He Said/She Said(86)

I know that hearing from me out of the blue like this will shake you up. Trust me, dragging up our history is not exactly my idea of fun either. I thought the whole Jamie thing was dead and buried years ago, and I don’t appreciate that all this time later it’s coming back to bite us again. But there you go.

Please read everything carefully. There’s quite a lot of it, but I’ve tried to get it in some kind of order that lets you know what’s been happening.

Don’t worry, I’m not interesting in rekindling our friendship. You’ve made it pretty clear you want to wash your hands of me and to be honest after a while I ran out of energy trying to find you, and persuade you otherwise. Anyway, whatever happened back then, I’ll always be grateful for what you did for me, and that’s why I’m getting in touch now.

I do think you should take the threat seriously.

With love,

Beth Xx

Her letter raises more questions than it answers. What’s been eating away at her for weeks? What threat? How did she find me?

I turn over to the first of the collated pages. Next is a photocopy of a typed letter, written six months ago; the week I found out I was pregnant. The week Jamie’s website changed.



Antonia Balcombe

c/o Imrie and Cunningham Chambers

198 Bedford Row

London EC1

Elizabeth Taylor

c/o Evans and Bay Chartered Solicitors

1 Broad Street

Gedling

Nottingham NG15



3 October 2014



Dear Beth,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you Beth. I hope that you receive this letter safely, and that you are amenable to reading it. I hope a great deal at the moment, it seems. I don’t deserve your attention and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to burn it, or even throw it in the bin, but I hope you read it. I hope.

You might have noticed that last week Jamie’s website – that hateful, blasted website – was replaced by a notice that there had been a new development in the court case. This isn’t true. How can it be, after fifteen years? What has happened is that, after years of misery and abuse, I have finally found the courage to leave Jamie, and am no longer prepared to put my name to his cause. But I have not withdrawn my support because we are divorcing; we are divorcing because I have withdrawn my support. Support I should never have given him in the first place. To say I owe you an apology is an insult.

I have been determined that this letter will not descend into excuse-making. But I do feel I need to explain.

Jamie is a bully, and I suppose I must be bully-able. He’s clever; he’s charming. It sounds silly writing it down but admitting to ‘infidelity’ with you was his masterstroke. I thought it was honesty; I didn’t realise it was just the boldest of his lies. You must have been so strong, to stand up to him. When I think back to the trial, which happens often, I admire you so much and eventually your bravery played a big part in my own. I have a new vocabulary now; all that time living with what they call coercive control and even though I could have filled a book with examples of it, I didn’t know it had a name. I thought it was just something he did to me.

There are levels of knowing things, Beth. And I think that even then I knew what Jamie had done to you, but I was in the grip of something powerful in those days. Even when he was in prison, I believed him. Or perhaps I should say that I believed I believed him, if that makes sense. I didn’t have the space to doubt: you have only seen their steely side, but unless you have experienced it, you can’t imagine the warmth of a Balcombe welcome. Jamie is his mother’s golden boy; her faith in him went a long way to persuading me.

They set me up in a flat, helped me get it ready for his release, and although he kept up the show for the first few months, it wasn’t long before he began to take what he wanted, whenever he wanted it. I don’t have to spell it out, but let me only say that you and I have more in common than any women should. By then, I felt that I was in too deep. I had his ring on my finger; I’d put my name to his campaign. And there would always be charm, and presents – jewellery, clothes, perfume – in the aftermath. Never apology, though, for to apologise is to admit.

You might have children now, and if so you’ll understand why I stayed so long. Material provision does come into it, especially in the early days, but he was a good father too, in so far as he never hurt me in front of them.

But there is always a turning point, and mine came when he did it again. Not to me; or, not just to me.

Let me start at the beginning, or this other girl’s beginning. Jamie’s firm offers a very prestigious internship for undergraduates; it’s well paid, and the interns get more construction experience than in any rivals in the sector. I suppose you need to know the industry from the inside to understand what belonging to the Balcombe group means to a young architecture student. It’s a huge deal. Last year, the intern was young, female and pretty, and Jamie became her mentor, giving her unprecedented attention, although she wasn’t to know this wasn’t standard. She was twenty-one at the time but a very naive twenty-one, God knows I know these young women exist, and she didn’t realise he had designs on her until it was too late. The circumstances were horribly familiar, Beth: he made a pass one night when they were both working late, she rejected him, he brushed the whole thing off and she put it down to a flattering, if embarrassing, incident. Later, she told me that it even made her think that his conviction couldn’t be sound; surely if he was really a rapist he would’ve taken the opportunity to attack her then? She was actually more relaxed after she’d turned him down than she had been before.