The Aftermath

Throughout the time the police were there I was the perfect host, offering tea and chatting about our house and garden and places we had visited – a picture of us in front of the Taj Mahal was on the bookshelf. We talked about my health condition, work and our crazy cats – one was disgusted to be disturbed by all these strangers and the other was busy getting involved – there were open cupboards and drawers to explore! As they were leaving a female officer asked if I would be ok, I politely told her that I would be and I would find out exactly what had happened and if he had done anything I would smash his face in.

The leaflets left with us for Lucy Faithfull and other organisations were quickly stuffed in a drawer along with a copy of the warrant that had been issued in early September. I noted it had been due to expire a few days later – surely this meant that there might not be an issue if they hadn’t rushed to execute it? The DC had said it could be a mistake, it had happened before, some crumbs of hope to hang on to. He wasn’t arrested or cautioned.

As I went round the house I felt dirty, I scrubbed the house from top to bottom, straightening everything and trying to retain some sense of normality. My ashen faced OH said he’d been downloading some porn from a file sharing website he’d found on google but hadn’t seen anything ‘dodgy’ He’d not paid attention to what he was downloading, just copying everything in bulk. I asked why when he could just go on pornhub, who even downloaded and kept it in this day and age? How naïve I was.

That night, and for many nights after when trying to sleep I could hear children weeping. The horror of what children being abused go through kept me awake.

We both returned to work the next day, I needed the normality but soon broke down as I took my seat between 2 colleagues who were both mums, feeling immense guilt for just being near them when they had young children at home. How would they react if they knew? My new manager took me offline for a chat and through sobs I told her what had happened. She was brilliant with me and helped to reassure me that this wasn’t my fault and to contact the employee assistance programme – advice I didn’t follow up on for a long time.

In December our younger cat went missing, this was surely divine punishment for staying with my OH and the wickedness he had done. I paced the streets at night looking for it, placing posters up and social media posts. Someone rang me to say the cat was at the bottom of the local river, I just took the abuse and felt it was deserved. Christmas came and went, I had always hosted Christmas dinner with a big family get together but my heart wasn’t in it that year and I dialled it down not realising at the time it would have been my last opportunity to do it.

We both kept busy with work, OH worked at a world renowned company, myself at a national institution and we were both well regarded in our roles, my bullying episode put to rest by my new line manager. Life carried on as normal, OH was a happy go lucky social creature and had nights out with his mates every weekend and was on the local pool team. He liked a drink, in my eyes it was an issue but for him it was the reason for being alive. I was the introverted one, the home maker. After the initial conversation/argument where we agreed we would ‘keep quiet for now’ the knock was only discussed on his terms, if I tried to broach it he shut down.

Driven to distraction and feeling I was losing control of my life I’d contacted a pet psychic who told me our cat was still alive and trapped nearby. A few days later it turned up scrawny and dehydrated but alive. The relief was immense and gave me a glimmer of hope that some bad things come to pass.

Then along came a virus that would change the world..