‘None. None at all. When I was in the maternity ward waiting for him to come and get us and he never showed, I was frantic. My calls were going straight to his voicemail. I got the registrar to ring around all the hospitals thinking he’d had an accident. I even called his mum’s place.’
Even when the universe had presented her with the opportunity to get away from him and start a new life with her baby, Joy had been worried for Sean, thinking he’d been hurt or killed. She hadn’t just been ringing round looking for confirmation that he definitely wasn’t coming back – confirmation that she never got anyway. The sickness that he’d cruelly seeded at her core had still felt loyal to him then, still felt horribly like affection, even when it was mixed in with all the resentment and fear and hate.
She could see herself standing there with her bags, postpartum, staring wide-eyed at her miraculous little Radia Pearl, holding her phone to her ear, torn apart, not knowing what to do. If he had turned up, she’d have gone back to her flat with him and then who knows what their fate would have been? She shuddered at the thought of how her life might have turned out, might have ended, had Sean not been arrested.
Patti was repeating a question next to her. Her voice made its way through the fog of horrible memories to reach her.
‘Did he rip off your signature, like he did that woman’s?’
Joy shook away the visions and cleared her throat before she spoke. ‘I don’t think so, but…’ she swallowed. ‘He had my bank cards.’
‘No? That arsehole!’
‘And my pin numbers. I gave them to him. Who’s the arsehole now?’
‘Still him.’
Joy pushed her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and looked back at the paper. ‘He didn’t clear us out or anything. Didn’t take out any loans.’
‘Didn’t have time to,’ Patti said, knowingly. ‘You had a lucky escape. He was nicked before he could do any real damage.’ In the silence that followed Patti seemed to reconsider her words. ‘Well, you know what I mean.’
Joy smiled thinly and read on.
‘Sean Jackson, 45, of no fixed address – variously known by the assumed names of Sean Tilley, Jon Jackson and Sean Sampson – has a history of swindling women out of their savings and running up huge debts in their names through the practice of coercive control.
‘Jackson was convicted at Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday on three accounts of fraud by false representation and two accounts of controlling and coercive behaviour as defined in Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act, 2015, as well as absconding to avoid arrest. He is sentenced to seventy-two months in jail. His arrest followed a police report filed by Ms Annabelle Chapman, 32, of Clerkenwell, earlier this year.
‘Chapman, who testified via video link, said life with Jackson had become intolerable: “It was like a fairy tale at first, all flowers and champagne. We got engaged on a weekend trip to Paris a few weeks after we met and once the ring was on my finger he suddenly flipped. He wanted me to stop work, expected me to stay home. He took my house keys and my mobile and he had my whole family turned against me. When I stood up to him, he’d turn nasty, calling me ungrateful for all the things he did for me. He’d rant and rave, saying I’d upset him on purpose. It was always somehow my fault. I thought I was going crazy. That’s what he’s like. He convinces you you’re in the wrong, and by then you’ve no one to turn to for help because he’s scared all your loved ones away.”’
Joy could feel Patti’s eyes upon her, brimming with tears and sympathy.
‘That’s what he did to you, wasn’t it?’ she asked.
Joy only nodded. This was the first time a family member was acknowledging how it had all unfolded, how Joy had come to be cut off. She couldn’t face looking at her little sister, so she read on.
‘Senior District Judge Benjamin praised Ms Chapman’s bravery in making the police report that brought Jackson to justice. During the investigation, two other women were revealed to have been subjected to his coercive control and it is believed there will be more who have yet to come forward.
‘Detective Sergeant Alain Cho, from the City of London Police Fraud Enforcement Department, said: “Whilst looking into Ms Chapman’s allegations of coercive behaviour, we discovered that Sean Jackson had been up to his old fraudulent tricks once again. His modus operandi remained the same: targeting young, single women, isolating them from family and friends, and taking control of their finances, homes and in one instance, obtaining multiple sports cars over a period of weeks from a girlfriend’s central London supercar rental business.”’
‘Hah!’ Joy laughed, wry and bitter. ‘Well, that explains why he had a different car every week then. He had the supercar woman and me on the go at the same time, and when I was pregnant too.’
Patti grew animated, running through the most vivid expletives in her vocabulary, aiming them all at Sean. Behind the spite in her voice there was a tremor of emotion. Joy spoke over her, wanting to get to the end of the newspaper report.
‘D.S. Cho added, “Clearly Jackson’s previous sentence wasn’t enough to deter him, but this second conviction will reinforce the message that coercive control of domestic partners is a serious crime in itself and won’t be tolerated.”
‘When under examination in court, Jackson answered “no comment” to all questions. The convict, said to be temporarily residing at his mother’s home in Croydon at the time of his court appearance, began his sentence on Friday. He was also ordered to pay £18,000 in damages as well as court costs and surcharges.’
Joy folded the paper again and handed it back to Patti. That was not a souvenir of her trip to Clove Lore that she wanted to keep.
‘I will have that sandwich actually,’ Joy said, and Patti hurriedly tore away the wrapping.
‘Here you are.’
They ate for a moment in silence, Joy looking out over the harbour to the blue horizon and Patti sneaking sidelong glances at her sister, clearly not believing she could be this OK after the bombshell.
Finally, Joy spoke. ‘It’s over then. He’s actually ended up in prison.’ Her voice hitched and tears threatened but Joy wouldn’t let them fall. She took another voracious bite of sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.
Patti attempted to draw her out. ‘He’s not coming back from this. There’ll be more women too, I bet, more days in court. He could go down for decades if they add up multiple sentences.’
