Letter 3:

‘When it comes to this pass a relationship is in very serious trouble — and ours is — the tensions already present between us, have broken what we had into pieces.’

‘I find little comfort in your words, demeanour, responses — yet I know already, in making that plain observation, that the doors against me will now be shutting. It’s hopeless. What choice are we faced with now, given the impasse between us? Counselling? Concluding things and going our separate ways?’ ∼ ‘As to [her son] who has been a major point of difficulty for 18 months (you’ll deny this, come up with your random and inaccurate number of 6 meetings as though that explained away everything).’

Our note here: the paragraph which follows in this letter is far too vile to quote, containing much that is libellous and sexual pseudo-psychology. We move to the next:

‘So by extension, in your view I’m a liar, a fantasist, an inventor of stories, over cerebral. I’m none of these things.’  (It is apparent from his behaviour recorded in the posts on our site that Jim Perrin is ALL of these things!!)

Again we feel that the paragraph which follows in the letter is not repeatable. So, to the next:

‘Your pattern of denial has a great deal to answer for in the decline of good feeling between us and the escalation of the temper of the thing. My exasperation and growing anger at your refusal to listen and to hear.’ ∼ ‘You have to accept that this stuff has been happening, otherwise you brand me as mendacious and malignant — I am neither of these things.’  [Oh, indeed he is!]  ‘Look at these things and try to view them objectively instead of characterising me as mis-interpretive, jealous, over-intellectual or whatever’ ∼ ‘Whether you and I will stay together I no longer know.’

‘You surround yourself with partisan and flattering testimony from those who cannot know [by this he means her particularly close friends, and of course we, her sisters. He recognises that she is ‘surrounded’ by their protection and has tried to isolate her from their continued support], and you will never reach understanding that way. I don’t want any more of this trouble and affront and negative pre-occupation and I want to lay Will’s ashes to rest in some good, peaceful, honest ground.’

*       *       *       *       *

And to remind our readers that this letter, with the others in the sequence, was sent to Jac when she was trying to keep her distance from him — seeking rest at her sister’s house in Yorkshire. Instead he was brow-beating her with daily packets of these questionable outpourings (as well as post-cards and phone-calls). Again, do note the nasty reference to his son’s burial — it was quite simply gratuitous and calculated cruelty.

Is it any wonder that Jac found these literary assaults over-whelming and had already decided she was going to finish with the man: the man whose ‘mind’ had composed them? The words which he uses of himself are such an accurate portrayal of the author: as he once wrote to Jac, of one of his letters, ‘a shrink would have a field-day with this.’…

Jac’s sisters.