it.”
Among the people whom Lucie particularly sought out was her father. After the separation from Jane in 1995, Tim Blackman had met and moved in with Josephine Burr, a divorced mother of four teenagers from Tim’s birthplace, Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. He never lived with his family again, but he stayed in close touch with two of his children. During a period of particular acrimony with her mother, Sophie had gone to live with him in Ryde for a while, and Tim regularly drove over to Kent to take Rupert to rugby practice or for pub lunches. But of Lucie, he saw far less. The question of why and how this happened was part of the unceasing joust over the truth between Jane and Tim.
* * *
Jane was adamant that the decision was Lucie’s. “Lucie was very disappointed in her father,” she said. “But I never, ever, ever would have stopped him seeing the children—ever—because they’re his children. Lucie chose not to see him, but I never, ever stopped her. You can’t stop a grown child—if they’re little, maybe you can. Lucie didn’t see him for quite a few years, because she didn’t want to see him, because she was angry with him. And I suppose because we were very close, she was very protective of me.”
There is no doubt that Lucie reproached her father for her mother’s pain—she said as much to several of her friends. But Tim also detected something subtler going on. “There was no benefit to the children in trying to explain away or justify my actions,” he said. “That would never fall on receptive ears, except to say that I was very unhappy before it happened. I took the view that time would make a difference, and things would change, and that eventually they would come and see me. And with Lucie that was happening. She’d been down around Christmas a couple of times, and waterskiing in the summer. I’d see her a little bit in Sevenoaks; there wasn’t a complete severing of ties. But it wasn’t easy. For two, three years it was very difficult.
“This is where it gets very complicated. I know Jane very well, and I know how manipulative she can be. And she was a hundred percent vitriolic against me. There was simply no way she could have avoided manipulating the situation. Lucie would make an arrangement to come down to the island, to come and see me at the weekend. Then we’d get to Thursday that week—and, suddenly, it was too difficult to come. It’s my belief that, most of the time, it was because there was a situation at home that she couldn’t easily battle out. I was the easy sacrifice in her complicated status as eldest child supporting the devastated mother. She was stuck in a corner. And I could understand that, but it didn’t make it hurt any the less.”
Whatever pressures Lucie felt from her parents, the imminence of her departure eased them. Jane made a point of telling Lucie that she should see her father, and in mid-April, after she went in to British Airways for the last time to hand back her uniform, they met for dinner in a pub outside Sevenoaks. She sent him a text message a few nights earlier that Tim kept on his phone long after Lucie had disappeared. Much later, when mementoes of Lucie had come to be very precious, he preserved it by copying it out exactly.
14.04.00 00:38 xxxxxxxxxxxxx good morning! my beautiful daddy. I love you so very much & can not wait to see your smiley face on tuesday. lots of love & snuggles … lula xx
Jane had always been a worrier, but her anxiety about Lucie’s trip to Japan, and her campaign to foil it, verged on the absurd; it had about it something of a child’s irrational fear for the well-being of a parent. The point of going to Japan for Lucie was to work off her debts, so Jane began collecting clippings from the newspaper about the grim state of the Japanese economy and casually leaving them on Lucie’s bed. When these were ignored, she made an appointment on Lucie’s behalf with a spirit medium, in the hope
Among the people whom Lucie particularly sought out was her father. After the separation from Jane in 1995, Tim Blackman had met and moved in with Josephine Burr, a divorced mother of four teenagers from Tim’s birthplace, Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. He never lived with his family again, but he stayed in close touch with two of his children. During a period of particular acrimony with her mother, Sophie had gone to live with him in Ryde for a while, and Tim regularly drove over to Kent to take Rupert to rugby practice or for pub lunches. But of Lucie, he saw far less. The question of why and how this happened was part of the unceasing joust over the truth between Jane and Tim.
* * *
Jane was adamant that the decision was Lucie’s. “Lucie was very disappointed in her father,” she said. “But I never, ever, ever would have stopped him seeing the children—ever—because they’re his children. Lucie chose not to see him, but I never, ever stopped her. You can’t stop a grown child—if they’re little, maybe you can. Lucie didn’t see him for quite a few years, because she didn’t want to see him, because she was angry with him. And I suppose because we were very close, she was very protective of me.”
There is no doubt that Lucie reproached her father for her mother’s pain—she said as much to several of her friends. But Tim also detected something subtler going on. “There was no benefit to the children in trying to explain away or justify my actions,” he said. “That would never fall on receptive ears, except to say that I was very unhappy before it happened. I took the view that time would make a difference, and things would change, and that eventually they would come and see me. And with Lucie that was happening. She’d been down around Christmas a couple of times, and waterskiing in the summer. I’d see her a little bit in Sevenoaks; there wasn’t a complete severing of ties. But it wasn’t easy. For two, three years it was very difficult.
“This is where it gets very complicated. I know Jane very well, and I know how manipulative she can be. And she was a hundred percent vitriolic against me. There was simply no way she could have avoided manipulating the situation. Lucie would make an arrangement to come down to the island, to come and see me at the weekend. Then we’d get to Thursday that week—and, suddenly, it was too difficult to come. It’s my belief that, most of the time, it was because there was a situation at home that she couldn’t easily battle out. I was the easy sacrifice in her complicated status as eldest child supporting the devastated mother. She was stuck in a corner. And I could understand that, but it didn’t make it hurt any the less.”
Whatever pressures Lucie felt from her parents, the imminence of her departure eased them. Jane made a point of telling Lucie that she should see her father, and in mid-April, after she went in to British Airways for the last time to hand back her uniform, they met for dinner in a pub outside Sevenoaks. She sent him a text message a few nights earlier that Tim kept on his phone long after Lucie had disappeared. Much later, when mementoes of Lucie had come to be very precious, he preserved it by copying it out exactly.
14.04.00 00:38 xxxxxxxxxxxxx good morning! my beautiful daddy. I love you so very much & can not wait to see your smiley face on tuesday. lots of love & snuggles … lula xx
Jane had always been a worrier, but her anxiety about Lucie’s trip to Japan, and her campaign to foil it, verged on the absurd; it had about it something of a child’s irrational fear for the well-being of a parent. The point of going to Japan for Lucie was to work off her debts, so Jane began collecting clippings from the newspaper about the grim state of the Japanese economy and casually leaving them on Lucie’s bed. When these were ignored, she made an appointment on Lucie’s behalf with a spirit medium, in the hope
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