Running In The Dark

Why Women Don't Like Exercising in the Winter

Zoë Sharp

 

At the end of October, the clocks in the UK went back, from British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time) to Greenwich Mean Time. The mornings are lighter as a result, yes, but by about 4:30 in the afternoon, my thoughts turn to switching on the lamps in the sitting room and lighting a cosy fire.

 

I’ve been on something of a health kick of late, but I try to ensure I get any outdoor exercise during daylight hours. You can wrap up well against the weather, after all.

 

Darkness is another matter.

 

As a child, I always suffered from a bit too much imagination when it came to being happy in the dark. And now, living out in the wilds with nary a sniff of a streetlamp, walking home from a late winter event in the village can still be an unnerving experience. Things scutter about in the verges as I walk past, or take flight out of the branches overhead. I’ve encountered owls, hares, and badgers, as well as sheep and cattle on both sides of the hedgerows.

 

But one thing I have not yet encountered is other humans.

 

The chances are, around here, if I meet someone else in the lanes then I probably recognise and know them. But for millions of women, living in cities, that’s not the case when they’re out, alone, at night. And so, despite the constant message that exercise is as beneficial for our mental health as it is for our physical well-being, taking up regular outdoor exercise at this time of year can be the proverbial double-edged sword.

 

Upping Your Winter Vitamin D

If you work in an office, then getting out, even for a short period at lunchtime, when at least it’s light, can do you the world of good. It also enables you to absorb a bit more of the Vitamin D we’re all lacking here in the UK between October and March. In fact, I use the alteration of the clocks as a reminder to double up on my Vitamin D supplement.

 

The easiest way to up your daily step count and get some fresh air is either to take up regular walking or running. During lockdown, it seemed that everyone I knew was taking up the Couch-to-5k challenge. Personally, I prefer to cycle rather than run, which feels kinder on the joints.

 

I think this is because I’ve never been much of a runner. For one thing, I’m incredibly slow, which is possibly why I learned so much self-defence – you have to stand and fight when running away with any kind of alacrity is not really an option.

 

And, I confess, that having learned how to protect myself does give me the confidence to go out alone in the dark, although I would never dream of doing so with earbuds in.

 

It’s rather a shame that we don’t hear more news items about lone women who have successfully fought off a would-be mugger or rapist, rather than those who tragically did not succeed. It all feeds into the frightened mindset that somehow it cannot be done.

 

Trust me – it can.

 

I didn’t create the character of self-defence instructor turned close-protection expert, Charlie Fox, as some kind of unrealistic superhero. She’s simply strong, determined, tuned in to her surroundings, and very well trained. And she knows how to turn almost any everyday object into a weapon, from a tube of lip balm to a rolled-up magazine.

 

Barrier to Running

I read a fascinating article in The Guardian recently, written by former gold medal-winning cyclist Chris Boardman. In it, he explained that he’d been trying for some time to persuade his wife to take up running. He had not realised why she was so reluctant until she finally told him her real reason for not doing so at this time of year – she simply did not feel safe.

 

Boardman raises the statistic that one in five women is worried about sexual harassment while out exercising, and three in ten have endured it first-hand. If I’m walking along a street at night, I don’t feel comfortable if a man is walking behind me. I will cross to the other side of the road, or stop, put my back to the wall, and pretend to be answering a text while I wait for him to go past. (I would always stop and turn my back to the wall to genuinely answer a text, rather than keep walking without being aware of my surroundings.)

 

Boardman’s article asks why women have to be so hyper-vigilant, when the cause of their anxiety is the male half of the population. He highlights Sports England’s This Girl Can campaign, which encourages women to take up a form of empowering exercise. They have also written some guidelines for men to help them seem less of a threat.

 

Because I’m sure anyone reading this is no genuine threat to a lone woman – you’re all far too nice a crowd for that. But if you’re out exercising and you come upon a woman doing the same, have you thought that you might unwittingly cause her some anxiety, just by your presence?

 

If you’re closing on her, slow down, or cross the road in order to overtake, rather than gaining on her and then passing close. Boardman also quotes the advice not to make comments, even if you think you’re being complimentary. Say nothing unless you get a greeting first. Then simply return it and keep going.

 

No consolation

There has been a whole spate, in recent years, of female victims who were murdered while out running, and whose attackers were brought to justice due to data from fitness trackers. Either their own or those being used by their killer.

 

Somehow, I don’t find that information very comforting, do you?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is accismus, from the Greek akkismos meaning coy or demure. It means a deliberate and feigned lack of interest in something which one secretly desires. It was described as both a vice and a virtue in the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1823.

What comes next? Handling writer's block

Zoë Sharp

I wrote a post about writer’s block about seven years ago, but as it’s a condition that does not improve with time—or age, alas—I thought it was well worth revising and revisiting.

 

Up until a few years ago, I would never have considered that I suffered from writer’s block. I still view my work as a craft not an art, and whilst I always strive to become a better craftsperson/crafter/more crafty, that doesn’t mean I can get away with sitting around waiting for the muse to strike. Putting arse in chair and putting fingers on keyboard generally works for me. This is a job, after all, no longer a hobby. As Lee Child famously once said, lorry drivers don’t get lorry driver’s block—they simply get up in the morning, get in their lorry, and drive.

 

In the past I thought of writer’s block as being a dreadful case of staring at a blank page and not being able to get a word down. But according to the online definitions, it can go much further than that. It also covers being able to write, but being convinced that everything you produce is utter rubbish.

If that’s the case, I’m a chronic sufferer. 

One of the best blogs I ever came across on the subject was penned by Charlie Jane Anders going back ten years ago. In it, she explored the different types of creative shutdown that form WB, and how to overcome them. The blog itself is well worth reading, but here are the highlights:

You can’t come up with an idea

This has never been my problem. I have so many novel ideas they’re falling out of my ears. Unless, of course, we’re talking about blog ideas, or short story ideas, and then yes, I do stare holes in the walls. These days, if I’m stuck I try writing up any kind of scene for which I have half an idea, regardless if it might fit with a current project or not. The CJA blog recommends you do a ton of exercises to get your creative juices flowing, from writing a random scene in which somebody dies, or falls in love, to writing a scathing satire of someone you hate. (Of course, just be careful not to accidentally email this one out to your writing class buddies…)

 

You have plenty of ideas, but none of them seem to go anywhere

This is a tougher one to get around and I admit to it being an issue with me. Until I have the starting point of a story of any kind nailed down I feel I can’t proceed further. CJA suggests working out the purpose of a project—that the novel idea you’re losing a grip on is actually a short story, for instance—which may rescue it. Saving them for a later date is often the only thing you can do, and come back to them later—and by that she means sometimes years later—when any reservations surrounding them have had time to disperse. Instead, look round for something fresh. If your creative mind is working so hard on reasons to reject the current crop, the chances are it will soon produce something that works here and now.

 

 

You can’t make progress even though you have an outline

This always happens when I’m in the middle of a novel. I’ve carefully worked out my outline beforehand, but there will always be sticky bits, and they’re usually where things have got a little vague. I tend to think of working from an outline as like driving along a road at night. Your headlights are on and you can see the road immediately in front of you in stark detail, but beyond that things are hazier. You know ultimately where the road leads, but that doesn’t mean a deer isn’t going to leap into your path, or an oncoming driver will career into your lane and you have to be prepared to react to that. If I’m trying to shove a story forwards and it won’t go, there’s usually a good reason. The best bits—to my mind at least—are the ones that arrived easily and fast.
 
CJA points out there could be a couple of reasons for getting stuck in this way. Either your outline has a major flaw and you won’t admit it, or there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with your outline, but you just can’t see a way of getting from one high-point to the next. In either case, she suggests going off on a bit of a tangent and seeing what happens.
 

 

You have no idea what happens next

This can quite often happen if the night before I didn’t stop writing until my forehead kept nudging the space bar. The next morning I’ll open up the document and discover that not only have I stopped in mid-sentence—occasionally in mid-word—but I have no idea where I was going with it. Sometimes the bulk of the previous paragraph makes very little sense either, but that’s another thing altogether. This is why I try never to end the day’s work at the end of a scene or chapter, so I do know what’s supposed to happen next when I pick up the thread again, and I re-read the previous day’s scribblings as well to get me back up to speed. CJA suggests, if you’re really stuck, to have something unexpected happen. To have Huck and Jim take a wrong turn on the river and get lost, or to drop a grand piano on someone. Or, as Chandler would say, to have a man walk into the room with a gun.
 

You think your story took a wrong turn waaay back, but it’s only finally come to a head now

This is terrible. I mark progress on a book by the cumulative total of words and having to throw away some of those words because you’ve wandered down a literary cul-de-sac just throws the whole project out of whack. To quote some old phrase: there’s no harm in turning back if you’re on the wrong road. That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt, but don’t throw any of that excised chunk away. The chances are it might come in handy for something else further down the line. You just might not be absolutely sure what that is yet. CJA suggests that you miss a section and carry on from the point you feel you should have been at, had you not decided to deviate in the first place, leaving the missing part to be filled in later. As someone who frequently writes out of sequence—many’s the epilogue I’ve written before the rest of the book—this would work for me.

 

You’re bored with the characters

Here CJA and I deviate because she suggests that perhaps this is because you haven’t worked out who your main protagonist is yet, and you’ve been concentrating on someone who’s a minor character. CJA’s advice is that sometimes you have to find the knife before you can twist it, and therefore writing a dozen pages or so of nothing-much-happening will help you get inside the world you’re creating and possibly also discover whose voice grabs you hard enough to make it obvious they should be the main character rather than a bit-part player. 
 
When I was writing only the Charlie Fox series, I was never in any doubt who was the main protagonist. But since then I’ve written more third-person, multiple-viewpoint narratives. The latest Blake & Byron books focus on two main characters, but with various scenes from other viewpoints. These characters are important to that particular story, but who may (or may not) reappear in the next book.
 
The best advice I ever received on this front was to make everybody count. Imagine Hollywood is turning your book into a movie, and a bit-part actor has just been cast in only one short scene, in which he/she is questioned by your hero/she-ro. I want that actor to be delighted with the part, rather than reading glumly through their lines and thinking, ‘ah well, it pays the rent…’
 
The scenes I’ve just been working on are a case in point. My detective, Byron, needs to question a possible witness at a motorway service station. The witness turns out to be a female truck driver from Glasgow, who is a reformed drug addict and spends her downtime reading Dostoevsky. What’s not to like?

 

You keep imagining all the reasons why people are going to hate your work

CJA describes this as your Inner Critic—you can’t make choices because you keep imagining how someone on goodreads or Amazon will tear you apart for it later. The Inner Critic, she says, has its place during revision, but during the first draft stage is better drowned out with some Finnish death metal. I’d agree with this, but at the same time I tend to self-edit as I go along, and therefore I don’t rush a first draft onto the page with the thought that I can correct any problems at the second/third/fourth draft phase. But, this is just me. I know everyone writes in their own way and therefore I do give sneaky house room to my Inner Critic during the first draft. I just try not to let it paralyse me to the point where I can’t get anything down. Reading over and over what I’ve written previously, trying to refine and improve it, always helps.

 

 

The Difficult Third Quarter

Here I’m deviating completely from CJA’s list to add a few of my own. The Difficult Third Quarter—DTQ—is one of my constant bugbears when I write. The first quarter of the novel I’m racing into the story, introducing the players and asking more questions of the reader than I’m answering. The second quarter is for some answers, followed by more questions and a few red herrings. But the DTQ is when you have to start pulling the threads together. Pull them too tight, too soon and the ending falls flat. Don’t pull them tight enough and you’ll be left with too much explanation to do in the final chapter. Unless you write the kind of books where the detective settles everyone down in the drawing room for the big reveal, this is something to avoid.

 

 

So, my question this week is do you suffer from writer’s block and if so what do you do to combat it?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is carking, meaning anxiety, worry, a burden on the mind or spirit. It comes from the Anglo-French karke, from the Old North French carche, charge—a variant of load, burden, imposition.

PLAYING WITH WORDS AGAIN

Zoë Sharp

 

It comes as no surprise to those who know me that I love playing with words. My dictionary is falling apart and decorated with Post-It notes of words that would make great titles, names, or just ones I love the sound or shape of. Looking up anything always takes me longer than I expect because I get very easily side-tracked. I collect weird meanings and derivations of unusual words and phrases.

 

But it’s not just unusual words that fascinate me. I love common words with unusual meanings, or slight difference in spellings that change everything. (A while ago, I was sent an email imploring me to sign a partition.) When I started making a note of some words that caught my eye for this post, I quickly filled pages of notes, and then had to force myself to stop. Here are some of my favourites, in no particular order.

 

Homophones

In UK English, we have both practice and practise—noun and verb. So, you could be practising your backhand during tennis practice.

 

And although in UK English we would ask someone to use their best judgement when making a decision, if the context referred to British legal proceedings, the spelling would be judgment, as in US English.

 

One that often seems to cause confusion is callous, meaning to be insensitive or to have a cruel disregard for others, and can also mean hardened and thickened, but callus particularly means a thickening, or a hard thickened area, of skin or bark. So, someone might have either callous hands, or callused hands—or even callous, callused hands—but the meanings would be very different!

 

While androgynous means having both male and female characteristics, androgenous means having only male offspring.

 

Everyone knows what angry means, but angary is a legal term meaning a belligerent’s right to seize and use neutral or other property, subject to compensation.

 

Pursue means to harass or persecute—or, in Scots law, to prosecute—and Spenser spelt it pursew with the same meaning. But written persue, it is not only another alternative spelling, but also means a track of blood. (Spenser again) from the act of piercing.

 

Consent might be to agree or comply, but concent is a harmony of sounds or voices.

 

The meaning of blanket is familiar, but blanquet is a variety of pear, blanquette is a ragout of chicken or veal made with a white sauce, and bloncket means grey. (That bloke Spenser gets everywhere.)

 

A lake is not only a body of water, but also a small stream or channel, or a reddish pigment made from combining a dye with metallic hydroxide to give the colour carmine. Spell it laik and it becomes a Northern English term meaning to sport or play, or be unemployed, and lakh means the number 100,000 in India and Pakistan, especially when referring to rupees, or an infinitely vast number.

 

While a block is a mass of stone or wood, a bloc is a combination of parties, nations, or other units to achieve a common purpose.

 

One that always used to confuse me as a kid was the difference between demure, meaning chaste or modest, and demur meaning to object or hesitate.

 

And I know for a fact I’ve accidentally mixed up defuse, to take the fuse out of a bomb or, according to Shakespeare (and what did he know?) to disorder, with diffuse, meaning widely spread or wordy, or also to pour out all around; to scatter.

A clue might be anything that points to the solution to a mystery, but it’s derived from clew, being the ball of thread that guided Ariadne through the labyrinth, as well as being the lower corner of a sail, or one of the cords by which a hammock is suspended.

 

To be discreet means to be careful of intentionally unobtrusive, but discrete means distinct or unconnected.

 

Another I keep coming across in my recent reading is reign, meaning to rule, being used in the context of somebody being given a free hand to do as they like. I can see how this might seem logical, but it should relate to horse riding rather than the monarchy, as in to be given free rein. Not to be confused with wet rain falling from the clouds, or the US gender-neutral name Rayne, meaning abundant blessings from above.

 

And this is before we get to the words with one spelling but lots of different meanings...

Homonyms

 

To smirkle means to assume a facial expression somewhere between pleasure and sarcasm, followed by laughter; an emotional response to an idiotic question; a dance move in Revenge of the Nerds; a gag reflex to a noxious odour, and also to pilfer or steal.

 

Swanky can be used as a compliment for something that’s strikingly fashionable or luxurious, but it can also mean to be overly ostentatious, or using one’s wealth, knowledge or achievements to try to impress others. In Scots, swanky means an active or clever young fellow, one who is tall but lank, or to be empty or hungry. Whereas swank is a Scots word meaning slender, pliant, agile, or supple.

Pernicious means both destructive and highly injurious, but also (according to Milton) swift, ready and prompt.

 

A tent could be a portable canvas shelter, an embroidery or tapestry frame, a plug or roll of soft material for dilating a wound, or the Scots word for taking heed or notice of.

 

A rabble could be a disorderly mob, but also a device for stirring molten iron etc in a furnace.

 

To cleave is both to split apart and to join together.

 

A race is the descendants of a common ancestor, a fixed course or track over which anything runs, the white streak down an animal’s face, a rootstock of ginger (Shakespeare) to raze or erase, or to tear away or snatch. (Both Spenser. He just made them up as he felt like it, didn’t he?)

 

One of my pet hates is the word feisty, used to mean tough, independent, or spirited—usually about a heroine. It can also mean lively and aggressive. However, originally feisty mean either a small, excitable, yappy dog, or to be flatulent. Not the kind of characteristic I particularly want to be associated with Charlie Fox…

 

Anyway, there are LOTS of others, so what are your favourites, folks? And what’s the best accidental misuse of a word you’ve ever come across?

 

No Word of the Week this week. I think I’ve used quite enough, don’t you?

Setting The Scene—Launch of THE LAST TIME SHE DIED

Zoë Sharp

The location where a book is set always has a big influence on the plot. And if it doesn’t, then it probably should.

 

After all, they reckon there are only seven basic plot themes— overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. Everything else, we are told, is just a variation on those themes.

 

Nevertheless, even if you took exactly the same story idea and gave it to, say, nine or ten different authors who were noted for writing books set in very different parts of the world, can you imagine how different those stories would turn out to be?

 

The contrast between the same basic plotline, when it’s set in 1920s’ Bombay, Buenos Aires in 1945, modern-day Paris, or one of the deceptively idyllic islands of the Aegean would be enormous. I am no expert on Africa, but I can imagine that setting a tale in Ghana is utterly different to setting one in Botswana, or any of the East African nations.

Sometimes location dictates plot

Sometimes, the location heavily dictates the plot in the first place. I usually say that one of my Charlie Fox novels, FIRST DROP, could only have been set in Daytona Beach, Florida, during Spring Break. But if it had to be set in another city—in another country—over another weekend festival where teenagers were predominantly involved, then I wonder how the final book might have been changed by that.

 

Likewise, when I chose Appleby-in-Westmorland in Cumbria as the location for my second Lakes crime thriller—BONES IN THE RIVER—not simply because I was looking for another Lake District setting, but because of the Gypsy and Traveller gathering that has taken place there practically every year since the Middle Ages. And because it’s well known among the locals that the influx of forty or fifty thousand strangers into a small town is a very good time to settle old scores.

When I set out to write the first in my new mystery thriller series, THE LAST TIME SHE DIED, I had the storyline I wanted but it wasn’t tied to a particular location. I wanted a rural area where everybody knows everybody else’s business—or thinks they do. I wanted a relatively sparse population, but with urban conurbations nearby. I needed woodland and seclusion, but somewhere that was in reasonably easy reach of a seat of power.

 

In some ways, Scotland would have been ideal, but other writers—not least of which is our own Caro Ramsay, of course—have a far better claim on the area north of the border than I do. (Caro’s Anderson and Costello series has Glasgow sewn up.)

 

Derbyshire good fit for story

I decided on Derbyshire because it’s somewhere I’ve come to know well over the past few years, and the more I worked on the story, the better it seemed to fit into the landscape. It was an hour and a half from London by train—the kind of distance a Member of Parliament might be comfortable travelling for weekends in the country, for instance. There were plenty of steep drops to catch out the unwary, careless motorist, too. And plenty of space for certain manor houses to be within reach of the nearest village, but at the same time completely out of sight of their neighbours.

 

In some ways, the more restrictions I have when I’m working out a plot—and the more creative I have to be to work around them—the more fun it is to write. I’ve always liked to play with preconceptions. You think you know where the story is going, but you don’t.

 

In the case of THE LAST TIME SHE DIED, I wanted to start with an idea that might sound vaguely familiar, and then take it off in a more unexpected direction.

 

The book begins with a funeral. Family patriarch Gideon Fitzroy has died and his second wife Virginia, his stepchildren, and brother-in-law have gathered for the occasion. They think they know exactly what will happen next, as far as the division of Fitzroy’s estate is concerned.

 

Then somebody claiming to be a missing heir turns up. Blake—the daughter who vanished ten years previously and has been assumed dead.

 

For certain people, there is no ‘assumed’ about it. They know she’s dead. Because they killed her and hid the body on the night she disappeared…

 

Didn’t they?

 

Who is this imposter?

So, who is this ‘imposter’, and what does she want? It can’t be as simple as the money, because Gideon Fitzroy made no provision in his will for the only child of his first marriage. (His second wife has read the document in question, and there’s absolutely no doubt about it.)

 

Is there?

 

But if the young woman now claiming to be Blake is indeed a fake, then how does she know so much about the vulnerable fifteen-year-old who went missing? Or the quirks of the family home? Not to mention the layout of the village where events take place. That village I mentioned, where there always seem to be secrets that are never quite as well buried as people hope.

 

Having spent the last six years or so living in a small village in the Derbyshire Peak District, I really wanted to set a book here—or somewhere very like it. I compromised by not actually naming the place, and I’ve played fast and loose with the geography for the location of the Fitzroys’ country estate, although not entirely. The lane exists, but the manor house called Claremont does not, which is a shame. I have a very clear picture of it in my head.

 

On a walk through local woodland I found a rutted track leading off the lane into an old plantation, with a stone gatepost at the latch end of the five-bar gate. The track continued on into the trees, leading to the edge of a gravel pit, long since fallen into disuse. It was eerie even in daylight.

But at night, in the dark, it would be perfect.

 

Good way to stir things up

Bringing an outsider into this situation to ask awkward questions, and to stick his nose in where it isn’t wanted, is always a good way to stir things up a bit. Enter Detective Superintendent John Byron of the Met. Right from the start, it’s obvious that his role is not that of a straightforward mourner at the funeral. One of the youngest detectives to achieve such a rank, he’s now on a long leave of absence for reasons initially unspecified.

 

His interest in the life—and death—of Gideon Fitzroy seems anything but casual, so is he there on official business or not? And his interest in the young woman claiming to be Blake is something neither of them can quite define.

 

Anyone who’s read any of my books will know that I favour female characters who are… self-sufficient, shall we say. I’m beginning to hate the term ‘strong’ because it’s become almost meaningless. Strong as oppose to what—weak? And does anyone feel the need to define their male protagonists in such terms?

 

Male characters are ‘tough’ and ‘uncompromising’ if they’re likely to answer a difficult question with a punch or a bullet. (Charlie Fox can be a bit like that, but she’s usually referred to as ‘kick-ass’ or—my pet hate—‘feisty’. Either way, she will always try to talk her way out of a fight when she can manage it, and only stand her ground when there is no other option.)

 

An asset and a flaw

So, if my female characters are strong then it’s because they refuse to rely on anyone else to dig them out of trouble, and occasionally this leads to a stubbornness that’s to their own detriment. In the case of the young woman who is claiming to be Blake, her inability to trust others is both an asset and a flaw.

 

One that might just get her killed.

 

The reason I’ve talked so much about THE LAST TIME SHE DIED is because it comes out on Wednesday, October 20. I hope you will forgive the BSP, but Wednesday is put up or shut up day, when I find out what people think of my take on this particular storyline, set in this particular area of the country, with this particular pairing.

 

I’m keeping my fingers, eyes, and legs crossed that readers like it. Because I’m already writing book two!

 

This week’s Word of the Week is querencia, a Spanish word that describes a place where we feel safe or at home, even if it isn’t where we actually live. It’s from where we draw our strength and inspiration.

 

THE LAST TIME SHE DIED is published by Bookouture in eBook, print, or audio format, on Wednesday, October 20. Or pre-order now.

You can read or listen to an excerpt here.

Why is Violence Against Women Still Not Being Taken Seriously?

Zoë Sharp

 

Last week, a report was published that used the word ‘epidemic’—but not in relation to Covid-19.

 

Instead, the comments came from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS). This government-run agency’s task is to independently assess the effectiveness and efficiency of both the police and fire & rescue services, in the public interest.

 

Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, Zoë Billingham, said there was “a once in a generation opportunity to permanently uproot violence against women and girls, which is now epidemic in this country.”

 

This year’s report is not the first time the police in England and Wales have been found wanting in this area. In 2014, another report by the HMICFRS concluded that: ‘The overall police response to victims of domestic abuse is not good enough. Unacceptable failings in core policing activities, investigating crime, preventing crime, bringing offenders to justice and keeping victims safe are the principal reasons for this.’ 

 

The latest report, commissioned by the Home Secretary, looked at all local forces in England and Wales, and opened by saying ‘Fundamental cross-system change is urgently needed to tackle … violence against women and girls (VAWG).’  VAWG offences are classified as acts of violence or abuse that disproportionately affect women and girls (in this report, girls are seventeen or younger). This includes rape, domestic abuse, stalking, and many other crimes.

 

Although the report allowed that ‘the police had made vast improvements in the response to VAWG over the last decade, including better identification of repeat victims and improved safeguarding measures,’ it followed this by saying that it had also found ‘several areas where the police need to improve, including grave concerns about the numbers of VAWG cases closed without charge, and major gaps in the data recorded on VAWG offences,’ and suggested that the police could not tackle the problem alone. ‘The whole system—including policing, health and education—must take a fundamentally new approach.’

 

It is hard to believe we have entered the third decade of the twenty-first century, and this level of VAWG is not only still going on, but seems to be getting worse.

 

And, if not getting worse, then certainly it seems to be taken less seriously.

 

Police forces across England and Wales were listing priorities such as counter-terrorism, organised crime, so-called county lines gangs (which operate across different force areas), and some forms of child abuse. Ms Billingham said: “Violence against girls is not highlighted specifically as a priority within strategic policing requirement, the only real signal the government has to state what its priorities are.”

 

The report underlined data showing that ‘huge’ discrepancies were found in how different forces used the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS), which was designed to supply confidential information about a person’s past criminal activity to someone who is believed to be at risk of future abuse by that person. It is intended to reduce intimate partner violence.

Clare Wood

 

Clare’s Law

 

The DVDS is also known Clare’s Law. It is named for Clare Wood, who was murdered in her home in Salford in 2009 by a former partner with a severe record of serious abuse against women. He had been imprisoned three times—six months for breaching a restraining order; two years for harassment; and six years for holding a woman at knifepoint for twelve hours.

 

Unaware of this frightening history, Clare met George Appleton on a dating website in April 2007. They began a relationship, which was ended by Clare several months later. At that point, Appleton turned nasty and began a campaign of intimidation towards Clare.

 

Although she was interviewed several times—and Greater Manchester Police were aware of Appleton’s criminal background—in February 2009 Clare was raped and strangled by Appleton, who then set fire to her body. Days later, he was found hanged in a derelict building. Clare’s father, together with various politicians and journalists, mounted a campaign to give sufferers the right to know if their partners had previous history of domestic violence.

 

Clare’s Law was first implemented in England and Wales in 2014, although it is not, in fact, a law, but takes the form of guidance issued to police forces. It has since been extended to other police services in some areas of Australia and Canada.

 

Perhaps because divulging information about a person by the police raises issues over privacy, less than thirty-nine percent of DVDS applications by partners of potential suspects, or other concerned members of the public, end in disclosure.

 

And only fifty-two percent of proactive DVDS applications by police forces resulted in that information being passed on to a potential victim.

 

Three out of four domestic abuse cases reported to the police are closed early without any charges being brought. The HMCIFRS found that police forces were closing such cases either because of lack of support from the victim, or lack of evidence despite the victim wanting to proceed.

 

Ms Billingham said: “It is the police’s job to build the case for the victim. In many cases, it isn’t clear that forces are taking all the opportunities to undertake an effective initial investigation, or that they desisted from pushing back the decision onto the victim… When was the last time any of us heard of the police asking a burglary victim if they wanted the police to take action? It doesn’t happen but it happens repeatedly in crimes of domestic abuse.”

 

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of all this is that the data informing the report was collected in the year to March 2020—before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, with the resultant rise in domestic violence.

 

When I first came up with the character of Charlie Fox, more than twenty years ago, she started out teaching self-defence classes to women in a northern English city. Over the course of the series, she moved on from that into professional close-protection work. It is sad to realise that the need for those lessons she taught back then—how to avoid being strangled; to escape from a wrist lock; even to deal with an attacker armed with a knife or broken bottle—has not decreased. If anything, that need has grown…

 

This week’s Word of the Week is hüzün, a Turkish word for the gloomy feeling that, bad as things are at the moment, they are probably going to get worse. One can take comfort from the fact that this state of affairs happens so universally, there is a word in another language for it.