Page 135 of Don't Tell Teacher

The police believe I’m a violent, sexually abusive partner. London social workers think I’m a lunatic. All because of Lizzie’s fantastic ability to manipulate.

The only people who’ll give me any time are solicitors. They’ve been mounting an appeal, although they’re ‘not hopeful’. One of them even told me I was wasting my money.

I put Lizzie on a pedestal, my little elfin-faced nurse, so timid and vulnerable, I thought. In need of my protection.

But Lizzie is none of those things. She’s an expert liar, clever and ruthless.

Little and often, drip, drip. Like coffee filling a cup.You hit me. You’re violent.

Showing me bruises on her body. Tampering with my medication. Throwing herself down the stairs. Altering clocks. Moving things around the house. Distorting my reality.

I didn’t stand a chance.

She must have done the same with Tom.Daddy hurt you. Daddy hurt you. Until he believed it himself.

God knows what else she’s done to him – I can’t bear it. Christ, he had a broken wrist. I thought he fell out of bed, but Lizzie must have … It makes me sick to think of it.

I overtake a bus, veering dangerously into the other lane, not caring about the beeps from oncoming traffic.

Getting myself off the medication – that was the first step to clarity. Not so difficult, actually, because Lizzie took all the medicine when she left. I’ll probably never know what she gave me or what it did to my brain.

Lizzie was clever. She had me believing I’d done something. I thought I must be blacking out. A Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing. It was terrifying. I think that’s why the court case was such a mess. I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t.

How would I ever guess Lizzie was giving herself bruises? That someone could be that crazy, while seeming so sweet and vulnerable?

I suspect our neighbour, Stuart, was inadvertently involved with some of Lizzie’s bodily markings – the ones Lizzie couldn’t do herself. He probably threw her around a bit when they had sex. Gripped her too tightly. Didn’t realise his own strength.

She was having an affair with him – one of my friends kept trying to tell me. I didn’t believe the friend at the time, even though he’d been a mate of ten years.

Lizzie told me my mate had made a pass at her and she’d rejected him – that’s why he was making up stories. Jealousy. I wanted to believe her. I wanted the fairy tale. I loved hersomuch. But none of it was real.

Confusion. Aggression. Paranoia. Depression. Dizziness and disorientation.

That’s what Lizzie gave me.

But I’m to blame too.

If I’d told the doctors how I was feeling, they might have done blood tests. Worked out something was whizzing around my body that shouldn’t have been there.

Stupid, male pride.

I’m not a religious man, but now I pray every day.

I’m on my way, Tom.

Dad is coming.

Lizzie

The pharmacy is clean and quiet, a gentle ticking clock measuring the stillness. Outside, sheets of rain slosh against the window.

‘You’re soaked,’ says the pharmacy lady.

I give her a meek smile, squeezing water from my hair and sliding the prescription slip over the counter.

Yes. Poor me. I’m ever so vulnerable but I never complain.

‘Who are you in for today?’ she asks, reading the slip. ‘Your husband again?’

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