Chapter 9: The Woman Before Hannah
Her name was Gemma.
Patricia found her, or rather, Patricia knew someone who knew how to look.
She made a call on Monday afternoon while Hannah and I sat in her office, and by Wednesday she had a name and a phone number and a short note that said: willing to talk.
I called her myself.
I didn't tell Hannah until I knew what Gemma had to say.
She answered on the first ring, as though she'd been waiting.
"Sue?" she said.
"Yes.
Thank you for taking my call."
"I've been waiting for this call for three years." Her voice was steady.
Midlands accent.
Older than I'd expected — she must have been with Craig in her late thirties.
"How is she?"
"She's safe.
She's with us."
"Good." A breath.
"Good.
I'm glad she got out."
"Can you tell me what happened to you?"
She told me.
She spoke for almost forty minutes and I sat in my car in the car park outside Patricia's office and I listened and I did not interrupt her once.
It was the same.
Not similar.
The same.
The monitoring of money.
The phone.
The clothes.
The way he controlled what she ate in front of other people.
The bruises that were always in places that could be explained.
The way he performed concern so well that her own family had wondered, for a while, if she was the problem.
"When I left," Gemma said, "he told everyone I'd had a mental breakdown.
He told his family, his friends, people we worked with.
He said I'd become paranoid and irrational and he'd tried everything he could to help me." She paused.
"Some people believed him.
Some of them still do."
"Would you be willing to provide a statement?" I asked.
"To Patricia — she's a legal advocate.
It wouldn't necessarily go to court.
But it would help establish a pattern."
Silence.
A long one.
"Yes," Gemma said.
"I'll do it.
I should have done it when I left.
I was too — I just wanted it to be over.
I didn't want to fight anymore." Another pause.
"Tell your daughter it wasn't her fault.
Will you tell her that?"
"I will."
"And tell her — tell her the hardest part isn't leaving.
The hardest part is the bit after, when you keep waiting for it to have been your fault somehow.
When you keep looking for the thing you did wrong." Her voice was very quiet now.
"Tell her to stop looking.
There isn't one."
I drove home and I walked into the kitchen and Hannah was sitting at the table with a cup of tea and she looked up at me and I sat down across from her and I told her about Gemma.
She listened without speaking.
When I finished she sat very still.
"He did the same things," she said.
"Yes."
"To someone else.
Before me."
"Yes."
She looked at the table.
"I used to think — I used to tell myself that if I was just better.
If I was just calmer, or quieter, or more careful about what I said—"
"Han."
"I know.
I know that now.
But I used to think it."
"Gemma said to stop looking for the thing you did wrong," I said.
"She said there isn't one."
Hannah's eyes filled.
She pressed her fingers against her mouth.
"She got out," I said.
"She's all right.
She has a life."
Hannah nodded.
The tears ran down and she didn't wipe them.
"I want a life," she said.
It came out very small.
Like something she hadn't said out loud before.
"You're going to have one," I said.
Three days later, Craig arrived at our door for the second time.
May you like
This time he didn't bring Diane.
This time he came alone, and what he said on our doorstep was the moment everything shifted — because Tom had thought to turn on his phone's voice recorder before he answered the door.
