‘But you have coping mechanisms in place now,’ Marsha replied.
‘Yes, I’ve found a way of blocking it now, when the thoughts whirl around my head like a tornado threatening to uproot my sanity and smash it on the ground,’ I nodded, mock-philosophically.
‘Sometimes there is no “why”’ that’s what I tell myself. Now I’m aware that it’s simplistic, maybe even a bit trite. But frankly I don’t give a toss because it’s helping keep the madness at bay.
Sometimes there is no ‘why’. What I mean by that really is that I’ll never get it. I’ll never understand. Even if Daryl were ever to sit me down and explain his thought process and feelings in mind-numbing detail I still wouldn’t comprehend why because I’m, well, normal for want of a better word. And he isn’t, he’s got something in him that’s broken, something that stops him being like other people.
Maybe he was born with it, maybe it got broken at some point in his life, but I think it was too late for him by the time he met me. I couldn’t have fixed him even if I’d realised he needed fixing.
So yes, back to the why (it’s always back to that). I’ll never understand it even if I’m told it, because what explanation can there be for hunting women down, raping them, even killing them. What could he tell me that will then make me have a light bulb moment where I think: ‘Oh yeah, that makes sense. I can totally see it from his point of view now.’
There may be reasons for it – maybe he was abused him or something, I don’t know – but there are no excuses for it. So when the whirling ‘why’ comes along and threatens to take control of me, that’s my new mantra. Sometimes, there is no ‘why’.
I’ve taken another massive step towards freedom. I feel…tranquil.
Sunday 28
One of the few things I decided to keep when I left the house was my diaries. It might seem like an odd decision; I’m sure most people wouldn’t want to revisit a terrible past like mine. Me neither, really. But avoiding it won’t change the fact it’s happened, and maybe I can learn some lessons from sometimes reading entries from when I lived in a fool’s world of denial and blindness. I’ve had to forgive him so that I can move on, and it’s worked a treat…but forgiving is not the same as forgetting. I will never allow myself to be that person again.
This excerpt from five years ago is a prime example. We’d had some kind of row and I was tying myself up in knots about it.
I’m struggling not to text Daryl. Wondered about ‘Are you ready to talk yet?’ That’s quite neutral. Shows the door’s open, that I’m willing to forgive him his tantrum if he apologises. I hate being in limbo like this, I can’t stand it when he disappears off the face of the earth just to punish me. What if this time he doesn’t come back? Decides he’s had enough of the rows and wants a fresh start. After all, sometimes he says ‘having a relationship shouldn’t be this hard.’ I can’t imagine my life without him. But if that’s what’s going to happen then he needs to tell me, not keep me dangling. I’m a ‘rip the plaster off’ kind of girl – if something’s got to be done and is going to hurt, just get on with it, because prolonging it will only make it worse. I’d rather be told the no holds barred, no shit truth than be messed around and left dangling. And he knows it. Which is why he does it…
In the end of course, I had made Daryl a grovelling apology. It makes me sad to think of that young woman being played; allowing herself to be played. But it also makes me happy, oddly, because I know now that I can spot a manipulator from a mile away, and I am stronger than that woman ever was.
At the start of the diary I was keeping the year of the arrest, when life started to cave in, I wrote something quite profound. If you’re not happy with something, change it; if it won’t change, get rid of it.
When I wrote it I’d claimed I was going to try to live my life by that line. I wish I had, it might have saved me a little heartache…but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all I can do about the past is vow to learn from it. So now I’m taking that piece of wisdom from two years ago and this time I WILL live my life that way.
I’ll do it on my own too. I’ve realised I rely on others too much. Growing up, all I wanted to do was keep my parents happy because they are so lovely; when I became a teenager I became friends with Hannah and I did my best to keep up with her, following her around like a puppy, taking her lead; then came Daryl, who controlled me completely, manipulating me so blatantly, yet it never occurred to me to mind, not really. Even after him, I relied on Kim so much, leaning on her instead of standing on my own two feet.
Now I’m learning how to live for me and no one else, and to keep myself going rather than hand that responsibility over to others.
I am not helpless. I just act like I am.
That’s not to say I asked for what happened to me. Good grief, how could anyone ask for that? A whole lifetime of lies and horrific revelations… But I have to take responsibility for my part in it. Not for the attacks because only with hindsight can I see now what was going on there, but for what I allowed Daryl to do to me.
I knew something was wrong in my marriage and I said nothing. I was unhappy and I did nothing to change it. I realised I was being lied to and my strings pulled by a master puppeteer, yet I told myself it was all in my head because that was easier than facing reality. I told myself it was my fault and desperately tried to change my own behaviour, instead of confronting Daryl for his failings.
I will never accept behaviour like that again. I have to draw a line in the sand right here and now and say ‘no more’. I refuse to accept crappy friends like Hannah (who I now realise I never actually liked much, so what the hell was I doing trying to please her and make her like me?!). I refuse to be in a relationship that makes me contort everything that is me in order to make it work. I have to have the confidence to say to people: ‘this is me, like it or lump it’, instead of doing whatever it takes to be liked by people who aren’t actually likeable themselves.
I never do that, incidentally. I’ve realised I’ve never decided in the past whether or not I like someone, instead I worry about making them like me. Ridiculous. No more making myself invisible to help others.
No more feeling guilty, either, for my own suffering. I know what I’ve been through can never compare with Daryl’s victims’ traumas, but it isn’t a suffering contest - if it were, they’d win hands down. But I need to stop comparing myself, finding myself lacking, and apologising for my existence,
Finally, I’m starting to immerge, I think. I’m finding myself. I won’t be invisible any more. I’ll never let myself disappear again.
MARCH
Monday 5
As the shop is quietest on a Monday, I’ve taken today and tomorrow off to visit my parents. They seem happy in their new home too. At the time, I think they both felt like moving away was something that was being foisted on them, because of everything that had happened with Daryl. The silent phone calls had persisted, the odd threat, and in the end they, like me, had recognised the need for a fresh start.
It’s the best thing they’ve ever done. It’s given Mum an excuse to buy all kinds of new knick knacks, rugs, cushion covers, and so on, while Dad has stoically agreed to everything she’s requested because, bless him, all he really wants is for her to be happy again.
She’s definitely that. To hear her talking, the old house was a real dump (it wasn’t, it was lovely) and had all sorts wrong with it. ‘Oooh, the oven was in totally the wrong place’, ‘the stairs were so steep, they hurt my knees, and so awkward if you wanted to take any furniture up and down them’, ‘there was a terrible draught coming from somewhere if you sat in the wrong place in the lounge’, and so on…
Luckily, the new place seems to have no such problems. Well, for starters it’s a bungalow, so she definitely can’t complain about the stairs. She’s barely recognisable as the avenging angel who kicked a bed apart in anger; so typical of her though that she didn’t get that angry for herself, only for me. That’s how we are in this famil
y though; we love with all our hearts and always put the other person first.
Now though, my fierce protector has been replaced by my good old mum again, never happier than discussing which curtains would best suit the conservatory. Although there was one interesting little result of Mum getting in touch with her anger – before she moved she told her grumpy neighbour, who was always complaining about leaves from Mum’s hanging baskets blowing into his garden, that he really ought to get a life. Nice one, Mum! Seems neither of us is as scared of confrontation as we used to be.
Dad gazes at Mum with adoration as she talks about whether or not to have nets or muslin in the conservatory windows. Funny, I never used to notice how in love they still are; I never used to notice them as people somehow, I don’t think. After everything we’ve been through together though we are more than simply daughter and parents, we are friends too.
Still, for all Dad loves her, too much soft furnishings talk will send him off to the garden, which he is passionate about. He spent ages today walking me round it, telling me in minute detail all his plans for the beds and borders; he has all the time in the world to perfect it now that he has retired.
Geraniums and buddleia here, fuchsia there, a vegetable plot to grow their own tomatoes, carrots, lettuce… As he talked a squirrel bounded quickly over the lawn to the big tree at the bottom of the garden, and suddenly I remembered that weird obsession I’d had before with the squirrel at their old place, longing for its simplicity of life. I’ve come a long way since then.
At the end of Dad’s gardening monologue, I flung my arms round his neck and gave him a big hug. ‘Love you,’ I said into his neck.
I could feel him smiling as he hugged me back and patted me awkwardly.
‘Love you too. What’s brought this on?’ he laughed.
‘I’m just happy,’ I replied.
I’m just happy.
APRIL
Sunday 8
Argh! I’m so bloody nervous! Tomorrow I start my diploma course to train as a legal secretary. What the hell am I doing? What if I can’t hack it?
Oh, sod it, I’ve tackled worse things than this and got through it. That’s one good thing about what’s happened to me; I feel like I can tackle anything now, because I know I am far stronger than I think.
This is it, the start of an exciting new future for me. I’d had the idea growing for a while, and had wound up having a chat to Peter about retraining and launching myself into a proper career. He’d thought I’d be great at it, after all I’m organised, can type, and well, I have a knowledge of how barristers and the legal system work, thanks to my past. Might as well put it to good use!
Peter’s even put in a good word for me at a friend’s firm of solicitors, so I’ve got a job lined up while I train that could turn into something even better once I’ve got my qualification. Who knows, I might even progress to become a solicitor myself at some point.
Get me, making exciting plans for the future! Not bad for someone whose husband consistently called her an air head…
Mum and Dad are really proud of me too. Mum reckons legal secretary sounds so much more impressive than my old job – and she’s right. She called me earlier to wish me good luck for tomorrow, and as soon as I’d put the phone down it rang again. This time it was Kim.
‘Good luck! We’re thinking of you!’ she sang.
‘Thanks! I need all the luck I can get!’ I laughed.
‘You should have more faith in yourself,’ tutted Kim. ‘That man destroyed all your confidence…’
There was a time when just that mention of Daryl would have made my blood pressure soar and my shoulders shoot up to under my ears. Instead I just brushed the comment away with a ‘well, I’m fine now.’
I really feel like Daryl’s old news now though. Which is great. Believe me, I know how lucky I am to be able to say that because I’m sure it will take his rape victims a lot longer to feel like that. Will they ever?
But as for me, I think I’ve come a long way. I’ve shied away from the memories, then finally forced myself to examine exactly the depth of the pain, betrayal, hopelessness. To revisit the world of lies he built around us.
Now though, I’ve stepped away from it. I’ve done what I hadn’t truly thought was possible: I’ve moved on. Will I sometimes still think of what happened and get upset, and be influenced by it? Maybe. I’ve learned never to say never. No one can second guess the future – after all, I thought I had a future that was all mapped out but it was built on nothing at all.
So now I take one day at a time, and tomorrow is looking pretty darn exciting.
‘Anyway, how are you doing?’ I asked Kim, taking the subject away from me.
‘Oh, I’m fine! Peter’s at work and Henry’s just playing around in the pool. And…guess what? I’m pregnant!’
I screamed down the phone then, probably bursting her eardrums, but that’s okay because she joined right in and burst mine back! After that we chatted animatedly about why tiny socks are so cute, whether she felt like she was having a boy or a girl (girl, but she changes her mind daily), how excited Henry and Peter were… She promised to email me her scan picture too; she’d had it done that day, and had been desperate to tell me her news now she knew the pregnancy was going well.
‘Come and visit soon,’ she begged as we said our goodbyes. ‘I know you’re really busy now being high-powered…’
‘Yeah, right!’ I laughed.
‘…But visit soon!’ she finished.
Hmm, maybe I will.
DECEMBER
Sunday 9
Noon - Well here I am at the start of a trip of a lifetime. Going to Australia, to visit Kim, Peter, Henry and their new addition, little Eve. I’ve never been on a trip like this – in fact I’ve never gone anywhere alone, so I’m drinking it all in and making the most of every moment.
I’m currently sat next to a woman who has been filing her nails for 45 mins. I’m amazed she’s got anything left. Eventually, by the time we reach Singapore to re-fuel, presumably all that will be left will be bloody stumps.
How bizarre, the Captain’s just made an announcement. No sleeping on the floor is allowed. Who on earth would?!
The file’s still out…
Anyway, I booked this holiday in November as soon as Eve was born, and it felt like it would never arrive, but suddenly here I am, flying for 24 hours solid, on my own, to Sydney. Boy, am I looking forward to this holiday. It’s my first since the Daryl incident (as I now call it. Well, God knows it needed some kind of shorthand title and nothing was going to do it justice) and I reckon I really deserve it after everything.
Funny, people think it’s brave of me to get on a flight alone and fly to Oz, but I don’t feel it. All I’m doing is getting on a plane one end and getting off at the other, where Kim is meeting me. It’s a picnic compared to everything else that’s happened to me.
This holiday isn’t the only good bit of news I’ve had lately. My training is going really well, and my employers are so impressed with me that I’m already in line for a promotion. Seems I’m a natural legal secretary! And last Friday I went out with some women from work and I met a guy called George; we’re going to meet up, hopefully, when I get back in a month’s time. That’s helping with the old positivity!
He’s not going to be The One, I know that. But he’ll be a step towards finding The One. Time to dip my toe in the water again, but I’ll be looking out for sharks. Of course, I worry that basically every man is a shark of some form or other, or that I’ve got truly bad taste in men and will somehow, in a room packed with hundreds of normal blokes manage to pick the only twisted, perverted weirdo in it…but I can’t hide away from life forever. I won’t let myself.
Seriously, does that woman have nails made of steel? Ooh, blimey, I think she’s finally finished filing!
Anyway, I’m 34,000 feet up in the air and feel like I can see my future laid out below me. Maybe I’ll train to be a solicitor, maybe I’ll fall in love and h
ave oodles of babies, maybe I’ll even move to Oz myself, who can say. Whatever happens, life is just waiting for me to grab it, and from now on I’m only going to accept good things.
I’m free. Totally free.
EPILOGUE
WAKEFIELD PRISON
Tuesday
Every day is the same, a numbing grind of boredom divided by work, exercise time, and staring at the four walls of my little cell. At least I don’t have to share with anyone, so it gives me plenty of time to think about everything.
My past. The mistakes I’ve made. How I’d put them right in a flash if I could go back in time. I can’t of course, all I can do is learn from it, and my God have I.
Yes, I won’t make the same mistakes again. I won’t get caught.
The divorce came through today. Which means that fucking whore is out there somewhere celebrating, thinking that she has won. But that’s okay, let her have her time of triumph, it’ll make it all the sweeter when I show her how to really play the game. I’m being a good boy, I’m never in trouble in here, and in twelve years I’ll charm the parole board like I can always charm anyone I want to.
Then I’ll be free to go after that little bitch and make her pay for what she’s done to me.
I win.
THE END
Invisible
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I OWE HUGE thanks to so many people for listening to me as I became increasingly caught up in the writing of this book, so apologies if I miss anyone out.
Firstly, I have to thank Paul Humphreys. Invisible may have happened eventually without him, but his support made it easier, faster, and far more pleasant! The difference he made can’t be underestimated. What’s more, he created the amazing book cover for me – talented, eh?
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