This story concerns a young couple
who
got together to pursue their dream, that of running an entertainments
business. She was a talented performer in a number of fields; he was
her driver, road manager, and general factotum. They became moderately
successful in their chosen field, but as they did so the work began to
fall more heavily on her shoulders while he worked less and less.
Eventually he gave up working at all, instead preferring to
spend his time stalking her wherever she went, even though they
were married. When at home he became a minor expert in the arts of
monitoring the computers and communications of others, recording
telephone calls and setting up hidden forwarding options on email
accounts.
An additional ploy was for him to present himself in such an unpleasant
way, omitting to wash or to dress properly, as to put off anyone who
might otherwise become a friend and thereby present a threat to his
dominance over her. He would use unpleasant tactics, even violence,
against members of her family in order to separate her from them. The
process happened slowly and stealthily, and over the years she came to
believe it was she who had failed, that she should work harder to allow
him to develop himself in a way he wasn't able to do because she was
holding him back. Working days became longer and longer, up to 20 hours
each day, and her health naturally suffered. This did not elicit
sympathy or support from him, only more pressure to work still harder.
At the same time he made no secret of his dislike of the country they
lived in; its people and its climate, so they moved south to a sunnier
part of the world, where he promised her she would live like a queen.
This turned out to be an empty promise; she was still commuting long
distances and working long hours while he honed his skills in deception
and the exploitation of others. Some more years passed, followed by a
move to a third country after he fell out of love with the second one.
Of course this kind of situation has only a limited number of outcomes.
Together they jointly owned property in two countries and she was
supporting the upkeep of these properties and of her husband. They had
a mortgage on the last of these properties and a life insurance policy
to guarantee the mortgage in the event of her death. Two outcomes were
likely; either she would leave him or she would die, whether of a road
accident or a stress-induced illness. The latter was far preferable to
him, though even the former was acceptable as it left him with the
house.
However, a spanner entered the works in the form of a third party; a
friend who, unlike all previous ones, was not put off by her husband's
bestial ways or intimidated by him. She and her friend had a shared
interest that did not include her husband; a new project for them to
work on together. At first her husband saw the friend as an ally in his
continued attempt to overload his wife, but gradually became suspicious
of them both.
And with some reason, for the inevitable happened and they fell in
love. This was the point of no turning back; she now had the
opportunity denied to her for so many years, of escaping her life and
starting a new one. So she left her husband and moved to a flat in a
local town.
Her husband wasted no time in turning the situation as far as he could
to his own advantage. His first actions were to empty all shared bank
accounts and to change the locks on the house they had been living in
together. When she returned to the house to collect personal belongings
he attacked her for over an hour, giving her bruises needing hospital
examination. Their only car was in her name but he had the spare set of
keys, so he spent weeks tracking down the car with the intention of
stealing it. Defeated by a steering lock he poured a can of diesel oil
into the fuel tank, resulting in a garage bill to have the engine
cleaned out.
The real victim in this story, however, is not the wife. Nothing he can
do will more than temporarily erase the joy of being free for the first
time in so many years. The real victim is entirely self-made; the
husband who has lost the meal-ticket he did so little to appreciate.
Nobody will feel sorry for him, an unwashed, overweight, middle-aged
failure who hangs around street corners like a tramp then goes back to
his lonely existence in the house that will one day be taken from him.
He lives in a past of his own creation and is totally unable to move
on. Clinically he is mentally unsound, but is unlikely to receive help
because he is unable to see himself in his true light, preferring
instead to believe in himself as a kind of Master of the Universe,
hacking into computers and tapping phone lines. Fortunately for her,
his
self-belief far outstrips his real abilities and the amount of
information he gains about her is minimal and often completely wrong,
since she is smart enough to lay a false trail.