Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Straight to the Tate with a breast pump

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

The much-missed Fi is battling new technology to join Jane for today's podcast.It's the inaugural edition of 'Rays Reviews' - where Jane's 90-year-old dad gives us his thoughts on the new Napoleon film.Louise Tickle joins to talk about her debut thriller 'Between The Lies'.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Eve Salusbury Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Now, Fee's had some new equipment, the lucky devil. Is it new equipment? No, but it's a new platform or something or other. I've logged into something very, very complicated, Jamie. You wouldn't understand it. No, I wouldn't. Well, there's absolutely no point pretending. So you're still in your little office at home. I am.

But hopefully I'm being brought to you in clearer, more crystal-like quality now. Yeah, I don't think anyone can complain about the quality of this. Well, I mean, they can. But the quality of what I'm hearing is excellent. Yeah, so that's very good. Audio was the word you were struggling for. I think it probably was. Now, quick medical check-in.

How are you? Well, look, I'm definitely on the mend, and I struggle with the amount of attention now being focused on my illness because it's not, you it's it's been a bug it's really fine nasty bug though covid it's not to be underestimated it's well it's not but also it is nasty but i don't can i just say that i don't know for definite james i haven't done i haven't done a test this side of having done the test before the weekend so i don't want people to think um you know that i that that i'm uh i'm

wandering around breathing on people when i shouldn't be breathing on people so anyway look i miss you obviously that's the main thing isn't it i just miss you jane no we miss you here and you are you're much missed by everybody um that's true so i hope you feel better soon now we had a very interesting trip kate and is the producer on the podcast tonight and kate and i went uh because we were both due to go to this community project in islington this morning for a special podcast which will be available in a couple of weeks and kate and i went and honestly it was genuinely really life enhancing so i hope people look forward to finding out more about that later. But it's a project called Cook for Good.

And it's just one of those, you walked into the place, it's in an old laundry on one of the Peabody estates in North London. And it's just a fantastic community hub. And it was just buzzing with life and full of really decent people trying to make life a bit better for everybody. Honestly, it was lovely. And you know what, that's genuinely set me up for the day because normally i'm a carpy old bint but today i've been quite positive and it was because of that good change yes no it's very good absolutely

it was it was so that's really cheered me up and before we go much further i know people will be desperate to find out if they heard last night's podcast what my dad made of napoleon and oh gosh well particularly that scene with the josephine saucy temptress well mercifully he doesn't allude to that in the email which i will read in its entirety this is going to be a very short possibly one-off series called ray's reviews here it is this is my 90 year old dad on napoleon very special no this is the start of something this is a whole series i cannot wait very spectacular battle scenes but too many rest of the more personal stuff seemed to lack continuity and was fragmented altogether it

was far too long 150 minutes and there was a charge for the gents at the end, with me winning by a short head. Love, Dad. Right. He went with his friend, I should say. That's why they were... I mean, the idea of these two quite elderly gents racing each other to the gents at the end is quite funny. But anyway, there we are. I don't think Ridley Scott will be...

Well, his career's not over on the strength of that. But 150 minutes for a bloke of that age and his friend who's not that much younger, that's quite a big call isn't it really, it's a big effort made there. Well and I say congratulations to the pair of them for actually managing to keep it in and staying in the cinema for that amount of time because you know many people would forgive both of them for just going I need a wee I'll spend half an hour outside and come back exactly you know they'll still be on horses uh marauding across the European landscape yeah because you were going to go but

you didn't make it in the end did you so um no so so we did just watch the trailer instead and I feel like I saw the film yeah well also you've got my dad's review so you don't really need to bother with it anymore all right okay now the guest this afternoon uh was a brilliant uh journalist I know that we both admire called Louise Tickle who has uh now written a book it's called Between the Lies and we'll talk to Louise in a couple of minutes in during the course of the podcast because this is a really, it's a great book, actually. It's a very pacey thriller, essentially, psychological thriller. But it's about the work of the family courts. And there's some difficult stuff in there. But I do urge people to have a look.

So to email Corner, what do you have, sister? Well, so many people wanted to bring to us their experiences of feeling overwhelmed. And overwhelmingly, Jane, the verdict is sometimes in life you just have to accept that you're in a really, really bad place. And the, I think, slightly relentless turn a negative into a positive thing that goes down in our modern society is particularly useless when stuff is just really, really shite. This comes in from Simon, who's listening to us in Ontario, Canada. Welcome, gentlemen. I just wanted to reply to the person who's going through a tough time, and it seemed to me was feeling bad about feeling bad. And I want to say it's totally okay to feel like that. They're her feelings, they're totally justified, and nothing else going on in the world has anything to do with it. And sometimes we think we should feel a certain way, but there's

no should, there just is. As a British guy living in Canada, one of the things I've learned since being this side of the pond is that it doesn't help to have a stiff upper lip or to keep calm and carry on. When things are crap, it's better to acknowledge them. That's the only way to move forward. I think of it like a trampoline. you need to let it sink down before you can bounce higher which I think is quite a nice analogy and so many people saying exactly the same and although you know as a friend it's you always want to make your friends feel better don't you in the moment and put a warm arm around their shoulder and say things will get better but but actually that's that's the thing that you should do after you put an arm around

their shoulder and just go yeah that's terrible because you just need that kind of reassurance of how shite it can all get sometimes you know what i mean i think sometimes you just go on you just need to i was going to say you just need to give people a hearing don't you let them speak yes yeah no totally you just have to listen and let it you know just let them get it all out and just agree that it's absolutely rubbish and there are just so there's a there's a real force isn't there and just all around us of people offering advice and tools and pathways and and those are all those are all great but therefore when when you've decided that you want the help to kind of get back to a different place they're absolutely useless when everything is overwhelming because it's just another thing that you have to put on the list of overwhelm and there's no space so I think within reason just allow yourself to just have quite a

few moments of yeah this is awful and wait for that little nudge of and now maybe things will get better and just that point that we were saying yesterday jane about all the dark dark darkness in the world it doesn't make you a bad person to still be experiencing your own troubles does it you can do two things you can do both things be incredibly sympathetic and empathetic towards everything else that's going on in the world without it meaning you know that you have a kind of you know because you're caught up in something yourself you disregard all of that can i just read one more i want to thank everybody who's emailed about this but what we don't want to do

is turn this into a really long list of everybody's worries but this this email it does contain a lot of really challenging sets of circumstances all impacting on one woman but um i just want to read it out because i feel it does need acknowledging um this listener says i'm a single parent who does the lion's share of the child care and child admin as my ex-husband lives hundreds of miles away facilitating visits to their dad involves frequent trips on avanti west coast as i'm sure jane will know this is not always the smoothest of experiences. My youngest child has autism and can be quite challenging in her behaviour. I'm self-employed and struggle to keep on top of my work at the same time as generating enough income in the cost of living crisis.

I help out in my parents' business as my dad, who's 82, refuses to stop working, much to the annoyance of my mum. He's often forgetful and stuck in his ways. This isn't always easy to work with, particularly navigating my way around his unique methods of storing and filing business documents and arbitrating disagreements between him and my mum. My sister has an ex-husband who seemingly exists solely to make her life a misery and I am an outlet for the stress this has caused her. Plus I am perimenopausal and to top it all off my 18 year old cat has had his eye removed. He has a recurrent infection in the other which requires two types of drops twice a day and actually I should say I have missed out at least

one of your concerns because I just feel that might just come a little bit close to um hinting at who you are anyway it does feel good to write this all down and I don't expect for a moment that this long list of what feels like highly self-indulgent complaints will get read out well it has been read out because I don't think it is self-indulgent I think it's just an honest assessment about how challenging your life is right now and if it's helped you to write it all down then that's good that's got to be good hasn't it very much so I'm I mean I know that there's an awful lot of other stuff involved um in that person's life Jane but for for your beloved cat to have to have an eye removed there's a visual visceral thing going on there, isn't there? Yes.

It's just going to be hard. But what a lovely pet owner to bother to do that. Can I just say, I was going to read this out at the beginning, this one just comes in from Glyn, it's just a tiny one, but it properly, properly made me laugh when I read it. I'm much reassured by Fee's return to the podcast today. Her ever-lengthening absence was beginning to drift off into the territory of tracy barlow

disappearing to her bedroom for five years to listen to her tapes yes she literally she went upstairs and when she came down a completely different person yeah oh my word yeah different actress i didn't realize that i love that just going to go listen to some tapes. I think it's quite difficult for the soaps to have teenagers because they can be quite challenging, as we know. And even playing a teenager comes with it. Well, a whole string of challenges, doesn't it? Anyway, yes, that was very good. There was one I wanted to mention too.

Oh, yes, just thank you as well to everybody who's had twins. I Have Twins says, this listener, we don't need to mention her name, they're currently 11 and with their two older siblings, they are the lights of my life. Those early months though, oh, they were gruelling. I had a husband who thought that by doing anything for them, he was being helpful to me,

rather than seeing it as a joint project raising children my granny used to say that she spent her last pennies on help in the home and i was lucky enough to have some pennies to spend on a really good house and child care help this got me through and relaxing all my standards across the board for a few years helped as well there was a particularly bleak moment of finally getting both girls to sleep and attaching myself to an industrial breast pump while i heard my older two whom i'd hardly seen for days playing downstairs the tears then coursed down my cheeks and i felt utter despair but it does get so much better right um okay there is there is light at the end of what can seem a never ending and really quite dark tunnel in the early, early, early months of parenthood.

So please do cling on to that fact. Now, how are you? How is the ormenagerie anyway? How is everybody? Oh, I think they're fine. They seem to be. Yep. They seem to be coping. And I think they rather like having the adults in the house around all of the time. And I think they rather like having the adult in the house around all of the time. All of them are following me from room to room. And Barbara has taken to peeing indoors again, Jane. Oh. As a mark of love.

And I don't know, pre-Christmas cheer. Oh, she's a one. She's a very, very pretty cat, Barbara. Oh, I know. I think it's problematic, Jane. Very problematic in adult life. life you know she's got a lot of attention in the early years and I think she's got to work on her personality a little bit. I was just going to ask you actually did you ever use breast pumps? Only on one occasion and do you know Fee I think I may have mentioned it in our book. In our little book?

In our book. The book available in time for Christmas book. It's that book. Did I say that out loud? That's the name of the book, by the way. Yes, because it was on Christmas Day in 1999. I'd had an absolutely rotten day. I had blocked the toilet with a large maternity pad.

I'd had to get some medication for extreme constipation. And the baby was a week old. And my sister and I wrestled with a breast pump on my bed for a while just to get away from the rest of the family, from what I remember. Couldn't really get it to work. What was your experience? Oh, I think they're terrifying things the sound that they make i think haunts you later on yes it does it's a very strange

and sometimes you do hear it in ladies toilets in a workplace don't you um because you know someone's come back to work and they are still trying to give their baby their own milk at home. I just think it's one of those strange things. And you mentioned yesterday the complete dearth of reality and advice in all of those pregnancy books about what happens after you have the baby. And I think all of an explanation of all of that equipment and stuff would be very helpful. Yeah, because suddenly you're expected to master lots and lots and lots of things, aren't you? Just when your brain is

pretty numb, doesn't really understand what's going on. And breast pumps are just one of those strange things. I mean, you know, why would you how would you know how to use them? And I suppose this might be too much for detail you you kind of you end up watching your nipple and your bosom disappear down into the equipment yes into the equipment it's odd isn't it and I remember thinking is that right would it ever come out and you know things like that I think it's not little it's not a little thing darling I think you could make some quite challenging visual art based around that. Why don't you enter the turn of pride?

I'm going to go straight to the Tate. There was a very funny, what do you call it, blooper moment I had with Muriel Gray once, who was on a panel with a very fantastic art critic. You know him, actually. A guy called Tim, who was at the time with a very fantastic art critic, you know him actually, a bit called Tim, who was at the time the editor of Tate magazine. We were talking about breasts and life drawing and all of that kind of stuff. And Muriel, you could just see her getting more and more

kind of mystified by the conversation that was going on. And then she suddenly burst in in her fantastic, enlightened Scottish way and she said, oh, I thought Tim was from Tit magazine instead of Tate magazine. She hadn't understood why we were having such an erudite conversation about tits. Oh, God. Right. A little anecdote of the day for me. Yes. That's a good one. I like Muriel Gray. Oh, she's fabulous. Yes. Fabulous woman.

Fabulous woman. No, she's great. Somebody else actually just wants to write very briefly about their dog, because their dear dog died very suddenly, they say, and indeed prematurely a couple of weeks ago. And I found myself repeating to everyone I told, I feel so awful for feeling so devastated about my dog dying when I look at the suffering going on in the world.

I've really had to work on giving myself permission to be sad. It was and is a huge loss and a trauma for us. He was a wonderful dog, practically human, and most definitely one of the family. He was called Higgins after President Michael D. Higgins here in Ireland. And as the Irish phrase goes, oh dear, I can't pronounce it. I'm afraid.

Tabronorm, which translated means the sadness is on me. Well, the sadness is on me and my husband and our five children, age three to 22. Tell your listener to allow the sadness to be on her

as she goes through her challenging times while holding on to the hope that this too shall pass and that is from Ruth in County Wicklow and thank you very much Ruth I'm I don't know much about him but I'm a huge admirer of President Higgins um it's not just because he's a shorter man but there's something about the way he carries himself he's very dignified I think he's an academic I think he might be a poet but um I mean as you know Fi i'm a proud monarchist but i wonder if we were to ever

have a president someone like him would be a bold choice who would you pick as a head of state in place of our dear king should this ever come to pass oh lordy i think probably matty the bloke who won bake off last night oh yes brings to mind does it heavily tattooed isn't he oh very heavily tattooed but the more that you learned about Matty the more you liked him you know he said he's a teacher then you know they did that lovely thing where they go back and meet the families and they all seemed absolutely wonderful too and he just seemed like a thoroughly nice young lad I'm just saying his name Jane because I can't honestly think of anyone who I think should be president of these great nations.

Who would you pick? It'll have to be somebody with stature. I mean, I don't mean physical stature. It's very hard in Britain to think of someone who ticks every box. They've got to be plausible, intellectual presentable and they've got to dress well god i don't know i think we better stick with the king also there's more entertainment with the royals you never know what's coming next i shan't be reading that appalling new book that's come out but i am trying to get hold of a copy i'm just getting hold of a copy yes but i won't

be reading it nether the Netherlands? Well. Abroad somewhere? Well, yeah. Interesting. You'll never guess. I don't understand how that can happen, Jane. No. Well, I mean, did we have a Dutch version of our book? Did we go Dutch?

I don't know. And was it fruitier than the English version? I'd hate to break it to you. I don't think it was published anywhere else. Is it not an international bestseller? No, not on this occasion, no. But we still have hope. Especially as I've teed it up so brilliantly in the podcast tonight.

I think we should try and do it every night between now and Christmas. Yeah, why not? Did you talk about Godparents? I don't remember doing that, so I was a bit puzzled by that, but carry on. Well, I think Godparents is quite an interesting thing actually um this one comes from anonymous having no godparents myself and only my father's poor example as a wayward godfather I'm not sure who I do not know I'm not sure who I do I'll just go to the next sentence yes do i please do i buy my god child's new sibling a christmas present too

i'll definitely send both chocolate at easter because chocolate is chocolate and birthdays are slightly different so only one child gets presents at a time anyway yeah but i'm not sure about christmas any thoughts i'm child free and only buy presents for my god child in general or if attending a celebration. I think godchildren, I don't know, what are the rules? And so when can you stop? When can you stop giving a godchild presents? I stopped very, very soon.

Very, very soon. No, I didn't. I went up to, now that's a good question. I definitely did 21st, although one of my godchildren is not yet 21. Although, oh, hang on. Gosh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. No, she's 21 next spring.

I need to check on that. It's a difficult area. Godparents are a funny thing because, let's say, I'm not religious. So am I the right person to be in that position? I don't know. I've got three godchildren. How many have you got? Five.

Five? You win that one? Five, yeah. No, but I haven't know. I've got three godchildren. How many have you got? Five. Five? You win that one. Five, yeah. No, but I haven't. There's one, so it's a tricky one. There's one who I really haven't kept in contact at all because her mum, who I was friends with, moved to New Zealand for a while and we just really lost touch. And sometimes I do feel really bad about that, actually. I think that's quite a kind of dereliction of duty and I just should have made more effort to keep in touch but I don't know about the god parent god children thing I'd be interested to hear whether other people genuinely take it very seriously I somehow feel it's not taken as seriously anymore I think you might be right I think the key thing is leave them something in you will. Yes. Or people go down the celeb route, don't they?

Because I think Elton John's got 7,652 godchildren and Liz Hurley's got about 500. Has she? Yes, loads. I don't know why I know these facts, but I do. And that's about something else, Jane, isn't it? I think. I think it might be.

What is very clear is that illness has not blunted your brain. Far from it. Now I think we probably need to move on for the sake of our colleagues to the guest this afternoon. Please do. Yes thank you very much for that little injecting just a note of brisk efficiency into this evening's edition of Off Air. Between the Lies is the name of the psychological thriller by the investigative journalist Louise Tickle. Louise has won awards for lots of investigative journalism over the years, and notably she did a brilliant series for Tortoise Media called Hidden Homicides. She's somebody who focuses a lot on domestic violence, abuse of women, and the impact of domestic violence on the home. And she also knows a great deal about what goes on in the really

quite secretive world of the family courts. So there's a lot in this interview about the family courts, about how they work and just about how challenging some of the court cases they hear are. So we'll get on to that in a moment but first of all Louise joined me just a couple of minutes after the BBC broke the news that the Newsnight programme was going to lose half of its staff and that there was going to be an end to much of its investigative journalism. And Louise and I agreed that this was a very, very sad day. It is really sad because it means that there's less time for people to do deep investigations. And what you need for that is backing and patience and if you have time and time yeah always time because you have to follow all sorts of leads

that may not get you anywhere in the end and it's it is time consuming well often leads don't get you anywhere often you could be working on something for months and and in the end it never it never gets broadcast or it never gets it never gets written because you can't stand it up and even the ones that do you know you need to build trust with people and that takes time you're here really to talk about your novel which is it's out already it is it is it is called between the lies and you a lot of your work has been about the family courts and we'll talk about them and domestic violence and frankly abusive people largely men i mean not, not always men. And I always feel this compulsion to say that because it isn't always men. But also what is so important, undeniable, is that the majority

of domestic abusers, the vast majority are men. Yes. And the ones who kill are overwhelmingly male. So, yeah, it's been something that as a subject for a journalist is very sadly a subject that keeps on giving and so for the last well it's over a decade now I've been exploring lots of different strands of ways that men can abuse women and it takes you into some very dark places. Well this story that you've written in Between the Lies it's about an investigative investigative reporter in Bristol. The name of the character is Cherry McGraw, and she can never forget the date that her mother and her brother were killed because it was her ninth birthday.

Her father was jailed for the killings and suddenly sends her a letter. That's where the story starts. Now, I gather this was based on a case that you covered. Yes. I mean, it's not difficult to find cases where women are killed by men because there are about 100 a year. And I think it was back in 2014 or 15 that I went to look at a case in Essex. And it was a woman who had been killed together with her two-year-old daughter on the eve of a hearing in the family court, which was going to decide custody of the little girl.

And that night, the ex-partner, and he'd been ex for a good long while, came to her house in the dead of night with tools, and he tortured her and he murdered her, and he murdered his two-year-old daughter that he'd had with her. But what wasn't very much publicised at the time was that there was an older daughter, Christine Chambers' own daughter, and she had hidden in the house, I think, and she managed

to escape and run away. And so although this book isn't about that murder and about that child, what it led to is me wondering what happens to the children of murdered women. How do they grow up? Because there are a lot of them. And also, if you are, say, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine, when your dad kills your mum, it's very likely that he's going to get out when you're in your 20s. And you're then very likely to have to negotiate what kind of relationship you want to have with him. Gosh, I mean, this is quite an area, isn't it? And can I, do you know whether the killer in that case is still in prison? He died in prison of cancer. Oh, well, I'm afraid my initial reaction is, well, that's good. I'm very sorry if that offends

anybody. But I mean, I've been thinking about that and I actually take if I'm honest some comfort from that I'm sure it's horrible for those people who cared for him and I've no doubt those people exist but still um and and you're I suppose in a way it's the mundane nature of these crimes that is the one of the most shocking things about them isn't it it is because I think what we have ended up with now is a situation not just in this country, but globally, where the murder of women is seen as bad, obviously, but it is also seen as inevitable. And I was hearing somebody say the other day that if dogs were killing two women a week, week in, week out, there would be an absolute national uproar. But that's what's happening. Men are killing two women a week, week in, week out, intimate partners or ex-partners. And of course, the time when it's

most dangerous is the time when they choose to leave. Because that's when an abuser's control is kind of snapping, it's being stretched, it's being challenged. And the way to re-exert control completely and totally is to deny somebody their life, their agency, their ability to leave. And it's a very sad fact that you have to plan very carefully when you're going to leave. So to those people who ask, and they do still exist, why didn't she leave? The answer is, if only it were that simple.

Oh, well, I mean, I think women who are being abused and have been abused over months and years know very well the danger they would be in if they were to leave. They've often been told it in very plain terms. they've had themselves. Because the plain fact is, none of us know what goes on in people's intimate relationships. They can be very complicated. And even if you were in the room, even if you played 50% of what played the part of 50% of what occurred in that room, you don't know how it's being interpreted by the other person, do you? Well, I wanted to, in this book, explore the complexity of a relationship and that people can interpret actions in different ways and that particular kinds of behaviour will be interpreted by other

people including judges perhaps in family courts in different ways and so because I also report on our closed family courts where hearings are held in private and journalists although we're allowed in for the most part we're not allowed to report as of right, and you have to apply to the judge. You will find that women like, for instance, the MP Kate Griffiths, whose case I reported on a couple of years ago, who managed to prove rape and coercive control and sexual assault, and all kinds of horrendous behaviour by her ex-partner. and sexual assault and all kinds of horrendous behaviour by her ex-partner. She went through a four-day fact-finding. She wasn't allowed to tell anybody about it.

What's a four-day fact-finding? Sorry, where she has to prove a domestic abuse she's alleging because she wanted to protect their child. And two years on, that case still hasn't been resolved. OK, well, that's an absolutely devastating example of what we're talking about. I think we'd better just deal with some basics then about the family courts, because this is a world that you inhabit. But most of us will never set foot in a family court or have anything to do with a family court. If you get divorced, that's relatively simple, isn't it? Does that come across the desk of a family court judge? Yes, does but not in the way that that i'm dealing with in

this novel you would be surprised actually at how many people end up in family courts hundreds of thousands of people will be affected by their decisions every year and it's not just about children for whom there are child protection concerns that local authorities try and take into care if you separate from your partner and there is an intractable dispute about access to the children, you are very likely to end up in the family court. And so I have, you know, as you say, I've inhabited it. Journalists are allowed to go. Nobody else is allowed to see what happens in there.

And when you try to report some of the things that happen, people are really very surprised because you would imagine if you were a victim of domestic abuse, that you had numerous police reports, you'd been to your GP, you'd had help from a domestic abuse service, that you would go and you might even have social workers telling you, leave him. You go to a family court, you have to prove it all over again, because he's saying, I want to see the kids. And when you've proved it, it still might not be enough. It still might not be enough. Why might it not be enough? interests of the children, which is right. But it is not automatic in the view of the law that the best interests of a child are only served by not having contact with an abusive parent. This is the thing that both intrigues and appalls me, I suppose. Well, in law then,

an abusive man, let's say it is a man, an abusive man does not lose any rights to access to the children who will have lived amongst his abuse? No. He retains full parental responsibility, his views are taken into account by the court and the judge will weigh up whether the children's best interests are served or not served by having contact with the father. And it is extremely rare, even when abuse is proved for there to be, as a victim may say is safest, and she is likely to know best, for the children not to have contact, both for them, and also, of course, for herself, because she is vulnerable. and abuse doesn't stop when you leave a relationship. Very often abuse can continue and there is real concern now that abusers are weaponising family courts by continually taking their victim back to extend control to try and get more access and it is

completely pulverising. Who pays for lawyers to look after people in the family courts? Well, very often, the people themselves pay, or if they can't pay, they have to represent themselves. There was legal aid for private law cases, so separating couples, was axed in 2013 for all but certain categories of domestic abuse. You have to be able to tick certain boxes but essentially you pay or you turn up in court by yourself against the person who you know believe abused you and they may also be having to represent themselves and remember you know in the book what

I do is I try and make it very clear that the father does not believe he has abused the mother. He doesn't accept it. And he tries in certain places to kind of explain how, you know, it is complicated when relationships break up. People are very unpleasant to each other. That isn't abuse. No, and that's made clear in the book that there are some exceedingly grey areas. And it's, I'll be honest, it's depressing stuff, isn't it? Because I think, I doubt that anybody

who's ever been in any kind of relationship could read this book and not recognise some aspects of their own or an ex's behaviour. There's any doubt about that? No, absolutely, because we all behave badly in relationships, don't we? And we all accept things that looking back with hindsight, we think, how could I possibly have taken that? Something else you write about, and I think it's very

important, the idea of how a victim should conduct themselves, or an alleged victim, of course. And this is very difficult, because how are you supposed to behave? You can't be too composed. I have had some fascinating conversations with barristers about how they represent people alleging domestic abuse. And it feels to me from all the responses I've had over the last nine, 10 years I've been reporting on family courts is that it is very hard to find a way through and to have a, it feels like you just can't win. If you are somebody who has got out of a relationship

and a year later, for instance, your partner makes an application to see the children, so you're dragged into court and you've found yourself again, you're feeling stronger, you're feeling more self-assured and you give your answers confidently. And a judge might think, well, here she is saying that she's been abused, downtrodden, terrorised, and she doesn't look like this at all. Or another response to abuse can be that you shut down, you deaden your emotions, you become numb, you can't express your emotions. And so it looks like you're not really very affected. So you have to, as a victim, it feels to me, and I've watched fact findings happen, and they are extremely distressing to watch an alleged victim of domestic

abuse be cross-examined as to what has happened to them it's been so difficult to watch that at times i found myself in court slightly turning away so that by the end of the cross-examination i'm actually sort of completely turned away from what's going on um and watching i mean it is it is undoubtedly re-abuse re-abusing the person who's being and we know this from from rape trials don't we yeah it's no different voiceover describes what's happening on your iphone screen voiceover on settings so you can navigate it just by listening. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone.

My guest this afternoon is the novelist and investigative journalist Louise Tickle. Does it feel good to be described as a novelist? It does after it took eight years to write it. Yes, but it's worth doing. It's called Between the Lies. It's a psychological thriller about relationships, about domestic abuse and the impact of being a child who lived through some appalling domestic abuse. But it's also, crucially, as we've been discussing, about the family courts. Now, actually, before we get on, can I just put a question to you, Louise, from a listener who says, are there any numbers around people killed by abusive partners, driven to suicide, I'm sorry, by abusive partners? There hasn't been very recent research into it,

but domestic abuse academic experts are pretty consistent in saying that it will be many times more women and occasionally men killing themselves as a result of domestic abuse than are murdered. Really? Okay. Gosh, that's another very telling and heartbreaking statistic. Right. Well, thank you to the listener who posed the question. Can we talk about the judges in the family courts then? Who are they? Are they specialist judges, are they? They tend to be judges who were once family law barristers or indeed solicitors, who I suppose when they get to their 40s and 50s start to sit, as it's known, part-time, and then become full-time district judges or circuit circuit judges, or even high court judges. So yes, they do tend to be specialists, but they're not always. And there are no juries here though,

so the judges have an enormous amount of power. It's a single person sitting in a small court making life-changing decisions, exerting effectively very draconian powers that the state can wield over people's private and family lives. A judge can extinguish the legal relationship between a parent and child in making an adoption order. And in the kind of case that my book talks about, where separating parents in dispute over children can decide whether parents see their children at all, how long for, under what conditions. Yeah, it's a big deal going to a family court and obviously you've been to lots of hearings in family courts i gather you need permission from both sides and indeed from the judge is that correct it's not quite right um it might have been that a long

time ago but in 2009 journalists with a press card were allowed to go as of right and sit in family in almost all kinds of family court case but we weren't allowed to report on it so of course almost no journalist ever did well exactly why would an editor ever send you nobody went yeah um apart from you know a few people would go occasionally when there was a very big and very dramatic usually a child murder case where there were there were there was then a dispute as to whether the parents should see the surviving siblings, that kind of horrendous case. But in about 2014, I went to Bristol Family Court, not really knowing very much about it, but I was incredibly welcomed by the senior family judge

there, His Honour Judge Stephen Wildblood, who made it very easy for me to feel that it was fine for me to come in and fine for me to make applications to be able to report. And so because I was freelance, and I might not have been paid for my time, I was in charge of my time, I could explore that interest and kept going. And to anyone listening who thinks, well, these matters are extremely personal, they should stay totally private, what do you say? extremely personal, they should stay totally private. What do you say? I say that I believe that as long as you can effectively anonymise the parties in cases,

so the parents and the children, and experience shows that you can, it is a protection for the public to have journalists bringing independent scrutiny into closed courts where the state wields powers that are life-changing. I know, I don't expect you to know the answer to this necessarily. Are things different in Scotland? I mean, England and Wales, the same judicial system? I don't know. I think it would be the same privacy, but there might be different rules to do with applying for permission. I'm not sure. I have never actually reported on a family case in Scotland. Okay. The central point of your book is about this idea that somebody who's done a terrible thing to their own child, to their own child's mother, should be allowed to make contact with them in later life.

Now, in real life, that could happen, could it? You could be going about your business as a grown person in your 20s and 30s, and then one day you might get a letter from a prison from the man who killed your mother. Absolutely. But just going back a few years, it doesn't need to take that long. There are men who've murdered their children's mother, who have subsequently applied to be able to see and spend time with

the surviving children even from prison so those are the kinds of decisions that family court judges have to make and it's an application that would be countenance that would be considered it's unlikely to be an application from a father that would be readily you know agreed to or court ordered contact from a child you know but remember that child court-ordered contact from a child, you know, but remember, that child in losing their mother has then immediately lost their father too. And there can be concerns that if you completely denude a child of any of their relationships, they might end up potentially hero-worshipping a father who they didn't know, trying to make excuses for them, trying to understand why they had killed their mother, if they didn't have some level of understanding of what that man's personality was like. I mean, I'm not saying necessarily that I

agree with those things, but these are the theories that are advanced for why a court would countenance a father's application from prison to see his child, and why that means necessarily lots of trauma for usually the maternal grandparents who are looking after the surviving kids, helping them through this kind of lifetime of grief. And then they have to be dragged back to court to deal with that. And I know families that that has happened to. Gosh, I mean, the toll must be absolutely horrendous. I mean, I wonder, you could have done all sorts of different sorts of journalism, Louise. Why have you focused on this really troubling area? Well, I think if you find an area as a journalist where someone says, you are not allowed to write about this. I mean, for me, it's like, I will not accept it. Because I think there are very

important reasons to do with accountability and scrutiny, and holding judges to account for the decisions they make and holding society account to account for the powers that are wielded in family courts. So that's why because it's an area that nobody else was looking at, because it was too hard. I have listened to your podcast series, Hidden Homicides, as well. And just explain briefly what that was about. So that was about the murders or the deaths of women, which are not properly investigated by police, and where there are grave suspicions that they may have been murdered. And in some cases where that has been discovered many, many years later when the man has gone on to murder another woman. So we called them hidden homicides. And not every death of a woman was one that we

could prove had been a murder. But for instance, I interviewed the mother of a woman called Katie Wilding, whose daughter died in the apartment of her ex-boyfriend, who she had very recently gone and done a police interview about his violence, his aggression. And I know that Julie Ornger, who is a wonderful woman, Katie's mum, believes that Mitchell Richardson, who died at the same time as her daughter, planned her daughter's death. Right. So, I mean, I suppose there's an element of, I'm listening to every word, hanging on your every word. I've listened to your work. I've read your stuff. I've done, I've interviewed you before. Thank you. Is there an element of preaching to the converted about this, that your message only reaches those of us who are already more than furious about what's been allowed to happen forever,

it would seem? Well, that's why I wanted to write a thriller. Right. Because I wanted it to be more accessible. Yeah. I wanted, you know, there's only certain numbers of people who will read a 5,000-word long read or will listen to a four- part podcast entitled Hidden Homicides,

though actually quite a lot do. I wanted to read something that was much more accessible and that wasn't as dry as, well, I hope my journalism's not dry. But I could be much more fluid and flexible and I could bring together things that I couldn't write about

that I'd seen, the kinds of things I'd seen happening in family courts in cases where I hadn't got permission to report'd seen, the kinds of things that I'd seen happening in family courts in cases where I hadn't got permission to report. I could meld them all together and kind of concentrate them in the book. Well, I think you've done a really good job. And I want to tell people it's a very, very readable book indeed.

But it's just got some really important messages. So I do urge people to have a look at it. Thank you so much for coming in. Oh, thank you for having me. Really, really appreciate it. That's the investigative journalist and now novelist Louise Tickle. And her book is called Between the Lies. Something just crashed.

I probably need help. Technical assistance will come flooding in. That was Louise Tickle. And the incident there at the end was in fact some. It was the, what do you call it this the stuff that you put i've got it i've got some of this some of it everywhere the alcohol gel rub was just uh met a calamitous end uh towards the conclusion of that conversation so uh nobody rushed to my aid fee as you heard there there was complete indifference and in fact since you have been off i am being treated with total

contempt the cup of tea if it arrives at all is covered in a thick layer of scum because it's been resting on the side probably been left over from Matt Chorley's show three days before honestly it's terrible darling no it should be the complete opposite because now the whole team should be focusing on you and you only well you would think so wouldn't you yes yes absolutely no I could not agree more I could not agree more. I couldn't agree more. But it seems that you were the person who kept the standards high in this establishment. Anyway, Between the Lies is the name of the book. But Louise Tickle is just in general a journalist well worth following and knowing more about her work. Very briefly, I just want to end with

Julie Cooper, who we enjoyed meeting a couple of weeks ago. She's been speaking to Saga magazine, Fi. Yeah. And this is from the Times Diary today. She says that she's worried that when the time comes, her death she's talking about here, she will find her beloved late husband chatting to his first wife up there in heaven. She was so ravishing it might be awkward when I get there, says Jilly. On the other hand, she is looking forward to a reunion with her pets.

When you arrive in heaven, all your dogs will come rushing across the lawn to meet you with your favourite dog leading the pack, she says, and that will do for me. Well, that's lovely. Those of us who've only really in relatively recent life been cat owners, am I really expected to look forward to Dora chomping me again in the next life is that the best I can hope for what do you think well I don't know Jane that is problematic isn't it because I think Dora also just has a tendency to kind of look you up and down and slink off and that's not the greeting that you want and the heavenly clouds I don't think I think

Jilly no Jilly does herself down yeah she doesn't need to worry about the first wife, does she? No, she doesn't need to worry at all. No, but that suggests that the first wife has already passed, so she might be sort of moving in on the late husband again. I mean, does all that go... does it go on in heaven? Jane, if all of that ding-dong's going on in heaven, then, yeah, I'm going to have to regroup myself and head somewhere else. I can't do it all again. You'll certainly have your work cut out, won't you?

Right. OK. Fee Glover there. No, I think you sound a bit better. So that's good. Be very careful. I'm going to go and listen to some tapes. Yes, I am. I am definitely on the mend, Jane. And apart from anything else, I'm slightly giddy with delirium of being stuck in my house for a whole week.

So, yes, bring on the full recovery. And thank you, actually, to everyone who sent very kind messages. I genuinely really, really appreciate them. And I'm also a little bit embarrassed because, you know, it'll be fine. No, I know. We know that. But we're encouraging everyone to own their own sadness and suffering and just, you know, just be in the moment with it. OK. Thank you.

Yes. Good. Thank you. OK. Thank you. See you soon. Take care. And it's Jane and Fee at Timestock Radio. If you want to, just join in with whatever, as we say, this is.

You did it. Elite listener status for you for getting through another half hour or so of our whimsical ramblings, otherwise known as the hugely successful podcast off air with jane garvey and fee glover we missed the modesty class our times radio producer is rosie cutler the podcast executive producer it's a man it's henry tried yeah he was an executive now if you want even more and let's face it who wouldn't then stick times radio on at three o'clock monday until until Thursday every week and you can hear our take on the big news stories of the day

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