Chapter 25

25

Dear Marianne,

I’m sorry for the weirdness of pushing this letter into your hands. It was a difficult decision to write it, and I know it will be very difficult to read. I’m sorry for any pain it causes you. I felt I had to. Hopefully, by the end, you might understand why.

I’m going to give you the whole story because if I start to leave parts out, I won’t know which parts to leave in.

I’m an ex-girlfriend of your fiancé, Scott. We met when I was twenty-five and were together until I was twenty-nine, and lived together for most of those four years. I look back now, nearly ten years on from when we met, and realise how young and inexperienced I was.

I wasn’t myself yet, if you know what I mean: I was a bundle of ideas and intentions, untried and untested. But like most twenty-five-year-olds, I didn’t think there was anything I didn’t know.

I met Scott at a dinner party. A friend of a friend liked to host them in a networking supper club kind of way.

It was the first time I’d been and I was intimidated. I knew no one, beyond nodding acquaintance, and the hostess was busy. I drank a sugary cocktail, fast. Quite buzzed, I found myself sitting at a long trestle table opposite a slender lad with a broad Manchester accent, and messy, rock-star-in-waiting hair. He had a sly grin and made dry remarks. He fastened his attention on me and asked me rapid-fire questions about myself, his response to my answers a very northern: aw, right. He had a way of looking at me from under his brow that suggested I was the only one in the room who was on his wavelength, and vice versa.

We clicked. Not any old click either, the magic click. The click there are films and songs about, that you spend your adolescence dreaming of.

I went from what the hell am I doing here? to feeling a kind of confident, joyful belonging in the room that I hadn’t known before, and it wasn’t coming from Bacardi served in Moroccan tea glasses. We swapped numbers as we left: ’cos it’s always nice to make a new friend, Harriet Hatley.

I don’t remember Scott ever asking me out on a date. He was keen, it was obvious I was too, he told me when gigs were happening that he’d also be at. We were soon intertwined on benches in pub garden tables, him introducing me to his friends in that languid drawl as: my girl Harriet.

My name in his mouth sounded like a miracle. Our love was like a spell. I didn’t walk down the street anymore, I bounced on air. I stayed awake to watch him sleep; we moved in together within months. I was flooded with brain chemicals that made me slightly mad. I put the dope in dopamine.

There was only one unexpected flaw in the rosy picture: my friends weren’t enthusiastic. They made the right noises, in a muted way. Then my best friend Lorna said: ‘He’s a little bit full of himself! You’re in love with him and so is he, haha.’ My friend Roxy thought he was great, but: ‘It did happen very fast, between you two?’

I was caught off guard. Maybe he had a little swagger, but Scott was surely entitled to be full of himself. He was fascinating, opinionated, creative, so sure of his convictions. Charisma to spare. He was the leader of his pack, wreathed in a special aura, the kind of character who blazes through life like a comet.

I once ventured some edited version of this stuff about his extraordinary presence to Lorna, who burst out laughing. ‘He’s an egotistical caner, not Lord Byron.’

I sometimes watched other women react to him. They’d fall by visible degree, with their faux-grudging smiles and sparkle in their eyes as he teased them. Then they’d remember my presence and give me a guilty glance, and I’d respond with a confident smile that said: yep, I know I’m lucky.

I decided: Lorna’s jealous. She maybe even fancies him a little herself. Ditto Roxy. They want him for themselves, but they know that’s a traitorous thought, so they’re taking the edge off their envy by nit-picking. With hindsight, I realise, this was the moment I crossed the line from girlfriend to a delusional member of a personality cult. Anyone criticising him must be in bad faith, or at least have bad taste.

All of this was the early hazing phase. I had to be in a state of bedazzled worship, where he was all the points on my compass and my heart’s only desire, as preparation for his destabilising me. I had to have pushed my poker chips across the green baize and gone all in.

At first, it was subtle. It could be written off as bumpy young love. I still remember the jolt, the cold shock, the first time he lost his temper at me. There’s a photograph of us earlier the same day, sat on the grass at some concert, all bucket hats and face glitter and giddily wasted on plastic pints. He has both arms wrapped around me and I’m grinning, delirious. I look back now and I see how much of a warning it is. His embrace like a cage, staking a claim. Me thinking that his possession is my paradise.

We got home to our flat, sun stroked, woozy with cheap cooking lager and me fancying a takeaway. I threw my house keys with a clatter to the table and yawned. ‘Want a Chinese?’ I turned and saw his face like a gathering thunder.

Why did you say that fucking thing to Lorna?

My stomach dropped like a stone.

You know ‘what thing’, your stupid jokes about how my job is easy, how dare you make me feel that small?

Scott worked as a sales rep for a drinks company. I’d made some throwaway remark about how you never had to work hard to over-serve Brits in a holiday mood. It wasn’t about Scott, it was a general chat about how none of us stayed within our recommended units.

He launched into a rant about how dismissive Lorna was to him, how I always colluded, how trivialised he felt among my friends.

I was horrified I’d made him feel that way and grovelled my apologies. I would never do it again. It would never happen again. I would never let THEM make him feel that way again.

Next came the jealousies over other men. Never mind the fact that Scott was a champion flirt himself. It was as if the face of every woman he met was a mirror; he was constantly needing to see his attractiveness reflected and reaffirmed. Yet if there was a man around, I was under immediate suspicion of inviting undue attentions.

One night I walked in on him scrolling my phone’s camera roll. He had demanded the passcode in a fight, a week earlier.

There’s something fucked up going on if you don’t want your partner to have your passcode. If there’s nothing you wouldn’t mind me seeing, why refuse to give it to me?

It was easier to comply. Incredibly, I found his controlling nature proof we were passionate, at first. On my phone, he found photos of me in a shop changing room: I couldn’t decide whether to buy a dress and wanted to ponder it later.

Who did you send this to?

I explained: no one.

Bullshit, that’s for a bloke, look at the stupid face you’re pulling with that much cleavage out. Even if you didn’t send it, you were planning to. How do you expect me to feel when you constantly fucking lie, Harriet? Do you know how shit that makes me feel? Do you even CARE?

He didn’t speak to me for twenty-four hours.

The next night, after several tins, he played the Lennon version of ‘Jealous Guy’ and conceded selfies weren’t necessarily proof of infidelity. He said, sloppy-drunk and amorous: You know this overreaction is because I’m obsessed with you, don’t you? I threw my arms around his neck and promised him he had nothing to worry about. If he was insecure, I would fix him with my faithfulness.

When you’re so grateful to get a reprieve – from the only person with the power to grant it, the only one who can make you feel better – you never question your good fortune. I craved his approval like a drug, and I never knew when he’d throw me into sudden withdrawal.

Under this onslaught of hatchet job reviews of my behaviour, the vicious hyper-scrutiny, I started to change. Adapt to survive. I became withdrawn, tense, on edge. I lost a stone and a half. Out of nerves, and because he’d mentioned how much he liked skinny girls. He said: You, you’re well covered though, aren’t you? No, I don’t mean it in a bad way. You like your food a bit too much, but so do loads of us.

I stopped liking food so much.

He laughingly reported his friend said I looked: like a cartoon chipmunk. You would, but you don’t know if you should.

Mortified, I objected.

Haha, I obviously don’t mind, do I! You’re my girl! He clearly thinks you’re punching, but I don’t.

Oh God, Harriet, Scott said, pinching the bridge of his nose, in great exhaustion. Please don’t kick off. Not again. I thought you’d laugh it off, it’s nothing.

After that, Scott often relayed put-downs by third parties, insisting he’d leapt to my defence. I was always alarmed and upset they were, bafflingly, from people I thought I got on fine with. In retrospect, I can see such lying is an exercise in power. Making you mistrust everyone else but them, is power.

I turned down most social invitations, and when we were in company, I stayed quiet for fear of saying the wrong thing. Scott’s friends would joke with me and I would grit-smile, respond in monosyllables, worried that I would be accused of inappropriate reactions, or saying something that could be taken to embarrass Scott. None of this had to be ex-plicitly demanded by him, anymore – I had learned to treat the earth as if it was full of landmines, and pick my way gingerly through it.

Scott drew the circle I had to live inside smaller and smaller. The harder he made me strive, the more I was absolutely determined to pass the test, to show him I was worthy of his love. To get back to where we were in those early months. It had been perfect, and somehow, I had ruined it.

Our lives were ruled by his moods. The devil-may-care, wisecracking lad-about-town I’d started seeing had been replaced by a miserable snipe, given to volcanic eruptions of fury.

It became a theme, a definitive characterisation – I was casually cruel, I had no respect for his feelings, bull in a fucking china shop, you are. He said losing both my parents young had left me with deep problems and because I’d not been to therapy, my unresolved issues were being taken out mercilessly on him. You really need to see someone, he’d say, after he’d forgiven me another of my trespasses.

Even as I write this, I find it hard to accept: he turned the death of my parents into another weapon.

Now we call it gaslighting, but at the time I had no terminology, no map for this upside-down place I’d stumbled into where I was the aggressor, and my dependence on him had made me prisoner. If someone who loved me this much, and seen me at my most vulnerable, thought my soul was disfigured and ugly, then it must be.

Increasingly broken, and unsure of him, I cried, wheedled, begged and manipulated to get him to show affection. I played games. In a sordid, unhealthy relationship, you become sordid and unhealthy too. People who tell you to Just Leave, as if it’s clean and simple, right and wrong, they don’t understand. They don’t understand you’ve become accomplice as well as victim.

My job was my only time out of the atmosphere, the only part of my life that existed independently of his influence. Scott said I was throwing my talent away. He constantly needled me about quitting, under the guise of being the guy on my side, my cheerleader who wanted me to realise my potential, until it became a symbol of my lethargy and hypocrisy that I’d not comply. I see now that I was supposed to stop working precisely because it floated free of his control. Had I done it, it would also be more proof of my failure and dysfunction. He wanted me to fall apart, become isolated. He would be my carer and rescuer to the outside world, while turning the screws even tighter.

One day, my friend Lorna confronted me. She didn’t give me time to scheme my way out of it – she was ‘in the area’ and did I fancy a coffee. I asked Scott to come, he was playing Grand Theft Auto.

I need her attitude like I need a hole in the head.

Lorna and I sat, tense, talking over lattes like a couple of colleagues on a training weekend.

She blurted: ‘What’s going on at home, are you alright? Is he mistreating you?’

I reacted with stung indignance. ‘WHAT? What do you mean? Of course not! Why would you say that?’

Lorna described my agitated, downcast demeanour and my striking weight loss, and above all, how hard it was to see me without Scott present. That I seemed to spend all my time with his friends and ‘doing what he wants.’

I retorted that I liked my lifestyle, actually, and she shouldn’t be so ‘clingy.’ I actually called her clingy. Then I stormed out of the café so fast that, given she couldn’t do a runner on the bill, she couldn’t follow.

When I got in, she had sent me a text. I stood in the hallway, opened it, and stared at it with dread.

Harriet, look. Firstly you need to know I love you …

Scott saw me, and sensing something was up, grabbed the phone from me. He frowned momentarily at the screen, then swiped and deleted the message, unread.

There, fixed it for you, deleted and blocked her. I told you she was poison, right from the off. You shoulda listened. But you’re always right, huh? We always have to do it the hard way.

So, how it ended. I wish I could say I had a self-generated epiphany. Instead, it was the most trivial thing. It haunts me where I’d be now, had it not happened. Maybe that’s not uncommon. Maybe when you’ve reached your limit, you don’t know it – you need something to spring the padlock open, like the last correct number aligning on the combination.

It was Saturday morning and we’d gone to B&Q to buy some replacement bulbs for a lamp. I’d knocked it over the night before, when I’d got in at the decadent hour of 10.30pm from seeing a film that Scott wasn’t bothered about. I’d gone with the girlfriend of one of his closest mates, thinking that was ‘safe’, and she’d insisted on a couple of drinks after. I’d texted to tell him and got no response, which was a clear warning I’d pay for it. To this day, if someone forgets to reply to a message, I get that icy feeling in my gut, thinking they’re furious with me.

In B&Q, we were browsing those broad, open shelves which have other customers on the opposite side of them.

We couldn’t find the right kind of bulb. I felt a familiar panicky sweat rise on my skin. Why couldn’t the bulb be there, why did it have to let me down? My shoulders tensed as I waited for the diatribe.

Well, there we are, lamp’s knackered. Fucking hell, Harriet, you are so fucking selfish, why don’t you ever think of anyone else before you go and get pissed?

I muttered I was sorry. I knew better than to make my punishment worse by pointing out I wasn’t wasted, that – God forbid – he was also to blame for turning off the other lights, that it was a £6 lightbulb we could order online instead. Facts never had anything to do with Scott’s feelings.

Yeah, sorry’s no good to me, is it. If you genuinely cared, you’d stop doing stuff like this.

You always say you do, and your actions prove different.

He didn’t realise there was a young woman, maybe twenty-one or so, on the other side of the shelf, who’d heard every word as clearly as if she’d been the intended audience.

She stiffened as if she’d had a small electric shock and stared at him in amazement, her hand frozen on whatever she’d been reaching for. The venomous aggression. Over a lamp. Over anything.

Then her eyes met mine. I saw in them a mixture of incredulity and pity that I will remember for as long as I live.

She hurried away, before we polluted any more of her pleasant weekend, before she had to think about the strange, depressing couples you encounter in B&Q of a morning. If Scott had noticed her, it didn’t show.

Right there in the Lighting & Lighting Accessories aisle, I saw myself. Soon turning thirty, in a relationship with someone who spoke to me in a way that alarmed and repulsed a younger woman. For once, I saw a reaction to his behaviour from someone that Scott couldn’t demonise or dismiss, a casual observer with no stake in our lives. It woke me up like a syringe of adrenaline to an unresponsive heart.

As we left the store, walking into the fresh air, I turned to Scott: ‘This is over. I don’t want to carry on. If you can move out today, I’ll pay this month’s rent.’

Scott took a moment to take this in, then nodded. Yeah. Your attitude has said as much for long enough. Good you can finally admit it.

The incredible thing is – when the switch had flicked, when I wouldn’t take another minute of it – it was so simple. I knew it, but amazingly, he knew it too. Once I revoked my permission to be treated that way, what did he have left? He was an emotional terrorist but not violent, there weren’t going to be threats to my safety.

When we got home, I waited in the front room while he packed a couple of bags. I didn’t quite believe he’d go. He eventually emerged, and hefted his belongings onto the back seat of his car. Our only shared possessions were kitchen things and a pine bed. ‘I’ll pay you for them,’ I said, but he sneered at me. Keep your fucking money.

He came back into the front room, once the car was loaded.

Get some help, Harriet. I mean it. You need it. Get it for your sake, and before you put someone else through this.

I looked at his angular face that I’d once thought was so beautiful and saw only ugliness. You can’t easily love someone you’re scared of; I knew I hadn’t loved him for years. His way of leaving, his incapacity to say a single caring thing: it finally confirmed what I’d known but spent years trying not to face. He wasn’t the love of my life, he was an abuser. To confuse the two things seemed impossible.

I later found out that he’d told everyone we knew that he’d left me, made up a story about me throwing the lamp at him and breaking it, how he’d been hiding for years that I was a nasty drunk. I didn’t care. I really didn’t care. I was free.

His friends melted away immediately, his family took his side and cut me dead. They know Scott, but they don’t know him. The thing with abusers is they’re a percentage of a nice person. If the nice percentage is the only part their friends ever see, they don’t know he’s other things as well. If the abuser gets accused, they reflexively defend them, as any good friend would, if they hear something that doesn’t chime with their experience. No, no way, not Scott, he’s sound!

They’re right, they know the nice part and the nice part is nice. No one is seduced by someone showing their worst traits upfront. Scott is a showman, and a con artist. His friends don’t realise that they’re part of the show, and the con.

I don’t doubt I’ve been erased from Scott’s history. His sister once referred to a ‘bad break-up’ that predated me, and Scott gave her a look like he was going to strangle her. He scrubs us from the record. It’s supposed to be, I think, an act of extreme scorn, but to me it might be the one sign he knows he has victims, not exes.

Why write to you and tell you all this, instead of hope Scott might’ve changed, that he’s different, that you’re different, that you’re happy? After all, your life is a complete unknown to me. I was going to. Believe me, involving myself with Scott Dyer’s life again is the thing in the world I least want to do.

Then I saw you, and it was like seeing a past version of myself, seeing myself the way others must’ve once seen me. Maybe you are a reserved person, I don’t know you. But when I saw you, outside the bar, it was like you were sticking your head out of water to gasp a breath.

I know that feeling.

Please understand I’m not telling you what to do regards the man you want to marry. I only want you to know all this before you do. And that if you have been made a victim of Scott Dyer, you’re not alone.

Best wishes,

Harriet