I guess the place to start is the end…

I guess the place to start is the end. My editor is always going on about coda. That need to wrap things up nicely and put a bow on them so they’re finished. In his case he’s talking about the end of a manuscript or story, but for me it just seems like a natural place to start.

I’d spent two weeks in the UK. Two days in court. I’d even been on the stand twice, both times behind an ugly red curtain so the jury could see me, but my abuser couldn’t. But then I’d had to come home. The trial had dragged out because of obstruction by the defence council, and my flight from the UK to Asia wasn’t going to wait for me, so I returned to a time zone that meant I had a ten hour wait from my morning until the time the court in the UK would convene and the jury were sent to discuss everything they’d heard.

The day the jury deliberation was due to start, I text Ross, the detective who’d had the unenviable job of being my point of contact for almost four years, “Let’s hope for a quick decision.” It made sense to me that if the jury were convinced about what they’d heard, they would return quickly. He text back saying, “A quick result is a bad sign. I’m hoping for a few hours.”

It was 6 p.m. my time, and now I had to sit and clock-watch, counting up the hours, until we got to 9 p.m. which came and went. We got to almost midnight and the stress I was under meant my temper was on a knife edge. There didn’t seem to be anything my husband could say that I didn’t react badly to.

My favourite contestant on Survivor UK got kicked off the show. 

“Are you uninterested in the show now?” he asked.

I looked from him to the screen, and back to him. “I’m staring right at the screen!” I said, with arm outstretched to demonstrate which screen I meant.

He explained what he’d meant, carefully and in a measured tone. I scowled and went back to staring at the screen. I felt bad, because at any other time I’d have understood his reference. Nathan deserved to win the show for his smile and arm veins alone, but I just couldn’t control myself. My mind was stood outside the jury room with a glass to my ear while I listened at the door.

I text Ross again, who told me he suspected we’d move into a second day of deliberation, which is what happened. Leading to another sleepless night, and another wait until 6 p.m. for court to start.

Due to the tactics by the defence council, we’d had so many false starts, delays, and come back tomorrows. At around 4 p.m. I text Ross a picture of Bill Murry, and wished him a happy groundhog day. Over the four years since I first met Ross, we’d developed quite a good relationship. He said he’d let me know when it got underway.

Court breaks for lunch at 1p.m. which was 9 p.m. for me, and as we got closer to that time Ross started preparing me for what he suspected would be a hung jury, and possibly a retrial. The thought of going through all of this a third time was too much, and I left Jon, my husband, watching a new Survivor episode, and went to our roof terrace to discover how hard it is to smoke and cry at the same time. I’ve always struggled showing vulnerability in front of other people. Even someone who’s seen me at my worst like Jon. Something about being weak, gives me a need to do it in private.

I composed myself, text Jon to explain and say I didn’t want to talk about it, and came back downstairs. As the clock ticked past 9 p.m. I knew I could be away from the two phones I’d been glued to, after all, everyone would be eating whatever food they could find or had brought to court with them. I fed the cats. Had a cigarette, and at 9:29 p.m. I got two texts.

“Guilty on all eight counts.”

“Remanded until sentencing 29^th of March.”

I got halfway through replying, telling Ross to fuck off and stop playing with me, when I realised he wouldn’t do that.

For someone as eloquent and verbose as me, I replied, “What? I can’t deal. He’s not coming out? Guilty for everything?”

I could just make out Ross’s reply through my tears. “Absorb, we will talk later… Yes for everything.”

I was lost, nothing existed in my world except the few lines of text on my phone and the tears stopping me from seeing them. I walked into my husbands home-office, tears running down my cheeks, and his face fell. I looked back at my phone and stumbled over my words, I couldn’t say it out loud. Speaking the words would mean it was real, it was over, and because of me, never again would one of Tim’s victims Google his name and go through what I did: seeing he got away with it.

I read ‘Guilty on all eight counts’ again. I still couldn’t say the words, but I had to. It was so easy to read Jon’s face, and he was about to start consoling me. “Guilty for everything,” I said to my phone. I had to break the hug I was suddenly trapped in, I needed to look at my phone again. The messages still read the same.

I turned and walked out of Jon’s office, and I could hear him speaking as he followed me, but the words were in a world the meant nothing, the words on my phone were all consuming. Their meaning, the ramifications, the finality of them. I was living in multiple realities, the first where it was a hung jury, and Tim walked out the court. The second where he’d only been found guilty for one or two of the eight counts, and was released until sentencing. And the third that was rapidly bulldozing the walls of the others, where he’d been taken out the dock and led away.

“I need and ashtray,” I said, as I collapsed into a chair at the dining table. We haven’t smoked inside for years, but Jon moved towards the balcony to fetch one, and I put my phone down, feeling like the information inside it no longer had to be protected like it could fly away at any second.

My cigarette was lit before Jon got back, and he took a seat across from me – he’s learned over the years I can’t abide people being close to me when I’m emotional. – he just kept talking, saying how amazing it was, how great I must be feeling, how I’d done this to Tim. And the more he spoke the harder I cried.

I had to stop him talking. “That’s not what it means,” I said, as I waved him quiet.

I’d lost the ability to speak coherently or form full sentences. I babbled half thoughts as they all piled into the void in my mind. Each one making me choke on my breath, or sob, depending on which other half thought it connected with.

When I sat staring at my second cigarette, watching it become gritty ash, Jon needed to fill the silence with more congratulations, “You’re amazing, I’m so proud of you. You did this, you put him in prison.”

Having been barely holding back my emotions, I burst into tears again. “Stop it. I love you, I understand what you’re trying to say, but just stop it.” How was I supposed to explain to him my tears were of grief? How could I say the enormous guilt I was feeling. “Fuck, I need to text Alfie.”

Tim had introduced me to Alfie. He’d already been living in Tim’s house, and he became my best friend, we were bonded by being the only people in the world that could understand what we were going through, and even though we only spoke about it once, when we were kids, we always knew how the other one felt.

I typed, “Have you heard?” but how could I finish that sentence, what if he hadn’t heard, I couldn’t blurt it out, and I couldn’t not. Leaving a sentence like that open ended he’d think the worst. “It’s good for us but I’m in bits,” I hit send.

He text back saying how weird it was. How he was in bits too, and how he couldn’t believe it.

We text back and forth as Jon sat not saying anything. I didn’t mean to exclude him, I just needed to know I wasn’t insane. And knowing Alfie was feeling what I was, meant it was real, it was just a kind of real that other ‘normal’ people might not understand. I looked at Jon and told him Alfie knew, and he said, “You really are amazing, you stopped him.”

“I know what you’re trying to say and I appreciate it, but I need you to stop saying it. I can’t think about this being my fault. I can’t think about him being in prison because of me. I can’t think about that big steel door closing on him and how I betrayed him.”

The image of Tim’s scared face appeared in my mind. Not the sixty-two year old that was a free man until less than an hour ago, but the thirty-something, the man I knew when I was still a child. He was looking up, like I must have done countless times to him, and with fear in his eyes, his face got obscured by a door with a hatch in it, painted magnolia but with chips revealing the dark cold colour of the steel underneath. And it planted a seed in my brain that started taking root.

“I can’t right now, okay. I’ll get there, but I can’t right now. He fucked with my head so much… I just can’t.”

“I understand, and I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said through the fresh cigarette between my lips.

I let the roots of the seed get comfy, secure themselves to the image in my mind, and I needed to get them some fresh air. Two people chain smoking in one room had made it hard to see the far wall. We moved to the balcony, and Jon brought me a fresh rum and ginger ale.

“Just the way you like it. Strong enough to make your feet tingle.”

“It’s a good thing, I know that logically, I just need time.”

“Take all the time you need. You’re amazing.”

This time I didn’t need to tell him to stop, I just dismissed him with a wave of my hand.

“Want to toast?” he said.

And I kinda did… “To it being over. I don’t know what shape my future is, or what it holds, but it’s mine, my life is mine again.”

The seedling had sprouted a leaf now, I knew that because as Jon said, “Unlike Tim’s,” and raised his glass, I didn’t feel the need to tell him off. There was a sting to his words, but they didn’t hurt.

On the 20^th of February 2024, Tim Darch, aka Timothy Herbert Darch, aka Julian Timothy Darch, was found guilty of three counts of rape of a child, three counts of indecent assault of a child, one count of rape of an adult, and one count of indecent assault of an adult. He was led from the dock to the court cells, to await transfer to prison, where he would be held until sentencing.