Face Value.

It is with great reluctance I find myself reading again, for the third time now, Liam’s book … It was during an exchange of confidences with a close friend in December, the conversation turned to Liam … not that it had been my intention for it to, but because there were so many similarities …

I listened in great detail to her fears of her partner straying, his sudden apparent need for secrecy, the text messages or emails that would see him scurrying from the room … and closing the door firmly behind him … ” Its almost as though he is here, yet not here”, she said, and Liam’s words come back to me … ” You’re not there, you’re here, with me “, and I tried to dismiss the memory of his voice …If I remember correctly that would have been late November 2012.

” Its quite bizarre”, she said, ” Almost as though he is flirting with this person online who seems to demand his attention day and night, and at times I feel as though I’m in the way …in my own home” and a scary thought occurs … could there actually be female versions of Liam out there …? I shudder at the thought …

“I’m being ridiculous right?” she asks, ” I mean, its not as though he is meeting her …”. And so it was that I told her how Liam not only groomed me online but controlled, manipulated and alienated me from my family friends and work colleagues until I was a shadow of my former self. He told me my husband was an abuser, as was his wife, that we must be together …

As one rendezvous after another was cancelled, supposedly due to his illness, I began doubting his credibility … could he actually be playing me …? But I was in so deep I could barely motivate … I remember keeping my iPhone by my side … willing it to ping .. I was slipping into insanity …

My friend, absentmindedly reached for the bottle of Chardonnay … to refil her glass, and poured … and poured … So intent was she not to miss a word we had a slight accident … I gave her his book to read later that evening. Two days later she emailed me this …

Jo

Had I read this book taking everything at face value, I can easily understand why you, and others too, would contact him empathising with his terribly sad childhood. However, I am not looking through rose tinted glasses, neither am I in awe of him….

The first few pages, in which he positively gushes over his wife ( would that be the same wife he accused of physically abusing him?) and the rest it seemed, was very much “Poor me”. There is much talk of bowels and excrement, was there really any need to be quite so graphic? And the comment about pushing his legs together so he could pee on himself and what a pleasurable feeling it gave him … very weird. Did he talk about that to you Jo? You might want to google the word Urolagnia?

It seems he shifted his affections even then, all those years ago, so its hardly surprising he is a past master at doing so now … He is utterly contemptable. I have a feeling you’ve seen him off but be ever vigilent.