Roses Are Red

She needed to keep the electricity on so the panic alarm would work. So she sold roses.

Episode Three is where survival gets practical — and sometimes almost comic. With Clive gone, Vanessa faces homelessness, empty meters, and a legal system that has a word for mothers who protect their children.

That word is implacably hostile.

This episode introduces the family court presumption of contact — the legal principle that would shape everything that followed — and the moment Vanessa first understood that leaving was only the beginning.

Four voices this episode:

The story of Valentine's roses, a sister, and the first taste of freedom.

The law on the presumption of contact and what implacably hostile actually meant.

Author's reflection on the moment she realised the court was not on her side.

The stage — the shock of discovering that the system has its own priorities.

She had survived the man. Now she had to survive the system.

#ImplacablyHostile #DomesticAbuse #FamilyCourt #ContactOrders #CoerciveControl #SurvivorStories #MothersRights #YouAreNotAlone #DomesticViolence #WomensPodcast #TrueCrime #HealingJourney #Podcast #NewPodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Chapter three Roses are red several weeks later. Mrs. Perkins shuffled towards Vanessa at the courthouse steps, looking as though she had just rolled out of bed. Her clothes were slightly wrinkled, her hair loosely pinned up and already escaping in frizzy strands. Despite her dishevelled appearance, she was a kindly soul, the type of solicitor who exuded warmth even when she could not quite locate the relevant document. She had been assigned through Fran at the domestic violence unit, and Vanessa found herself oddly comforted by the woman's calm manner, despite its lack of polish. Vanessa had barely slept. She had been up all night, anxiously pacing and thinking about the hearing. What if the judge didn't believe her? What if Clive somehow twisted the truth? Her mind had spiraled through scenarios, none of which made her feel any calmer. She wore her best outfit, clothes that felt too formal for the occasion, but were all she had that didn't make her feel like a shadow of herself. As they passed through the metal detector, the courthouse's cold, sterile environment hit Vanessa hard. The waiting room was stiflingly silent, the tension from other cases pressing in on all sides. She sat by the window watching the other people, each likely carrying their own struggling story, and wondered what theirs were. I doubt you'll need to speak today, misses Perkins whispered, rifling through a stack of papers. The judge has everything. It'll likely be over quickly. Ex parte, Vanessa thought, remembering the term Mrs. Perkins had explained. It meant Clive wouldn't be there. For that, she was profoundly grateful. The hearing was over within ten minutes. The court granted Vanessa an injunction with the power of arrest attached. Clive was now legally required to stay three miles away from her house and to have no contact with her or the girls. As she stepped out of the courtroom, a wave of emotion hit her, but she held it together. Mrs. Perkins beamed. You won't have to watch the door every minute, at least for now. Vanessa wasn't sure how much weight had been lifted, but the relief was undeniable. For the first time, there was something resembling hope. The electric bill and an idea. Back at home, with Charlotte and Molly out playing, the silence felt unnatural. She picked up the phone and rang her sister Jackie. Once Jackie's voice filled the line, Vanessa broke down. The tension of the day, of the last few months, came out in sobs, while Jackie reassured her that she was on her way down that very afternoon. Money was still a major concern. Even with Clive gone, the financial struggles that came with escaping an abusive relationship were suffocating. The electric bill loomed. The alarm system required the electricity to stay on. If the power cut, the panic alarm would trigger, and if it triggered too many times without cause, they would stop responding. It was almost Valentine's Day. Vanessa looked at the calendar and an idea began to form. Jackie, she said one morning, sitting around the red-chipped kitchen table with mugs of tea, what if we sold roses? Sold roses? Jackie's eyebrow lifted. Like in pubs? Yes. People are always out buying roses for their partners on Valentine's Day. We could make it work. Jackie laughed, but the sparkle in her eyes showed she was on board. The next day, they went to Oxfam and found long skirts and black tops to pull off the look of Romany peddlers. Then they bought hundreds of plastic red roses at a wholesale shop, and spent an afternoon packing the flat flowers into cones with Charlotte and Molly's delighted assistants. They called it their rose run. The Rose Run. For three nights, Jackie and Vanessa hit the pubs, dressed in their skirts and hoop earrings, selling roses to couples. The first night, Vanessa's nerves were considerable. It was freezing cold, her fingers stiff from the chill as she gripped the buckets of plastic wrapped roses. Come on, Van, it's going to be fun, Jackie said, nudging her as they stood outside the first pub. Vanessa took a deep breath, adjusted the heavy earrings already pulling on her lobes, and said quietly to herself, Let's sell some love. They stepped inside. The warm, noisy atmosphere enveloped them immediately. The smell of spilled beer, fried food, the haze of cigarette smoke that was still legal and ubiquitous in nineteen nineties pubs. Jackie immediately walked up to the nearest table of men and flashed a wide grin. Valentine's roses, lads, make you lucky in love. Within seconds she had made a sale. Vanessa moved toward the bar, caught the eye of a man sitting alone, and said, surprising herself with the confidence in her voice, wouldn't you like to treat someone special tonight? He laughed and reached for his wallet. As the evening went on, Vanessa found herself growing more comfortable, more relaxed. She started to enjoy the banter, the playful exchanges, the small moments of human warmth. She flirted, carefully, and on her own terms, she was in control. It was new territory, but one she found herself enjoying. She hadn't been able to feel like this in years. Free, in charge of her own space, capable of engaging with people without looking over her shoulder first. When they finally called it a night and stepped out counting their earnings, Jackie waved a handful of notes in the air with a grin. Who knew you had it in you, Van? They sold all the roses. They made more than enough to cover the electric bill and splurge on a Chinese takeaway for four. It wasn't just the money. It was the first night in a very long time that Vanessa had felt something close to herself. What the children brought home. Jackie's presence was a godsend in more ways than one. She handled logistics, provided moral support, and helped with the girls during the contact visits that Vanessa had, with great reluctance, agreed to, because this was not about her. It was about Charlotte and Molly having the chance to know their father, whatever he was. Jackie would stand guard at the door during handovers, refusing to speak to Clive longer than necessary. When Jackie brought the girls back from one visit, the usual chatter was absent. Vanessa could feel something was wrong the moment they walked through the door. Charlotte's face was pale. Molly wouldn't meet her eyes. Good time, girls, Vanessa asked, trying to sound casual as she knelt to unzip their anoraks. Neither answered immediately. Charlotte stared at the floor. Molly fidgeted with the hem of her sweater. Molly, sweetheart, is everything okay? You can tell me. Molly hesitated, then blurted. I had to bite Daddy to stop him from hurting Charlotte. Everything froze. What do you mean, baby? What happened? Charlotte, still staring at the floor, whispered. I was making beans on toast, like we do here. And Daddy got mad. He grabbed the pan and poured the beans on me. They were hot. She raised her eyes briefly, then quickly looked away. He threw me off the chair, she added, barely audible. Vanessa felt sick, her five-year-old daughter standing on a chair to stir a pot, just as they did together at home, only to have her father pour scalding beans over her head, thrown off a chair by her own father. I bit him, Molly said, her voice small but defiant. I bit his arm to make him let go of her. Then he cried and told us not to tell you. That broke Vanessa completely. She pulled both girls into her arms and held them, her tears burning in her eyes. She would not let them fall. Not yet. She needed to be strong for them. You will never get in trouble for telling me the truth, she whispered fiercely. Not ever. Daddy was wrong to do that, and you did nothing wrong. The family court presumption. When Vanessa rang Mrs. Perkins the next morning and recounted what the girls had told her, she expected immediate action, a complete halt to all contact. Vanessa, I understand how horrifying this is, Mrs. Perkins said gently. But the family court operates on a different standard of evidence than criminal courts. What do you mean? He hurt Charlotte. Molly had to bite him to stop him. Surely that's enough. The family court has a presumption of contact, Mrs. Perkins explained. They operate under the belief that except in the most extreme circumstances, children should have a relationship with both parents. Even with everything you've told me, they're going to need concrete evidence to change the current arrangements. What more evidence do they need? My daughter was burned. She's terrified of him. I believe you, but family court judges are cautious. They want police reports, hospital records, visible bruises, documented incidents, witnesses, hard evidence that can't be disputed. Without that, they might view this as a one-time incident. Vanessa sat in stunned silence. The truth wasn't enough. It had never occurred to her before that her word alone would be questioned. After everything she had gone through, after years of abuse, after the bruises and the strangulation and the fear, she was being told she had to prove it repeatedly, as though her and her daughter's trauma wasn't real unless it could be quantified on paper. What about the fact that he's already strangled me unconscious? she pressed. Isn't that enough? The family court will want to see more recent evidence. Yes, your testimony about the strangulation is important, but without a current criminal charge from that incident, it becomes historical in their eyes. Family court isn't about what happened in the past. It's about what's happening now. Vanessa barely processed what she was hearing. She had spent years hiding the abuse, covering up the bruises, putting on a brave face. She had never gone to hospital after Clive had hurt her. What would she have said? And now she was being told she had to prove it for keeping quiet, for surviving. The phrase lodged itself in Vanessa's mind presumption It sounded such a reasonable word, the sort of word sensible people used in sensible meetings. Yet the more she thought about it, the more uncomfortable she became. Nobody seemed particularly interested in whether Charlotte and Molly wanted contact. The discussion appeared to begin from the position that contact should happen, and then work backwards from there. Until that moment she had assumed the court would ask a simple question Are the children safe? Increasingly, it felt as though the question might actually be how do we maintain contact? The difference frightened her. Implacably hostile? Mrs. Perkins spoke with a grave expression. Vanessa, I need you to understand something very important. If you refuse to allow contact between Clive and the girls without the court's permission, you could be seen as implacably hostile. It's a term they use when a parent is viewed as deliberately obstructing the children's relationship with the other parent. In the eyes of the family court, that's very serious. If they believe you're intentionally blocking contact, they can take drastic action, including fines, changes to custody arrangements, or even imprisonment. Vanessa stared at her. The phrase stayed with her for days afterwards. Implacably hostile. She rolled the words around in her head, trying to understand them. They sounded less like a legal term, and more like a judgment, a label, an accusation. Somehow a mother trying to protect her children could become the problem. Too much fear and you were emotional. Too much resistance, and you were obstructive. Too much protection and you risked becoming hostile. It felt like walking a tightrope in the dark. That night Vanessa sat by the window, her thoughts heavy with dread. He would use the children to get to her. He had already started. The next planned visit did not happen. Vanessa got Jackie to call Pam and say the children were sick. Mrs. Perkins was flustered and tried to pressure her. But Mrs. Perkins was not Clive. Mrs. Perkins would not strangle her unconscious. Neither would the family caught. Her children would be safe at any cost.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

That is what makes it so difficult to see when you are standing in the middle of it. The police photograph, the leaflet in the drawer, the panic alarm on the wall. All of it marks the point where private terror becomes official evidence. Even then help feels fragile. When the officers first left me in that house after I said he had strangled me unconscious, something in me learned that institutions do not always arrive in the way we imagine. That lesson sits underneath everything that follows. This is the chapter where survival starts to look practical, even entrepreneurial, but the emotional cost is still enormous. Selling roses is almost comic on the surface. Yet underneath it is a woman trying to keep the electricity on, so the panic alarm will work, trying to hold a life together with ingenuity and nerve. I wanted that contrast. Danger and absurdity living side by side, the mundane and the terrifying do not take turns, they coexist. Meeting the family court system for the first time was its own form of shock. I had believed with the naivety of someone who had not yet had cause to test it, that justice systems existed to protect people who were being harmed. The discovery that the presumption of contact could function as a mechanism for continued control, that a man who had beaten me, strangled me, and burned my daughter could continue to access my children through a legal framework was genuinely destabilizing. Looking back now, this chapter marks the point where the abuse changed shape. Up until then, I had been frightened primarily of Clive. Afterwards, I became frightened of the consequences of refusing him. Many women will understand exactly what I mean. Leaving is often presented as the end of the story. For me, it was the beginning of a different one. At this stage, I still did not understand something that seems obvious to me now. The solicitor worked for me. I instructed them, not the other way round. When you have lived for years in a controlling relationship, authority becomes difficult to challenge. Professionals sound certain. You assume they know best. I often followed rather than directed. I wish somebody had explained earlier that I was allowed to ask harder questions, allowed to disagree, allowed to insist.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

The legal landscape, family court in 1990s Britain. The presumption of contact, a law with consequences. The Children Act. 1989 did not explicitly enshrine a legal presumption in favour of contact, but the courts developed one in practice. By the mid-1990s, the prevailing judicial attitude was that children benefited from maintaining a relationship with both parents after separation, and that mothers who obstructed contact were acting against their children's best interests. This created a serious and well-documented problem for women leaving abusive relationships. The very behaviors that constituted reasonable protection, refusing to send children to an abusive father, declining to facilitate contact when the children were frightened, were reframed by the courts as hostile or uncooperative parenting. The label implacably hostile was applied to mothers who repeatedly refused or frustrated contact orders. It carried significant consequences. Judges could and did change residence arrangements, impose fines, or, in the most serious cases, imprison mothers for contempt of court. The label placed the obstruction at the centre of the court's attention, rather than the reasons for it. It would take years, several public inquiries, and a growing body of evidence about domestic violence and coercive control before the law began to shift.

SPEAKER_04 19:20

What stage was I at? Realisation. What I believed. The court would prioritize safety. Evidence would speak for itself. Professionals would naturally understand the risk. What I was beginning to learn. The court process had its own priorities. Fear and evidence were not the same thing. Contact was often viewed as the starting position. Protecting children could place mothers under scrutiny.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Questions women ask at this stage. Why didn't you simply refuse contact?

SPEAKER_04 19:57

Because by this stage, I genuinely believed I could lose everything if I got it wrong. The court could have given my children to him. I thought it what mothers do, allow the continued relationship. The breakdown wasn't about them, it was me and him. I still believed he loved his children and he wouldn't harm them. I was going along with what I was told by the solicitor. That was the way that it was.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Were you frightened of prison?

SPEAKER_04 20:24

Yes. Not because anyone sat me down and threatened me directly, but because women shared stories. We all knew the consequences could be severe. Part of me thought, well, that won't happen to me, to be honest. I had never done anything wrong in my life.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Did you trust your solicitor?

SPEAKER_04 20:42

Yes. In the beginning I did, but trust and understanding are not the same thing. I trusted people long before I understood that I was allowed to challenge them. That takes time. It's a good six months to a year after you have left for your body to calm down. But for your mind, that healing process is a lot longer. I was only just starting to learn the system. It was new, it's complicated, and it's not what you expect.