Woman's Hour - Sarah Ewart, Janice Galloway, hair and family secrets

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Sarah Ewart has brought a case against the Northern Ireland Department of Health and Justice for breaching her human rights. Six years ago she travelled to England to terminate a pregnancy for a fatal foetal abnormality. She discusses her decision to bring this action. Scottish writer Janice Galloway talks about Jellyfish, her collection of short stories. Januhairy is a month-long campaign urging women to embrace their body-hair - we ask if there's a hierarchy when it comes to women and body hair? And, the third in our series family secrets - Jess wanted to talk to us about the impact of a family secret she discovered when she was just fourteen.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Thursday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Now, it's the 31st, so if you haven't been shaving or plucking for Janu Hairy, it finishes today. Up to you. But when did hair on a woman begin to be considered a problem, except if it was on her head? A new collection of short stories by Janice Galloway, inspired by a quotation,

literature is mostly about sex and not much about having children. Life's the other way around. And the next in our series of secrets, the teenager who discovered something that could tear her family apart. Last summer, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission took a case to the Supreme Court in London, arguing that the law on abortion there breaches women's human rights. The law in Northern Ireland says a termination is only allowed if there's a risk of

permanent and serious damage to a woman's mental or physical health or if the pregnancy puts her life at risk. The case failed because five out of seven of the judges said an individual would need to come forward rather than a group arguing as a collective. Well, Sarah Hewitt has come forward. Six years ago, her foetus had a fatal abnormality. She was refused a termination in Northern Ireland and travelled to England for an abortion. Her case is being heard by a judge in the High Court in Belfast.

I spoke to Emma Vardy, the BBC's Ireland correspondent, and from Belfast, I talked to Sarah Hewitt. Why had she decided six years ago that an abortion was the right thing for her? Well, we were 19 weeks pregnant and we had gone for a scan. At that scan, we had found out that there was something wrong with our little girl she had a condition anencephaly and so her brain hadn't formed properly and her skull hadn't formed and if we were to go through with delivery the top of her head would have been open she would have had no chance of living independently on her own so after back and forward with the hospital asking

questions and speaking to another family member who had gone through the same pregnancy which ended up in what we were told the same result I decided that I no longer wanted to go through with my pregnancy so we went back to the hospital and we were then told that we couldn't get any help here that I would just have to continue with the pregnancy, which is not what I wanted. So therefore I had to then find out and make my way over to London for a termination. What did the doctors say to you when you asked them for a termination?

The doctors here, I mean, they wanted to help me, but they couldn't. They said that previously they would have been able to help women in my circumstances, but because of the way the law stands currently, they were unable to help me to the point where they couldn't even give me a name of who I could contact or point me in a direction of who I could speak to because that was threatening over their heads of imprisonment. Now, at 20 weeks, so soon after this had happened,

you contacted BBC Northern Ireland and spoke to them about what had happened. Why did you choose to do that? Well, before we contacted the BBC, we had written to over 180 of the MLAs, in which only two had come back at that time. We knew we weren't going to get the help. Politicians in Northern Ireland.

Politicians, yes. Sorry. Politicians in Northern Ireland had come back, only two of them, to say really that we weren't going to get the help here. So that's when we decided then to go public, to make others aware that what was going on i've listened to the interview that you gave that day and you were so deeply upset by it what do you remember of that conversation i mean we were devastated i mean this was a very much wanted baby and like i've said already we had questioned if if she could have had a procedure or any sort of medication that would have kept her alive with us today we would have had her here there's people out there who say that um i got rid of my little girl because of a disability

it has absolutely nothing to do with disability. My mum was born with a short finger and it affects one side of the body. I mean, I shouldn't have to tell these things publicly, but it just was not about a disability. This was about our little girl who couldn't live independently and I didn't feel that I could continue on with the pregnancy. I admire any woman that can go through with the pregnancy. I totally admire you, but the option needs to be there

for those who don't want to continue. I'm not saying that everybody who finds themselves in the circumstances that I find myself in has to choose the route that I chose, but the option needs to be there. What was it like to travel to England to have the termination? It was a very scary time. We didn't have any of my medical notes with me.

I didn't know where I was going or who was going to be carrying out the procedure. I was leaving all the familiar faces behind of the medical team who wanted to help me but couldn't help me. My family and friends. It was just a very scary time to be told you're losing the baby and then have the stress of working out flights and costs for hotels and paying for a procedure that really I should have been getting in my own hospital and nobody should have known who I was I mean the procedure alone cost us £1,350 and when we to London, we were told that we were extremely lucky

that we were coming from Northern Ireland because we were getting this procedure at a discounted rate. We should have been paying £1,750, which is just ridiculous. Being there, wanting to lose a baby, and being in a clinic where you're losing the baby that you very much wanted are two very different scenarios, and I should not have been put in that situation. Why, Sarah, did you decide that you would be the individual

at the centre of this hearing? It's just how it happened. I didn't set out to do this. We, for three years before we decided to go to the courts, we went round speaking with the politicians here behind closed doors to try and get help to change the law but when three years had passed we knew we just

couldn't do it here and then the Assembly fell we knew we had to go to the courts so that's when we joined alongside Amnesty to try and get the law changed here Well Sarah thank you for the moment Emma if I can speak to you, Emma Vardy. How vocal, Emma, is opposition to abortion in Northern Ireland at the moment?

Well, Northern Ireland remains a more socially conservative place than other parts of the UK, so there are still strongly held views against abortion here. Politically, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party are against changing the law. There's a number of anti-abortion activist groups, but things are changing. Public polls indicate that those views are unlikely to be in the majority anymore. Last year, we saw Sinn Féin, the largest Irish nationalist party, change its position on abortion. But of course, the Northern Ireland Assembly here

hasn't sat for more than two years since it collapsed. So there hasn't been any opportunity to actually have that debate in Stormont. There was a big push for reform after the Republic decided to reform their law. And it was, if I remember rightly, supported by Labour, Conservative and Liberals in the Parliament in London. Why has it stalled? Is it purely because the Secretary of State says it's a devolved matter and it's for Stormont to decide but Stormont isn't sitting? In part but there's a whole load of factors playing into this. You're right the referendum in the Irish Republic created

real momentum. It sparked a series of rallies in Northern Ireland last year. Then there was a very strong message from Supreme Court judges that they believe the law as it stands in Northern Ireland potentially breaches women's human rights. There was that cross-party debate in the House of Commons, a campaign led by the MP Stella Creasy to try to find a way for Westminster to change the law. Now, Stella Creasy had been planning to put down an amendment to the new domestic abuse bill in Westminster that may have had the effect of decriminalising abortion in Northern Ireland. But then the government restricted the scope of that bill. Some MPs, like Stella, believe to perhaps prevent a row with the

DUP. Now, as well as Sarah's case, there is another case running at the moment about an Northern Ireland mother who bought abortion tablets for her daughter. What's the status of that case currently? Well, you're right, it has been a very high profile case here, a very emotive case. Well, the mother, she challenged the decision to prosecute her through a judicial review. And we are waiting on the court's judgment to be handed down on that. Now, if the decision to prosecute her is overturned, it would be very significant for efforts to change the law in Northern Ireland. However, if it is not, then that mother will have to stand trial according to the current laws in Northern Ireland. However, if it is not, then that mother will have to stand trial

according to the current laws in Northern Ireland. And that, again, will reignite the debate, I think, here. Now, Sarah, if I can come back to you. I know you were in court yesterday. Today, the Departments of Health and Justice are being heard in the court. How are you coping with everything coming up again? It's extremely difficult, if I'm totally honest. I mean, every time we go through the courts,

I'm having to listen to my story and people debate whether I should or shouldn't be allowed to have it here. I'm in fear that this could happen again. I mean, I've been very fortunate to have two healthy children, but that took months of planning with high doses of tablets and injections before I conceived my two children. And I've written medical evidence from my consultant to say that I have a higher chance of having this again.

There's other women who are contacting us daily well not daily but contacting us who are going through similar situations who want the help here and can't get it you know this is five years this has gone on it needs to just we just need the help now we just need to be able to go on and have the medical care that we should be able to get in our own hospitals how How afraid Sarah when you were pregnant that first time you were very recently married how afraid were you that the foetus might die inside you? I was extremely terrified at this and I had asked the hospital at the time when I would know or how I would tell if my baby had passed

and they said that I would just have to be scanned every two weeks. So I was extremely worried that I could have ended up with some sort of internal sepsis or something because I wouldn't have any idea that the baby would have passed for two weeks before my next scan and then it would have been left for induction, which I was told would have been days before i would have had delivery sarah hewitt thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning and we will wait and see what what results from the court and emma vardy thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning too and so january comes to a close and if you've been dry you can have a drink tomorrow and if you've been taking part in January you can go back to the razor and the tweezer should you so choose. The idea of letting your body hair go the way that nature intended turned out to be

somewhat controversial which is surprising since shaving your, pubic hair and armpits began to be a topic of heated discussion in the women's movement in the late 60s. Why does it continue to create a fuss and what's the history of what a new book calls the last taboo, women and body hair? Well, Karen Lesnick-Oberstein is a professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, and she's the editor of the book. Chitra Ramaswamy is a freelance journalist based in Edinburgh. What did she make of Janu Hairy? Well, I have a kind of mixed response to Janu Hairy. On the one hand, I think, well, hey, great.

Anything that encourages us to do what we would like to do with our body hair is great. Or that, you know, at an awareness raising level, it's fantastic. However, I have got a lot of skepticism about any of these kind of initiatives, whether it's, you know, dry January or January. And, you know, number one, reducing it to a single month kind of makes the issue seems much smaller than it is. And, you know, to be specific about body hair, January is not exactly the most kind of radical month to be to be getting our hairy legs out. You know, I'd like to see much onus on the individual to kind of police her own body or to make changes as though we exist in a vacuum. And it kind of ignores the wider sort of structural implications of this as a feminist issue.

Karen, why were you keen to make women's body hair the subject of an academic study? The idea that body hair is either seen to be very trivial, some sort of cosmetic procedure that women do to make themselves feel pretty or to be seen as pretty by others, or the idea that actually not removing body hair is some kind of radical extremist feminist act. There's always the quite homophobic claims actually often about hairy lesbians or about political activists who are women and feminists often described as being hairy, unkempt. That alerted me very early on to the idea that there was much, much more at stake in ideas about body hair and the body. The interesting thing is that it took 20 years for me to get it published. I corresponded with almost 40 academic publishers.

And that seemed to make it clear to me that there was also a whole issue about actually what constitutes an appropriate study for academia. What kind of things are taken seriously enough to be seen as warranting academic study? And of course, this has been a long issue for all study around feminism and women. The idea, for instance, that women's history for a long time did not exist or was even ridiculed as being marginal or irrelevant. Anything can be configured as seriously academic or too trivial to write about.

Jitra, it's a long time since the question of body hair rose to the top of the feminist agenda in the 20th century. Why do you think it continues to be such a hotly debated topic? It's interesting, isn't it, that it's almost become kind of swept up in the whole kind of body positivity movement and this idea that we should all now be pursuing the kind of natural look, which ironically, you know, you often have to throw vast amounts of cash out to achieve. And then you have the kind of ancient and inarticulated workings of internalized misogyny, which mean that, you know, when you're sitting on your own in your room, looking at your extremely hairy legs, it's very hard to then go, do you know what,

I'm going to put on a mini skirt and I'm going to go out and I'm just going to throw caution to the wind. It does actually require bravery to do that, which I mean is ridiculous. But at the same time, if you're looking for evidence of the actual misogyny out in the world, as opposed to the internalized stuff, you can see it all over the place. For example, there was a Swedish model in an Adidas campaign a couple of years ago who had hairy legs in a modelling shoot and received death threats and rape threats, I think, as a result. Karen, what do we know about how far back these debates about whether a woman should shave her legs, armpits or pubic hair go? The claims which come largely from people who sort of want to support the idea that this is a natural thing to do in some sense,

that it's something which is a very long-standing history and shouldn't really need to be questioned, often have this narrative that there is evidence that this goes back to Egyptian and Greek and Roman times, the idea that there is evidence from graves, for instance, that they found shaving implements in the graves also of women and so on. The idea that actually this is a very longstanding practice and is almost kind of natural, even if cultural,

but also kind of natural thing for women to do. And that the long history proves that. On the other hand, there's the entirely different narrative that this is very much a kind of commercially promoted enterprise that is linked, certainly in Western culture, for instance, to the idea of the changing of fashions, that if women are wearing short skirts, they reveal their legs. So the legs then, in a sense, become exposed compared to when they were covered by long skirts. And that this initiated in the late 19th, early 20th century, the idea of shaving, and this was then picked up by shaving manufacturers and heavily promoted. And by

mentioning that this is part of an Anglo-American narrative, I'm also pointing to the fact how this idea of a kind of neutral history, which is completely objective, never really works once you start thinking about ethnicity and nationality and culture and issues of gender. Chitra, how would you say the arguments about body hair play differently with different cultures? I know yours is Indian. I definitely feel when I think back to, you know, the teenage brown hairy girl that I was, and think about how obsessed with hairlessness I was, like so many teenagers of all ethnicities. However, there's something quite specific and different going on when you're a woman of color, that there are two kind of yearnings happening at the same time.

You know, you want to be desirable, you want to be hairless, and in wanting to be hairless, you are yearning for that very specific white westernized ideal. So when I look back on that and then I think about, you know, the absolute dearth of women who looked like me in advertising campaigns or shaving adverts, and that still exists now, obviously, how the impact of that was that not only did I want to be hairless, but I wanted to be white, because, you know, that that's what desirability meant. And so I think, you know, this is not exactly as Karen says, this is not an issue of neutrality, not all body hair is the same. And not all body hair is viewed in the same way, just just as the bodies on which the hair grows are not viewed the same. And I do think there's also a structural difference going on here that, you know, if you're a woman of color saying you're going into a workplace, you're already going to be

experiencing different or increased levels of discrimination. So if you choose to go in in the summer with hairy legs or hairy armpits or hairy chin or moustache, you might be discriminated against or you might feel more vulnerable in a way that would be different to a white person. Karen, how have you found hairy women have been regarded in literature? And I think also some scientists, including Darwin, have had something to say about this. There's a very odd way in which Darwin kind of starts saying that sexual selection partially was initiated by somehow early women naturally losing their hair, just spontaneously. And then men spontaneously becoming more attracted to those women who had spontaneously less hair. And therefore, this led to hairlessness in humans overall, a higher level of hairlessness compared to the evolutionary branches that developed in parallel, for instance, in primates. And in literature, I think a woman

with a moustache is generally a bad character. A very famous example is Wilkie Collins's, in Wilkie Collins's Woman in White. One of the heroines, Marianne Halcombe, and we write about this in the book, one of my contributors writes about this, has a moustache and is in fact one of the heroines. But she is seen as ugly. Her figure is seen as beautiful by one of the male protagonists when he first sees her silhouette, when he first meets her, and he admires her beauty until she turns around. And he sees her heavy male features, as they're described, heavy features, and masculine in that sense, and her moustache. And there's a very kind of amusing follow up to this, that quite recently, I think about 15 years ago, there was a musical of the woman in white performed here in the UK.

And there is debate. There was debate between the producers and the director and so on about whether they should stick a moustache on the actress who was playing Marianne Halcombe. But apparently, as my contributor writes, it never, ever occurred to them that maybe the actress had a moustache anyway. That never occurred to them. And in fact, they didn't end up sticking a moustache on her because they said they thought it would be too much of a distraction for the audience. What's been the response to the book, Karen? Women and men are really, really interested in this topic, even though, as Chitra says, whenever it arrives in the media or is talked about, you get the very aggressive internet trolling indeed, very predictable,

all about, you know, how disgusting it is, how horrible it is, how, again, very homophobic, how extreme it is, that it's about extreme feminism, which only proves the very points that we're making, how important it is. I was talking to Professor Karen Lesnik-Oberstein and Chitra Ramaswamy. And let's hear from you on this one. Did you stop shaving during January? Will you start again? Send us a tweet or an email. And let's hear from you on this one. Did you stop shaving during January? Will you start again? Send us a tweet or an email. Now, still to come in today's programme,

another of the family secrets you've revealed to us. What's it like for a teenager to find out something that could blow her family apart? And the serial, another of Jenny Eclair's little lifetimes. And don't forget, you can always search for Women's Hour on BBC Sounds and subscribe, and then you don't miss the next episode. Johnny Scalloway's first novel, The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, was published in 1989, won awards, and is now considered a Scottish contemporary classic.

She's worked on novels, operas, poetry, and there are memoirs. This Is Not About Me and All Made Up. And her most recent publication is a collection of short stories, Jellyfish. In the front of the book, there's a quotation from David Lodge. Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round. Janice, why were you influenced by the David Lodge quotation? Oh, hello, Jenny.

Just because of its truth, it made me smile, but it made me smile in that kind of way that I was acknowledging something. I thought it was worth noticing that the art form which thinks of itself as kind of reporting on human behaviour was fairly wary of reporting on human behaviour, was fairly wary of reporting about one particular area of human behaviour in any depth. Now the first story, Jellyfish, sees a woman, Monica, taking her four-year-old son out for

a birthday treat. Will you read the opening of the story? Sure. A child was dangling over the kerb, the back wheels of his pushchair holding his whole weight, too near the precipice. Water scattered from a passing lorry, sprinkling his jacket front like

glitter. The boy tried to sit up, rocking the buggy and himself within it over the tarmac abyss. Couldn't be more than two, Monica thought. Maybe less. The rims of the back wheels, his sole contact with terra firma, were worn.

A juggernaut rounded the corner, changing gears so the pavement groaned. Monica watched the mother blink and draw back. The boy, however, stayed put. The radiator grill was near his dammit, tipping his nose, heat haze rippling his face into strips. The rabbit in his hand

shook from the tremor. Then the lorry, its tumbling unimaginable tonnage, was past. Monica coughed. The exhaust was at the kid's eye level. All that carbon monoxide, Jesus. Callum tugged her hand. Swearing, he said. He was looking up, his little face poker straight.

That's a swear. Jesus is only for church reasons. Sorry, Monica said. She tried to smile, hoping he hadn't seen any of the buggy business, the child dangling like bait. I just thought I saw somebody anew. Who? he said. Jesus. I thought I saw Jesus and I was just saying hello. So it's not swearing, it's being friendly. Now the story is set just before Callum is due to start school and Monica is realising that he's beginning to grow away from her.

Why were you touched by such a moment? It's probably obvious because I have a son. And I just had the one. It would have been awfully nice to have another one as well, or a daughter. Two children would have been wonderful. It didn't work out that way. And I kind of watched his every move

with the kind of fascination you do if you've never been near children I was 36 when he was born and it was the thing I never expected would happen and I suppose it's just that fascination with something you did not know and wholly underestimated that made me very interested in him indeed

Now here you are admitting to the fact that you are drawing on your own life's experience, and yet I know that you have got irritated in the past when people have asked you if your work is autobiographical. What's going on here? Oh, maybe I'm less tetchy, but I don't think so. I think I'm probably every bit as tetchy as I used to be. I think it's got to do with the fact that when people say it's autobiographical, they mean, did it happen to you? They tend to mean it in a very literal kind of way. Some people don't mean that. You can generally tell the difference because the phrasing will be slightly different. Did something happen to you is neither here nor there. That is not the

same as writing about it. Things happen to everybody. To turn it into writing, you're actually doing something else with it and you're removing it from the personal into a kind of public domain. So it's necessarily a different thing. What you put down is a different thing. How you would phrase things is a different thing and of course if you're a writer of any kind, you will inflect things differently according to how well it fits the story, in the end you're trying

to write something that will appeal to people and have a magnetism about it and it's not just about writing down facts, not at all Now there is another story, Alma in Dr drugs and rock and roll she's in a psychiatric hospital it it's clear that she has had an abortion and that she is suffering as a result of it but there's very clear vivid description of the atmosphere in the hospital

the other patients where did that knowledge come from visiting hospitals dealing with doctors um she said pointedly dealing with doctors and the the the fact of over so many years i think think as you get older, particularly as a woman, how doctors behave has been changing dramatically, and by and large for the better, I have to say. And I suppose it was just a kind of stories I knew from friends, things I'd experienced myself in or near hospitals, or even in doctor's surgeries is bound to feed into talking about the characters who work there and I think what I was doing was was reflecting a certain disenchantment with in particular my birthing experience the chap knew everything and I knew nothing

according to him and that's a that's a galling position to be in when you know you're going to be out the next day with this kid and you're going to have to look after it. Now for someone who observes so closely and writes so beautifully I was surprised to find you said you find writing boring. Why? It just is.

You do it all on your own, Jenny. You can tell by the tone of my voice I'm really enjoying talking to you. That's because I don't talk to a lot of people and I don't talk to them very often. And it's a delight to converse with someone. And I suppose it's just the sheer frustration of the fact that it's just you and a computer or a bit of paper or all three. It's that combination in a room. I'm quite sociable, but for some reason I have chosen a job where I'm in a room by myself a lot of the time and that's why I find it frustrating.

I do work in all sorts of other artistic fields which allows me to mesh with more creative people, I'm glad to say. And when's the next novel coming? Oh, jings. I don't know. This is the perennial question. You wrote a novel once, so there must be more. Yes, there's half a novel sitting waiting because I haven't managed to finish it

because I've got a lot of commissions to do other things which I really wanted to do. I will get back to my wee boy who is a castrato in 18th century Italy and I will finish the story but I don't think is a castrato in 18th century Italy, and I will finish the story, but I don't think it's going to be any time this year. Well, Janice Galloway, we will look forward to it. Thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And Jellyfish is now out. Thank you.

And now for the third in our series of family secrets. What would you do if you discovered something that you thought could break up your whole family? A woman we're calling Jess got in touch to talk about the impact of a family secret she discovered when she was only 14. She's now 27 and met Jo Morris at her home. She began by telling Jo what it was like to try and keep the secret when she was so young.

At first I tried not to let it get to me, but that's impossible. I kept just trying to push it at the back of my head and then there's a point where you just can't do that anymore. And then that's when you start to close yourself off and blaming yourself. And then you

start to think that it's your own fault. That's when I eventually had to tell someone. You know, I was 14 when I first found out and I didn't tell anybody for three years. I'm so sorry, my dog is very loud. It's snoring away. He's had on my lap.

Nice and intimate. So tell me a little bit about your family set up There's five of us in my immediate family I've got two brothers, I'm the youngest And there's four and a half years between us all We're all really, really close They're like my best mates And then there's my mum and dad

We had a great childhood growing up They took us on loads of holidays every year. We would go to America. We'd go on the road. They were very generous to us, you know, really strict as well. They were great like that. Everybody likes a good drink. We like a good party, you know.

We're not shy, put it that way. And what's your relationship like with your mum and dad? What was your relationship like with your mum and dad? What was it like? It's always been amazing, yeah. It's always been really, really good. They're really supportive and understanding. They're great parents. So you kept a family secret, or should I say you discovered a family secret and then kept that secret? Yeah. When I was 14 years old I um just to hang out with my mum a lot we'd go shopping you know do girly things and I just started to notice my mum acting differently and I just got a suspicion of something that she was up to something by her facial

expressions and the way she would look at her phone when she was reading something, I'd never really seen her do that before. And me being suspicious and young, I obviously checked her phone. And I found out that my mum was having an affair. That's where it all began. All of a sudden, it was just like, boom. Everything changed. It was like, oh my God, is this what real life is? Is this the way adults are supposed to be am i now an adult yeah i was just so angry just like why how like you have such a good life

like with my dad and the things that you do and the way we are like why would you want to to have an affair and you were just 14 yeah 14 and then I moved out when I was 15 I went to did further studies but every time I would go home I could still see the expression on her face every time she looked at her phone so I knew that it was still going on and I would still check as well. I would hear her in the toilet on the phone to someone, like, just on the phone talking quiet, like, it was suspicious, you know. I didn't say anything, I just pretended I was fine the whole time. That must have been exhausting.

Very exhausting. Yeah, terrifying. Why do you think you found out and your brothers didn't? My brothers don't care about anything. Boys don't hang out with their mum the way girls hang out with their mums, so they would never notice anything like that. I don't know. No. Plus they were older, they were going out at that time. Why didn't you tell your mum? Why didn't you ask your mum about it as soon as you found out? Because I didn't know what was the right thing to do. Fear, really.

Fear of what? Just fear of losing my family completely. The fear of my family falling apart and not them being the way that we always have been I was trying to you know do my own things and concentrate on myself I don't want to have to be dealing with other people's problems that aren't mine did you tell anyone I told my best friend all her family knew all my family she was like you can't say anything

if something like that come out it would be a disaster I remember one night I set up loads of little candles and I got a pillow I'd never done meditation in my life before but I was like I need to do something to keep me calm

the hell down you know and I'd sit with candles round me on a little pillow in my room and just sit there with my eyes closed, like anything to just try and unwind and switch off. Or I would take... There used to be a picnic table outside and, like, after 12 o'clock, I would take my duvet and go and lie on the picnic table

and just look at all the stars for hours. Just lie there on your own, thinking about everything. Just because I was so alone, so on my own, not knowing what to do. Terrified. You're just, like, you feel like you're in a box and you can't get out. I felt like it was my fault

because when you start keeping it for that long then I started to blame myself that I haven't done anything about it but I couldn't I just didn't have the balls to and what would happen? yeah what would happen, it would just, everything would just fall apart

and knowing what people would think of my mum I wouldn't want anybody to think bad of my mum so you're protecting your whole family yeah by discovering this secret yeah and not letting it out yeah it become a burden yeah definitely So what made you finally reveal the secret in the end, Jess? It just all got too much for me. I had to tell someone. It was all I could think about, and I couldn't pretend any longer to my mum.

And I just wanted... My dad didn't deserve it anymore I had to had to get out like I said I was worried about telling my brothers because obviously I'm a girl as well like two guys against one I was always the youngest sister so it's like oh shut up like oh whatever you know you don't get taken seriously really when you're your youngest sister and you've got two big brothers. So I was really nervous to tell them and I had no idea what their reaction would be and I know that they definitely wouldn't expect it. So I was petrified.

They were 21 and 27 and I was 17 when I told them. And actually I told them over the phone, believe it or not because I was living in London at the time and I was just getting so down I was like, I just said it I was just like, mum's having an affair and we need to do something about it and they were like

shut up, what are you talking about and I'm like, no, I'm being serious I was like, you need to listen to me back and forth on the phone asking me lots of questions this and that we were too scared to tell our dad because we knew he would lose the plot

I've never seen my dad cry before how the hell am I supposed to tell my dad that his childhood sweetheart is having an affair on him so we decided to sit her down to, like, sit her down. Well, they decided to sit her down because I was in London and we confronted her. And we said, we know you're having an affair.

You weren't there? I wasn't there because I was in London. I didn't really want to have to deal with it anymore, to be honest with you. I was like, right, I've dealt with this enough. I'm handing over, you know. She was, oh my goodness, a mess. She begged us not to tell her dad

and then she said she'll stop. It gets worse though. And then a year later I found out she was still having an affair. Then we decided to tell my dad. But the first thing he said was, you're lying. She would never do that.

That's really hard, isn't it? Yeah. But, yeah, he had to believe us because we had proof. My dad, God bless him, he would not leave her. He was like, she's the love of my life and I will do what it takes to get her back. But that took a long, long time for him to get there and get over things. How did you feel when you let the secret out?

How did that feel? Oh, my gosh, I can't even explain the weight that came off my shoulders. It was like, it was just like a big, oh, my God, a massive, oh. And then that's when you realise, you're like, holy moly, like, what have I actually been holding in? So where did the unravelling of this secret take you and your family? It's made me and my dad have the most amazing relationship ever. We were, like, best friends.

He needed me and I was there for him. It's been a journey for all of us because we've all been through that much and especially me when I've been younger. You know when you're trying to be something in your life you can never actually do it because there's always

so much pulling you down and all all that I never got to do anything I wanted to do because I let it get to me so much how has it affected your relationship with your mum now we have an amazing relationship but I didn't think that I could ever forgive my mum but it's your mum, you've got to forgive, you have to. Now I'm a bit older, I don't let it get to me too much. Yeah, I've learned from it, I've moved on from it. We're all in a good place and we're all tight and that's all that matters. And they're really, really good, I've never seen them happier. There's so many times they're like,

we're splitting up, we're getting back together, we're splitting up, we're getting back together. Over years and now it's not like that anymore. They've just accepted what's happened and forgiven, forgotten and moved on and they're just living the present now, really. If you were given the option not to have discovered this secret, what would you choose?

I would have chosen to discover it for sure. I think it's made me learn so much. It's made a part of who I am today as well. Understanding people, life and emotions emotions I guess if you can deal with that you can deal with anything I do have trust problems with people, I'm not going to lie but people make

mistakes and people do bad things but it's alright you forgive makes me feel better to talk about it because I think it's so important for other people to hear this. For young people, if anyone ever has to go through something like this and hold something in like that. You never feel ashamed to say it out loud or worry what people think of you.

And just try and understand your emotions. Not a secret anymore. Jess was talking to Joe Morris and you can hear all the family secrets in this series so far on BBC Sounds. Next

week someone we're calling Liz explains why finding out her father's secret after his death made her angry with her mother. Now, thank you for all your comments on today's programme. We got a lot of response on the politics of women and body hair and why it still seems to be so controversial. Louise, on an email, said, nobody seems to be mentioning that it's children who are hairless, which is something I've always found very disturbing.

Are women doing this to appear prepubescent to men? Dawn wrote to say, I hadn't heard about January, but guess what? I haven't shaved anyway, so I'm right on trend. Much to my 13-year-old daughter's embarrassment. Esther emailed to say, I'm currently in the bath shaving my very hairy legs. I've been struck down with a horrid viral infection since Saturday

and being able to shave and restore my smooth legs makes me feel clean, restored and at one. Not for anybody else, just for me. I love listening to Woman's Hour as I'm recovering. And Jill wrote, I haven't shaved my legs for years, but do have fair hair, which helps. I'm pleased to be living in an age where I feel I don't have to conform, a tribute to the women's movement or possibly a knock-on effect.

Also, being an outdoor sporty girl, I'm less concerned with my appearance than some others. Maybe this isn't good. Now, tomorrow you can hear the lead singer of the rock bank Skunk Anansi Skin who'll join us in the studio.

She'll perform one of their classic tracks from the band's new live album and we'll talk about what's changed during her 25-year career in the music industry. Join me tomorrow, two minutes past 10, if you can. If not, there will, of course, be a podcast. 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.