour all my love into. Instead I’m all adrift. I’m lost. I’m drowning. I’m definitely feeling sorry for myself, selfish cow.

  I keep thinking about my doppelganger, who is now expecting Daryl’s child - hell, maybe she’s even had it now. Is it wrong that mixed with the pity and admiration I felt for her, there was just the tiniest hint of jealousy.

  I know, it’s disgusting of me. I’m disgusted with myself. And what makes it worse is that I’m lying, even to myself. Because it wasn’t the tiniest twinge of envy. It was a big, heart-squeezing, breath-taking surge. Totally unexpected, totally unwanted, but there all the same.

  And I can never admit that, not to anyone. They’d never understand, they’d judge me, they’d think that I sympathised with Daryl at some level. I don’t. I’m disgusted by him, by what he did. But…a baby. A beautiful baby. I didn’t realise how much I wanted one until the chance was snatched away from me.

  The reality is I’ll probably never have a child now. I’m 32. I will probably never trust another man. Even if I do, it will take a long, long time. By then years will have passed. Precious years in fertility stakes. The older I get, the less chance there is I’ll conceive.

  Chances are I will never, ever have a baby. I’ll never know what it’s like to feel a life growing inside me, to get that much talked of rush of maternal love when I hold my child in my arms for the first time. I’ll never have that heady mix of love and fear watching my child grow up and go into the world, through nursery, school, dating, all that life has to offer. A whole chunk of what it is to be a woman will forever be alien to me.

  And all the time, that fucking rapist bastard has a child. So yes, I’m jealous.

  Thursday 18

  He’s sent me a visiting order. Daryl. (I’ve noticed that I’ve stopped using his name. But it tastes bad in my mouth when I say it, clagging it up like a dry cracker so that I can’t speak or swallow; I even had to force myself to write it down just now.)

  Perhaps I should go and see him. Ask him why?

  I’ve killed an entire day standing in the hallway staring at the order then putting it down, walking away, coming back and starting all over again.

  Sometimes I mix it up by putting it in the bin, then picking it out again.

  Monday 22

  Kevin called today. I’ve been sacked. Too much time off work, apparently.

  ‘We’ve been as understanding as we can be, but your absences have reached an untenable level, and this situation has been on-going for almost twelve months now,’ he said. He sounded like he was reading from a script Human Resources had given him.

  As I so often do, I went to anxiously twirl my wedding ring, my right hand fluttering away uselessly as I once again discovered it is no longer there.

  Kevin continued. ‘In addition, when you have been present your work has not been up to the standard required by this company, and as stated in your contract of employment. As such, I am afraid I have no choice but to inform you that your employment is being terminated with immediate effect.’

  ‘Okay, thank you,’ I croaked, my voice husky from lack of use, then put the phone down. No point arguing with him, he has a fair point.

  I couldn’t afford the house with just my wage. Now I have no wage. I should be getting worried and worked up about t
his. I should, but the good old numbness stops me. Oh dear.

  I shuffled through to the hallway and stopped by the little table where I keep the post (well, the post that isn’t obscene or threatening) and stared at the visiting order. Picked it up, twirled it in my fingers, then put it down again and shuffled away.

  Kim called as soon as she’d put Henry to bed, having heard the news of my sacking on the work grapevine. As usual lately, when I tried to change the subject on to her and what she’s been up to, she let the conversation slide away.

  Am I losing her friendship as well? My world is shrinking, soon the only people I will speak to are my parents, bless them.

  Sunday 28

  Mum’s come to stay for a few days. She and Dad are worried about me (still). They say I should be angry, that I should be expressing my emotions. But apart from scared, I don’t know how I feel.

  I did hide the visiting order though. Mum would go crazy if she saw it. I dread to think what she might kick apart this time, and I really can’t afford to replace all my furniture.

  Sarcasm aside, bless her for coming to stay with me, in the heart of the whirlwind of madness. I’ve tried to protect her as much as possible from what’s going on, of course, but it’s impossible. She and Dad are suffering the looks, the whispers, the abusive phone calls (and worse, the silent ones) almost as much as me. How anyone can hold a pair of 63-year-olds responsible for what’s happened is beyond me.

  Most things are beyond me though.

  Mum didn’t even need to ring the doorbell when she arrived, she was heralded by cameras clicking as she walked up the garden path, their flashes epilepsy-inducing, and the cry of journalists shouting questions. They all yell at once and I can’t make out half of what they’re saying to me.

  They’ve so many questions, how do they think of them all? Don’t they ever get tired of asking and never getting an answer? Or have they never grown up, and like children they can ask for all eternity it feels: ‘Why? But…why? Why?’ It’s amazing the stuff they ask.

  They all call me by my first name, too, as though trying to prove that really they’re my mate and if I open my heart to them they’ll look after me. I can trust them, they’re saying.

  That’s another thing. I get their cards stuffed through the letterbox, along with endless letters saying that they’d ‘love to hear my side of the story’. That I’m being judged by people already and so it’s only fair that I get to ‘set the record straight’ by speaking exclusively to them. Oh, and that while ‘obviously it isn’t about the money’ they would be ‘more than happy to pay a six figure fee’. So when it gets right down to it they think I’m some heartless bitch who will profit from what has happened.

  The really obvious question though, the one I’m asked time and time again, is: ‘Did you really have no idea?’ Of course I had no bloody idea! Surely no one can truly believe I would know about what Daryl was up to and keep quiet.

  Or…maybe they think I got some horrible thrill from it, or was somehow party to it? Maybe they think Daryl would come home afterwards and give me a blow by blow account over a cuppa, and I’d laugh and clap my hands in delight in all the right places as he got to the really gory details. And afterwards we’d sit and watch Coronation Street.

  If people really believe that, they must be sick themselves.

  But…then again, I have to remind myself about women like Rosemary West and Myra Hindley. They really did enjoy their bloke’s crimes. In fact, they actively took part, loved every second of it, were a driving force behind it. Is my name going to be mentioned in the same breath as them now?

  The thought makes me feel sick – I mean makes my stomach physically contract and I have to run to the loo or stand over a bin, retching, gagging.

  I hate being sick, it scares me, but the second I feel scared, I feel guilty. I can’t allow myself to feel anything any more, because nothing I feel can ever compare to what Daryl’s victims feel.

  I’m glad Mum’s here. It gives me less time to think about that sort of thing. Of course, the second she arrived, she took charge. You know what? I didn’t mind at all, in fact, it felt great. It took everything she had not to open the curtains, but I’ve got used to the half-light now, and it means the paparazzi can’t sneakily take photos of me in my own home.

  They do that, you know, sneak up to the window, press the camera right up against the pane then snap away. The photo quality isn’t great, as I discovered when the first grainy shot of me was printed immediately after the verdict, when I got home and put the telly on to try and drown out the noise they were all making outside. No, it’s not great, but it satisfied the appetite of the nation to see the ‘monster’s wife relaxing at the home they’d shared’.

  Relaxing! I’ve already checked with Peter – they can’t make any specific allegations against me, they can’t outright say that I knew anything because then I could sue them for libel and defamation of character and all that. But with oh so subtle use of words they can imply so much. ‘Relaxing’ because I don’t have a care in the world, ‘relaxing’ despite my fella being a killer and multiple rapist.

  So Mum kept the curtains closed and instead cleaned up the mess in the twilight. I seem to have forgotten how to do the washing up, vacuuming, dusting…bathing, dressing, brushing my hair…

  Then she offered to go shopping because apparently everything I own is past its use by date. ‘You need to eat, keep your strength up,’ she told me. I think she tells me that a lot, but her words, along with everything else in the real world, seem to have turned into a strange fug that is muffled from me, and everything I see is dulled through a mist. I don’t exist any more. I am a ghost.

  As she wittered on about eggs and bread and milk and vegetables, I simply grunted occasionally, but when she was about to open the front door reality hit along with panic.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted, grabbing her arm and holding her back. ‘Be careful out there, Mum.’

  She looked at me, eyes widened in surprise that I was finally reacting to something.

  ‘I mean it,’ I begged. ‘If people know you’re anything to do with me they’ll try to hurt you or have a go at you. Be careful.’

  She nodded slowly. Placed her fingers over my hand and rubbed them gently until I stopped squeezing her arm. It soothed the hysterical fear that was building inside me and I cleared my throat, trying to regain control.

  ‘Just…don’t go to the local supermarket, people might recognise you, link you to me,’ I instructed. ‘Drive to that other one that’s across town. Or the big one by the bypass. I tend to change which ones I go to, so that no one can ever guess where I’ll be and plan an attack. Sometimes I even drive to different towns…’

  I trailed off then, suddenly struck by the concern, fear, and fierce love all reflected in Mum’s face. It must be so hard for her. I’ve got to try harder to pull myself together, if only for her sake.

  I’ll try. I promise I’ll try. I just don’t know how I’ll manage it though.

  MAY

  Wednesday 1

  Night time is the worst, I think. During the day I can distract myself. I can do things, talk to people (well, Mum, Dad, and Kim – that’s it, everyone else has disappeared).

  At night though, there’s nothing for me to do but lie waiting and hoping for sleep to finally take me into oblivion for a while and offer me a few hours of respite. It rarely comes though. Instead I lie in the darkness, staring straight up, in a bed that seems abnormally huge. Cold and empty. I know I spent the majority of my time alone when Daryl and I were together, and then almost a year while he was on remand and I kidded myself that he’d be home because he was a good, innocent person…but somehow, knowing I am now truly alone and hopeless makes the bed seem bigger and emptier and lonelier.

  I curl up and try to imagine arms around me, a warm body spooned behind me, but my imagination’s not that good. Then I realise I’m thinking of him, my husband, and feel sick because now all I can think of is the Port Pervert.<
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  How could I not have known? Why did he do this to us?

  Those are the thoughts that keep me cold at night, shivering even when it’s warm.

  Thursday 2

  Mum marched me down to the doctor’s today and despite my protests she sat in on my appointment as if I was a little girl again.

  ‘She doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, barely speaks, can’t be bothered with anything and either stares out of the window in an almost catatonic state for hours or jiggles non-stop, rocking like a lunatic,’ Mum told the GP.

  Wow, I hadn’t realised I was quite that bad. But instead of arguing I just sat there, knee going up and down like the clappers.

  ‘It sounds as if you’re depressed,’ the doctor replied directly to me. Her voice was sympathetic but her body language spoke volumes: if she’d sat any further back in her chair she’d be coming out the other side. Yes, she knew who I was and wasn’t happy but was doing her best to be professional. ‘I’m going to write a prescription for you that will help you deal with things.’

  Finally I found my voice. ‘No, I don’t want that,’ I blurted, shaking my head stubbornly. ‘I’m not depressed, or, at least I am depressed probably but I know why; there’s a reason why I feel this way and tablets aren’t going to get rid of it. If I’m going to stand any chance of getting over this then I need to deal with it properly. Work through it.’

  It was the most I’d said at one go since the trial started. Goodness knows where the determination came from, but I kept on talking, my brain seeming to work properly for a few moments, at least.

  ‘Tablets will fog my brain up and make me feel better for now but it’s just putting off the moment when I do have to face reality. I’d rather do that now, even though it’s…’ I searched for a word to sum everything up, but failed miserably, ‘…hard.’

  ‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ the GP replied, voice gentler, unfolding her arms. ‘The tablets would simply help you, but if you’re certain you don’t want them…’