Woman's Hour - Bernardine Evaristo, Greek Refugee Camps, DV Perpertrators

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

Bernardine Evaristo’s novels The Emperor’s Babe and Mr Loverman will both be re-published this week. Bernardine won the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other but how do those two earlier works set up themes she then went on to explore further? And as people turn to books for distraction and escape during lockdown, what titles does Bernardine recommend?Jo Todd from the organisation RESPECT talks to us about perpetrators of domestic violence and what her charity is doing to help them stop their behaviour.Two refugee camps in Greece have cases of coronavirus, so what's it like to live there at the moment. We speak to Parwana Amiri who is staying at the Ritsona Refugee Camp and Katy Fallon who's a journalist based in Athens. And play and playfulness: how can we help our children get the most out of their playtime, and how can us adults take a leaf out of their book? Dr. Mel McCree joins us. She's a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at Bath Spa University.Image credit: Jennie Scott

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 15th of April. Good morning. In today's programme, Bernadine Evaristo, Booker Prize winner for Girl, Woman, Other. What inspires her characters? You may remember last week I asked a question about play

and whether adults really know how to do it. Today, the importance of play during a pandemic, whether you're a child or a grown-up, and some ideas about how to do it. And COVID-19 has been identified in two refugee camps in Greece. How can a vulnerable population in cramped conditions be protected? More and more reports of domestic violence have been coming to light since so many families have been locked into the home together

for such a long and stressful period, which shows no sign of coming to an end. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, in the government press conference on Saturday made plain where she believed the responsibility for the violence lay. Now I'm clear about this. It's the perpetrators who should be the ones that have to leave the family homes and not the supposed loved ones whom they torment and abuse. Our priority is to get the abusers out but sadly

this is not always possible. So where a victim and their children do need to leave we will ensure that they have a safe place to go to. Well Respect is an organisation that focuses its efforts on the perpetrators of domestic violence. One in four of them is said to be a repeat offender and some have as many as six victims. So how do you break such a cycle of violence? Jo Todd is Respect's Chief Executive. Jo, the Home Secretary announced £2 million to domestic abuse services.

What impact will that money have? Well any funding is welcome at the moment services on the front line are really struggling not only have we had our income drop significantly since the Covid outbreak started but we've also seen demand for services go up to a really very high level. So £2 million is very welcome, but it is a drop in the ocean. We know from the Home Office's own report that the estimated cost of domestic abuse to victims in the year 16-17 was £66 billion. And so we need a proportionate response to domestic abuse. And £2 million is a start. And we know that, and we hope that there is more coming. But we need to see more funding. We need to see it flow more quickly to the front line. Now, the Home Secretary made it

plain that it's the abuser who should be made to leave the home. How easy is it to get abusers out? I mean, that's definitely the right approach, isn't it? That the perpetrator is the one that's causing the problem. They should be the one to leave their home. It's not always easy and it's not always safe to do that. And sometimes women and children do need to flee for their own safety. We need all of parts of the system working together, we need a multi-agency

approach, we need the police to be doing their job, we need housing to be linking up, we need children's services, social services to be linking up too and when all of that comes together then it's easier to focus on the perpetrator. Perpetrators fall into loads of different categories they're not all one type so there are some that are reachable some some that will reach out themselves to services will recognize their problem their behavior is a problem and will want to do something about it. And we've got services that they can reach out to, like our phone line. And then there are other perpetrators

who are not reachable at all. They're embedded in their behaviour. Their behaviour is very harmful. It's likely to continue. They're very resistant to change or to recognising that they're the one with the problem. And those perpetrators need monitoring. They need containment.

They need an approach that focuses on stopping them rather than a behaviour change focus that you might have with the ones that are more reachable. So we know that Refuge say that they've had an enormous increase in calls to their helplines. What's been your experience of calls to their helplines and who's calling you asking for help? Yeah, so we've also had an increase in calls. We saw a slow increase at the start of the COVID emergency, and that's picked up quite a bit, actually. So in the four weeks since the beginning, the March start of the lockdown, we've seen a 67% increase in perpetrators phoning our phone line and they are all mentioning being in isolation as problematic we've had a caller talk about feeling like a caged animal at home and you can just see that it's a recipe for disaster to put a perpetrator who feels like that into a family um so every every kind of factor that might make

domestic abuse more likely to occur so um being stressed maybe about money and about housing about um employment being probably in a tight space um maybe with children who aren't behaving, who are stressed themselves. All of it's a recipe for disaster in any household. We're probably all feeling stressed and rowing more. But how can you work with perpetrators, Jo, in these current circumstances? You can't meet them face to face and talk to them. No, and we're trying to work that out. And I suppose one of the things that we're very aware of in the work with perpetrators is making sure that it's as safe as it can possibly be. Now, these are really unprecedented times.

So very quickly, we've had to think about, is it safe to call a perpetrator in his home when we know that his partner and his children are there to talk to him about his behaviour? Is that a safe and responsible thing to do or not? And obviously, if you're already working with him, so some of our member organisations already have behaviour change groups running and they're working with perpetrators in various settings. If you know him, then you're more likely to be able to assess that accurately. New referrals, we're working out, to be honest, Jenny, what best practice looks like.

We think it's better that he is alone when people have conversations with him, if that's possible. And sometimes that is possible. Sometimes he could go out for his daily exercise and have a chat on the phone then if he's in quarantine obviously that's not possible so we're just working it out and it and i would always say that we all of our member services who are accredited put safety of victims first that's the central reason that we do any work with but but what do you say to someone and

i mean they're not all men they are mostly men but there are significant numbers of women what support can you actually offer to someone who says i'm going to be violent i'm going to hit out what can you do about it so the main focus there would be trying to reduce the risk and to de-escalate the situation. So it would be doing some very simple, basic de-escalation techniques. You know, how do you recognise when you are getting to the point of being violent? And for different people, that is different. Some people realise that they're clenching their fists or clenching their jaw or they're stamping around the house or their face is red and flushed getting to know what your what your own body does when you are getting angry and when you're getting close

to being abusive and violent is really important and then learning how to de-escalate that how to wind down how to tell yourself positive things to block and stop that process. That's the kind of thing you would do in long term behaviour change groups. We can do very short bits of that on the phone or in face to face sessions online, things like that, just to talk through. It's about trying to interrupt those thought patterns. It's trying to recognise as well the kind of arguments that really raise the risk. So for some people, that might be arguments around money. For some, it might be about going out. We know from calls to our helpline that some of the pinch points at the moment are differences in opinion about what isolation means. So one

partner thinking it's okay to go out to the shops and another partner thinking they should stay at home and having arguments about that. So just realise really what buttons you've got and how they get pushed and then doing something to interrupt. I know you also support families where young people, 15 to 16 year olds are violent or abusive how concerned are you that

violence will increase among that group during lockdown we're already being contacted by social workers who are really worried about their caseloads um with that's that's young people who are already problematic who are already abusive and violent in the home towards their parents and their siblings and it makes sense doesn't it that in lockdown it's going to be harder they're not going to be able to have the escape route of just going out being with friends the normal things they might do so everything is amplified so we are worried about that client group. And I guess we're particularly worried because there aren't many routes for them to get help. There isn't a national

helpline directly for them to call or access or web chat or anything like that. And none of our, all of the domestic abuse helplines will take calls from either parents or from young people. But we're not marketed to them. And young people very much need their own source of support. There's a big gap in service provision there just for them to be able to reach out and get help. Well, Jo Todd, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. And I should say that we will make sure that there are numbers, details that you can get in touch with

if you want to talk to somebody about being a perpetrator or a victim of domestic abuse. And Jo, thank you so much. Now, it's been quite a year for the novelist Bernadine Evaristo. Her sixth novel, Girl, Woman, Other, in which she explored the lives and sexuality of 12 women, won the Booker Prize, was one of the biggest selling books of 2019, and was found to be one of Barack Obama's favourites. Her publishers are now reissuing two of her earlier works. The Emperor's Babe is set in Roman London, and the city is seen through the eyes of a young girl from a Sudanese family. Mr Loverman tells the story of Barrington Jedediah Walker, known as Barry.

He's 74. He's a grandfather who's originally from the Caribbean. He lives a double life in London with his wife and daughters and the secret lover, Morris, who's been his best friend since they were teenagers in Antigua. And Bernadine joins me from home. Bernadine, first of all, congratulations on last year. It was wonderful. Thank you. 23 years since you were first published.

What has it meant to you to have such recognition in this last year as a black british author yes well it's it has been incredible um to suddenly get my work my name out there but also my books out there and my publisher's actually um reissuing most of my backlist so it's more than two books it's actually four um with them and uh so it it's, yeah, it's been an absolute treat. And I am 60 years old, you know, and I have been in the arts for 40 years. And my first book was published in 1994. So to suddenly walk away with this prize has been just incredible for me. Now, The Emperor's Fabe, which I mentioned, which is set 1,800 years ago, I think, in London.

Yes, yes. What inspired the idea of this young black immigrant such a while back? I think it was 23 years since you wrote her. It was 2001 when it was published. Yes, well, I'm really interested in history, in the history of the African diaspora, in black British history. And I had discovered in the 1980s that there had been a black presence in,

or at least an African presence, in Roman Britain at that time. And I thought, wouldn't it be a great idea to set a novel in Roman London and to position a young black woman in it and see it through her eyes. Because it was my way of bringing the history alive for a wider readership.

And so, yeah, so that was the thinking behind it. Now, it was received well, critically, but how much influence do you reckon it had on the kind of stories that people felt confident about telling and publishers felt confident about publishing? Well, it wasn't a commercial hit. You know, none of my books have been commercial hits

until Go Home Another. Well, this one has been, hasn't it? Yes, yes, this one has been. So I don't know about its influence. I don't think anybody has gone that far back in history since it was published. You know, there are books that do very well critically and then there are books that do very well commercially.

And I would suggest that the books that do very well commercially are the ones that are perhaps the most influential. So I think if it was published today, it would have more currency than it had 20 years ago because I think there is more interest in Black British stories, even before Go Woman Other was published and won the Booker. So I think it being published 20 years ago is possibly ahead of its time in terms of a wider readership.

And, you know, there aren't actually very many novels that explore Black British history full stop. Very few books go back beyond Windrush. And yet we've been in Britain, you know, at least 2,000 years, I would argue even longer, and certainly very well recorded for the last 500 years. So there is so much material to explore. Now, Mr Loverman, preceded girl, woman, other,

how easy was it for you to put yourself into the life of a 74-year-old, secretly gay man? Yeah, it was quite easy, actually, which may sound strange. But as soon as I started writing the character of Barrington, he came alive for me. And in a sense, he started to tell his story to me, which people might have heard other writers say that. It's a strange thing.

But through the act of writing, the character emerges. So he wasn't fully formed in my mind before I wrote him. But he was very fully formed as soon as I started writing him. And I didn't find it a problem at all, stepping into his shoes. I found it, it was actually a very joyful experience writing that book because it's quite comic in many ways, even though there is an underlying tragedy in that, you know, he's married to his wife Carmel for 50 years

and she doesn't know she's married to a gay man. And so he's led a very secret life and sort of betrayed her in a sense um but i think as a writer you know what i do and what i think most of us do is we step inside the shoes of people who are not ourselves and sometimes that's more of a stretch than with other characters so you know i had to project myself into the into the sort of body if you like of a man who was of a certain age who was gay who is from the caribbean i'm not from the caribbean you know i'm i'm of african nigerian heritage um but that for me that is also the fun of writing in a sense the more distant the character is from myself such as with zuleika in the emperor's babe the more of a challenge it is

and in a sense the more enjoyable it is for me to write. I know you've described it as subversive to portray black queer characters. Why? It's subversive because it's something that's not done. When I started Mr. Lovemind, I looked around to see if I could find any other black writers who had written black gay protagonists.

And they are few and far between. In fact, there was somebody called Andrew Salke who wrote a book called Escape to an Autumn Pavement, which was, as it needed to be at that time, very ambiguously gay themed. And I couldn't find anything else to be honest uh although i don't want to say that they don't exist because i'm sure those books are out there but uh so so why is that why were people not writing black gay stories jackie k of course wrote trumpet which was about a character who was a trans character um and that was published in i think 1997 um so uh it's something that's that certainly when

i started writing the novel it wasn't talked about very much it was the portrayal of his generation so he is of the windrush generation had been exclusively heteronormative so these were heterosexual people who came to this country and their heterosexual lives that's not true we know that there's always a gay presence within any community um so to write a character of his age being gay as opposed to a sort of young clubbing 25 year old um somebody very recognizably of that Windrush generation who is married who is a father and grandfather, and in many ways fits the trope of what we understand about that generation, as gay, I think was an incredibly subversive thing to do. Now, I know you said his eldest daughter, Donna, sparked the idea for Girl, Woman, Other. How did she spark that book?

Yes, well, she was a spark, probably, I would say, in that his daughter Donna is a social worker. She's 50 years old. I really enjoyed writing her and her sister Maxine and Barry's wife Carmel. But Donna, in particular, in her youth, has a relationship with a woman. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting. And then the rest of her life, she's straight. And so in a sense, when I was writing Mr. Loverman, and there is a sort of, I think I have this kind of sort of a pattern, if you like, where each book I write speaks to the one that's gone before. So when I was writing Donna and her sort of earlier sort of gay experience,

I was thinking, why am I not writing that story? And so the next book then becomes the book, Girl, Woman, Other, where there are various women on the queer spectrum, as well as many heterosexual women who are the all co-protagonists. So that was what was going on, really, sort of writing those female characters, older women, middle-aged women, and then thinking, oh, these stories haven't been told either. Now, like all of us, you're stuck in lockdown and people are hungry for reading material. So let's have a couple of recommendations from you.

What would Bernadine Evaristo say, apart from your books, of course, people should read? I've just finished a book called Five Women by Hallie Rubenhold, which is looking at and investigating and building the stories of the five women who were killed by Jack the Ripper. And it's an incredible book. And I think everybody should read it because it's looking at women's lives in the 19th century, working class lives in the 19th century and also the ways in which they have been misrepresented ever since they died and it's a powerful feminist book but it's beautifully told.

I also recommend Black Rain Falling by a writer called Jacob Ross who I've actually known Jacob's work since the 1980s. He was a short story writer, He's now a novelist. It's a crime thriller set in the Caribbean, which is very unusual for any kind of crime novel. And it's just been published. And I wish people would rush out and buy it because he's an extraordinary literary writer, but he's also written this great thriller. And he's publishing at a time when obviously the books are shut there are no events and i think it's going to die a death if people don't go out and buy this book and i think if they buy it they will enjoy it hugely bernadine everista thank you so much for joining us this morning uh we will of course share your recommendations on twitter and then from

everybody else we want more suggestions from you we've've already had a lot. Elizabeth Stroud's Olive Ketteridge, Cella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm, Deborah Levy's The Cost of Living, Maya Angelou's Collection of Poetry and Still I Rise, or indeed anything by her. All the suggestions are on Instagram where you can also add

your own and that's at BBC Woman's Hour on Instagram. Bernadine, thank you very much. Now still to come in today's programme, playing during the pandemic. Why is it good for parents and children and how do we learn how to do it?

And the serial, the eighth episode of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Now earlier in the week you may have missed Sian Clifford, formerly Fleabag's sister and now Diana Ingram in the quiz, and Jade Adams and her couch cabaret. If you've missed the live programme, all you have to do is catch up by downloading the BBC Sounds app. Now, being asked to stay home to protect the NHS and save lives is not easy, even for those of us who live in a comfortable home with people with whom we get on. So spare a thought for the thousands of people

who've escaped conflict in their own countries and now live as refugees. COVID-19 has been diagnosed in two refugee camps in Greece. The first case was found in a woman who had gone to hospital to give birth. How can vulnerable people living in cramped conditions be protected? Well, Katie Fallon is a freelance journalist who will join me from Athens in a moment. Earlier this morning, I spoke to Parvani Amiri.

She's 16, originally from Afghanistan, and now lives at the Ritsona refugee camp. How is she keeping safe? To be honest, it's sometimes impossible to keep personally myself safe against the virus because we are in close contact with each other. And unfortunately, the ones that they are infected by the virus are all around us because they haven't been isolated yet. During one week, seven more people with the rest of the 23 confirmed cases that we had before, seven more people infected by the virus. How easy is it for you to wash your hands, stay home, which is the kind of advice that's being given across the world,

but I presume it's not so easy for you to do either of those things. Exactly washing the hands or keep the distance something that is impossible in the camps in a camp more people are gathering together and just to provide their daily necessities they have to be in contact with others so it is impossible to keep the distance when they are too much close to each other and like to just distribute the bars of soup it is not it's not enough while we don't have proper access to water i was talking to pvana Amiri and Katie Fallon now joins us on the line from Athens. Katie, we know those two camps, Ritserna and Malakas, have been affected. How are things progressing generally? Are other camps being affected as well?

So as far as we know, it's currently just the two camps on the mainland, which have confirmed cases of COVID-19. Obviously, there's huge concerns for all the camps across Greece, in particular the ones on the islands such as Lesvos, which are hugely overcrowded. And there are precautions being taken. There is a lockdown across Greece and this applies to the refugee camps. And there's curfews, people can't be out after 7pm. There's a huge restriction of movement in the island camps. As Parvana said, it's difficult because I mean, unless first you have a camp of nearly 20,000 people, social distancing is almost impossible in that kind of place. And there's often issues with running water and, you know, everything that people can do in normal situations to try and protect themselves is really, really challenging. How difficult are the lives of women in the Greek camps without the worry of the virus, just under normal circumstances? Yeah, I mean, in normal circumstances, it's very challenging for a lot of women.

You know, they have a lot of they're very vulnerable. Often they've experienced a lot of trauma in traveling to get to uh to get to greece and then uh it in the islands in particular places like lesbos they uh on they fear going to the toilet at night um because they fear being attacked um there's obviously issues with uh trying to get enough nappies and stuff for their kids, a baby formula. You know, there's usually a provision of services for women, such as safe spaces, women's centres where they can go and have a bit of respite. But these are all closed now, obviously, because of COVID.

So there's just a kind of huge reduction on these places that offered women a kind of chance to get out of the camp and kind of have a moment to themselves. So these women are now living in lockdown and all the issues that were there before are just exaggerated by the kind of threat of corona. What does lockdown mean in a refugee camp? What kind of accommodation are they living in? Well, it varies greatly. On the mainland, conditions are a lot better. Usually there's containers. People have kind of roofs over their heads that will protect them from rain, etc.

In places like Lesvos, it really varies. And, you know, there's a lot of organizations doing a lot of work to try and make a lot of the shelter better. But in Moria camp, for example, you know, I've met pregnant women recently as recently as a couple of months ago. And I was there who were living in shacks, in tents, which leak. So it really, the accommodation can be very minimal and often with kind of large families as well in these kinds of accommodations. And briefly, Katie, our children, there are a lot I know of unaccompanied and vulnerable children. Are they being helped to go out to other European countries and settle? Yes. So we heard this week that Germany is going to take 50 unaccompanied minors by this weekend Luxembourg are taking 12 there's a plan for I think around 1600 unaccompanied children to be moved off the islands shortly but you know obviously a lot of

this is being hampered by massive restriction of movement um but there is a focus now on trying to to help the most vulnerable which is of course a lot of the unaccompanied minors living in these refugee camps. Katie Fallon thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. Now you may remember a week or so ago we were talking about the difficulties of having the children at home all day and the importance for them of being able to play. And I said I thought it might be difficult for the grown-ups in the family to play with the kids because so often we've forgotten how to do it.

How can we learn how to play again? Well, Dr Mel McCree is a Senior Lect senior lecturer in early childhood studies at Bath Spa University. Mel, why would you say play is essential, not only for children, but for adults too? Well, hello, Jenny. Yes, play is something that we do, perhaps whether we're conscious or not. So it's something that's innate to humans and to other species so it's essential for our survival and development and I think it's essential because life's not just about doing the things that we have to do or that we're told to do we often want to feel a sense of choice and power so often when you ask children what play is they will well, it's what we're doing when we're not being told what to do.

And I think as adults, we all have things that we do that we enjoy, that we do simply for the love of it. So in that way, it's part of just existing. Now, parents now are trying to educate. They're trying to do their jobs from home. They're trying to run the household so how much should the children just be encouraged to play by themselves? Yes obviously it's a huge challenge for many parents now to juggle lots more at home and to essentially be doing more than one job at the same time because as we know being a parent is a full-time job too so it's it's really um a case of first of all giving ourselves permission to just get the

basics done so if your children are loved clean and fed then you're winning at life you know you've got the basics there um and we we do need to be able to exist alongside and get things done we don't in order to support children's play we don't need to be with them 100% of the time when they're doing that obviously if you've got really young children then you're going to be spending more time with them but that there's a process in play where children and adults, where we get immersed and actually we can be interrupting our children at that stage at a time when they don't actually want or need that interruption. So it's about being sensitive to meet a child's needs and give them 100% of your attention at that point and then to move away slowly to fade out into the background and find a balance that way so it could be that you know what your child likes the best so you can set something up that you know what your child likes the best, so you can set something up that you know they're going to engage with

and help them, sit by them, be alongside them while they get engaged and then back away slowly. Now, I know you're in favour of something called strewing. What is strewing? It's a great word, isn't it? Well, strewing is essentially setting up small play prompts for your children to find so i i guess a grown-up version of strewing could be um an exhibition or a gallery where things have been set up for you to discover and go oh look at that and get immersed in it so

in a way it's um it's uh basically getting a group of objects together and assembling them where a child might come across them so you might get out um a set of vehicles and some uh objects or you might get the contents of the recycling box and put them in an area where you think the child might be able to explore them and unpack them and arrange them in different ways. And so you're creating and changing the environment so that you're creating stimulus for the child to find. And it's something that's really quite fun to do. It's also a bit of a relief to know that you don't have to create something that's perfect or finished or beautifully put together you just need to leave some resources out and let the child do the rest

now they can be children i remember this it's a long time since i had them small but they can be destructive messy noisy how can parents avoid the extra stress when we know the play spaces are closed you can't just take them across to the park and pop them on a roundabout absolutely so there's a lot of physical need for expression um within the home certainly my own child um has got a greater need for energetic rough and tumble play at the moment. So I'm just, not that I'm a big fan of doing piggybacks for hours after hour, but I'm giving him that extra time at the moment because I know he needs it. And I know if I don't provide it, then he's just going to get more cranky and that's a negative spiral. So there's something called a yes space that's promoted by Janet Lansbury,

who says, let a child know where they can do stuff, where it's OK, where it's allowed. And equally, you can have a no space. So if you don't want your walls scribbled on, then create a space where a child can do that. If they enjoy that on big bits of paper or cardboard, again, you can raid the recycling box for that kind of material. And then if you're in a really small space like a flat without a garden and so you can't do messy play outside, then some parents are using their bath. So they might, instead of just having a bath in the bath, they might put other things like paints in with and the child can get messy. And as long as they're in clothes as well that you're not going to get stressed out about. So

give the child clothes to wear that they can fully engage with those materials with so there's there's ways around it but it's about being mentally and physically prepared yourself so that it doesn't stress you out and it's about giving the child those opportunities to express themselves in ways that will allow them to self-regulate, will allow them to feel expressed. Okay, final tip. How can adults learn to be more playful so they can put up with all that stuff? It's true. And it's a bit of a challenge right now.

They're really stressful circumstances we're all in. So quite often we're feeling very very far from that sense of playfulness ourselves so um i think the first thing is just to to think about um that element of choice so if play is something that's spontaneous and voluntary and something that we enjoy then it it's about being open to choice. So it's also about giving yourself a break, giving yourself permission. So and being a good resource for your child. So like they say on the plane, we need to put on our own oxygen masks first.

So if we're feeling stressed, if we're feeling out of sorts, then it's very hard to feel playful. So what do you need to do to feel calm and balanced yourself? So for me, I find that having a nice long bath with a glass of wine and some lovely music, just making sure that I do these things in my life to get that balance back where I can. And just make sure you do it when there's no child in the bath doing painting. Oh, well, you know, sometimes you have to adapt. Dr Mel McCree, thank you very much indeed for being with us. And we would like to hear from you.

How do you play with your children? What are you doing to keep them occupied at the moment? I was talking to Dr Mel McCree. On the question of domestic violence, someone who doesn't want us to use her name wrote an email. She said, I was a victim of domestic abuse for many years. I went to court to get my violent husband out of the house. The judge ruled that there had been no violence for a few months, therefore there was no danger. I was therefore sent back to my home. The judge's ruling has made my husband angry and more violent. That occurred in the late 1990s, although I left my husband in the early 2000s.

I'm now experiencing devastating nightmares and flashbacks. I'm fortunate to be undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder on the NHS, online of course. The therapy is very painful and I hope will be effective. So yes, the perpetrator should certainly be made to leave the home, not the terrified woman. Dr Laura Ovenden sent a tweet about Bernadine Evaristo. Great interview and I agree the emperor's babe would have more currency today. A verse novel nearly 20 years ago must have been more unusual too. I loved the irreverence of Zulika. Reminded me of Angela Carter. And then on the question of play for children and adults, Neil said, play is instinctive but still needs support. In Nottingham, we had an amazing

organisation called Playworks, supporting play since the 1970s. Sadly, austerity closed it down last year despite the efforts of its amazing play workers and volunteers. Dr Helen J Williams said, talking about playing with your children at home, I am loving strewing. Wendy Russell said, I love the idea of strewing. Adults just put stuff in places for children to come across as play prompts. Doesn't have to be perfect or finished. Strew them around.

Let the children do the rest. Dr Joe Wilding said, Dr Mel McCree talking about the importance of play for kids and adults. If we've kept them fed, we're winning at life. Advocating wine, music and baths for the parents. And Judith said, My daughter Rose has a neurological condition which meant that when she was a toddler and small child,

playing was really hard for her. She didn't have the posture or muscle coordination to sit and play or the language to express herself. She's 15 now and has been catching up during lockdown, playing and blaying Her focus has been on her Sylvanian families and soft joys Particularly her beloved panda family I've overheard the Sylvanians discussing lockdown and social distancing

She's expressing herself and working it all out through her play And it's moving to be alongside this beautiful expression and catching up. And then Jean said, we play this with our grandchildren. Children decide where they want to go, anywhere, and how to get there. For example, taxi to the train, train to the airport. We act out getting on two and travelling in each transport mode. And one can be the driver or the pilot, etc. And can be extended to act out what we do when we get there.

All it needs is a sofa or staircase, a backpack, small suitcase or bag. The game can include eating on the way, packing or any other holiday activity. My granddaughter used to love getting into a bed and we all had to go to sleep there. Enjoy. Do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to Victoria Atkins MP. She's Minister for Safeguarding with responsibilities that include domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. What will Priti Patel's promises

really mean for vulnerable women and children? And the question of nails. I did finally get my shellac off on Saturday. How do you cope without a manicurist? Join me tomorrow. Use your time. Two minutes past ten. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.