The Safest Man in England

In the late summer of 1997 I began to realise that 'something was not as it should be'. I was putting on a bit of weight that no amount of dieting would shift and my abdomen felt 'different'. I went to the doctor not sure why - I'd been told at 19 that I wouldn't ever have a child without intervention, so I couldn't be pregnant. Could I?

What made this even less likely is that by 1997 things between us had disintegrated, totally. We had sex twice that year. Once in April and once in July. And then the symptoms that took me to the doctor.

I went to a well woman clinic.

At the well woman clinic I described my symptoms to a nurse and as I did so I listened to myself with another ear that could hear things as she heard them and I could hear myself describing myself being pregnant but I couldn't be. Could I?

I went home and told him.

His first words were 'there goes our lifestyle'. He drew breath and next decreed that if 'it' was a boy it would be named after his father and if a girl 'it' would be named after his mother.

I hate my daughter's name. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Even now after all these years even having to use it makes me feel sick to my stomach. And I will never, ever forgive him. Never. He disgusts me, in every fibre and aspect of his being he disgusts me.

I loathe him.

To protect myself against ever having a murder charge brought against him I told everyone I worked with for years the truth, the absolute truth, including all the anecdotes. I made him the safest man in England. For only under the most severe and undoubted provocation could I ever give him what he so richly deserves.