Tis the season to be jolly, Fallon, Alan, Helen, Lillian; Deck the Hall with boughs of Holly, Lily, Will and Jill, Tilly Button. Celebrate Christmas with The Archers!

[PseudoBadger]

Thanks to SmallLegsOrSmallEggs for this thread title way back in November!

Yes she bumped into him and he told her he knew everything and made it clear he wasn't happy with her.

I suppose Helen is just clutching at straws as she has no one else to talk to.

Yes. Ian wasn't returning calls or texts but Helen finally caught up with him in person. Ian told her that he wasn't impressed with the fact that she knew about Adam & Charlie and hadn't told him (Ian). It's not what friends do.

I'm glad that PatBot has come out of her trance. But they all seemed to accept the job-share and a new assistant idea a bit too easily. However, as we know, Bridge Farm finances can stretch to anything.

I wasn't weighed and I lost over a stone in my first trimester. I didn't regain it til 28 weeks or so. No eating disorder just morning sickness. It wouldn't necessarily ring alarm bells in itself but possibly with her history. If the dress doesn't fit then she has obviously put on some weight. Unless he's really gaslighting her and changing the sizes. Possible? Mind you how Pat or Helen restrained themselves from beating Knob round the head with some organic broccoli is anyone's guess. How can he get away with this crap?!

I lost weight throughout my pregnancies due to sickness, and it didn't seem to bother the medics that much. However it's true to say that I had the weight to lose, which Helen probably doesn't.

"We must do what Daddy says, mustn't we Henry." Nice touch. At least Tom has come back from the salad patch.

Meanwhile, those investigating Sticker & Rock, they're both close to my heart & I quite like the pun.

I don't understand anything about emotional abuse so it baffles me too why Rob would want to push Helen back into an eating disorder when his son might suffer as a result. Perhaps he is banking on it being picked up by the midwives and then it can be another stick to beat Helen with, another way of reminding her that she can't manage by herself and needs him to control every aspect of her life or she will fall to pieces.

The other thing that comes to mind is that it is apparently a well-known phenomenon that a lot of domestic violence/EA steps up a gear when the woman is pregnant. This is very, very difficult for me to understand as surely any decent person would be particularly solicitous of his partner's welfare when she is so vulnerable and when his own child's welfare depends on hers. However, I suppose the vulnerability triggers some very deep-seated insecurity/urge to be cruel to somebody who can't fight back.

Rob depriving Helen of seeing Henry open his presents was just awful. I suppose we all noticed Helen saying to Henry 'We have to do what Daddy says, don't we?'

Cross post!

DH and I catch up on TA at breakfast, being In Au and all.

Utterly aghast at Rob's depriving Helen of seeing her son's presents opening. And at her acceptance of this.

Also think he's doping her Snorlicks.

Yes I think you are spot on Gasp. He probably intends to push it just enough so that Helen looks unstable but not enough to do actual physical harm to her or baby. She will then be made to feel guilty for risking the babies health.

Did she tell Pat she missed the present opening? I couldn't hear it all this evening.

I am hoping Pat and Kirsty will talk at some point and between them everything will suddenly become obvious.

He was getting quite snappy with Henry wasn't he? Surely Pat will pick up on that if nothing else. Also Henry is verbal enough to say "Daddy says......" to his grandparents, so he may let something slip.

I remember being weighed. Also urine tests and blood tests. The latter resulted in me being put on iron tablets. The questions were clearly routine and included some about home circs and abuse. The midwife was well trained to pick up on anything untoward.
In other words, I can't see how Helen can stay under the radar any longer.

He's encouraging her eating disorder because I think he ensures she gets just enough nourishment to keep the baby healthy (he is an expert in cattle rearing after all). He can easily blame any down-turn in her health on her own wilfulness and history then insist on intervention - I don't know the legalities of this. That's why he does things like making her tell the family about the job share plan so it looks like her idea. He's made them believe he's not looking for a job for Helen's sake. He expects to end up squeaky clean and in sole control.

I don't remember being weighed. Rare if ever.
With Helen's ED history, I'd be surprised if she didn't have some kind of red flag on her notes, though, for mental illness issues, too.

1st HV was superhot on DV, though, recurring topic (and honestly both DH & I had no red flags).

Just felt so sorry for Helen tonight. She was forbidden from attending the usual family celebrations in favour of Christmas at home with Knob ("Time to make our own traditions" - I think he's been reading some Mumsnet Christmas threads). Now we learn she wasn't even allowed to watch her son open his presents. Pat made some comment about being sad not to see Henry open his presents - half thought Helen would say "You and me both", but instead she just keeps on smiling and waving and pretending she is happy to give up her job to Knob. I also know nothing about EA. I can't understand how Knob can wield such power when she appears to hold all the cards - they live in her house, surrounded by her friends and family, she has a job for life in the family business. She is not someone who is dependant on her husband for anything (in any case she has nothing to depend on now he has given up his job) - rather she has a family she has been able to depend on her whole life for everything. I totally get that he is a manipulative tosser who is doing his best to isolate her from all her friends, has managed to get legal control of her son and is trying to get her to stop working, but I'm just shouting "For God's sake save yourself" at the radio. Kick him out - he has no job, no home of his own and no lovely family to pick up the pieces. What is stopping her - is it fear of losing face after spending so long trying to make people like him? Or is she just hoping against hope that he's not as bad as he appears to be and he'll come good in the end?

Actually I think I just answered my own question - it is precisely because he is such a manipulative tosser. No wonder her eating disorder has returned - it is the only area of her life where she can have any control I think it may all come down to Kirsty on her pamper day - assuming Knob let's her go.

I was never weighed in either of my pregnancies.

How on earth did Rob get Henry to not run to wake Helen up on Christmas morning?

I don't think it is Helen's house yet.. didn't Rob rent it from Peggy, who promised to leave it to Helen but changed her mind later.

I think he probably told Henry mummy would be very cross if they woke her up.

It's both, I think. And there's other stuff too - for me, it was the fact that it all sounded so ridiculous and petty when I said it to myself. How on earth was it going to sound to anyone else? Wouldn't they think I was exaggerating and being silly?

I survived an physically and emotionally abusive relationship, as did a close friend. One thing the two of us have often talked about is how much more insidious and damaging the EA is. It's easy (and common) to declare that you'd leave a relationship the first time a man hits you - nobody would do anything other than support you. But would you leave a relationship the first time he calls you a stupid fat cow? Or the 10th? Or the 100th? Now I've experienced a truly healthy relationship of equals, of course I wouldn't put up with that nonsense again. But at the time, the idea that I would say to my family and friends that I left my husband because he sneered at my choice of music, or told me that my friends were annoying, or expressed surprise at my dress size because it was the same as his fat mum - that was a ludicrous idea. They'd laugh at me, surely? Or tell me I was overreacting?

From Helen's perspective, you can see that the individual things don't sound so bad: he doesn't want me to work too hard. He doesn't really like a couple of my friends. He wants us to have Christmas on our own at home. What loving husband could do any other? I know the (probable) assault is a different story entirely, but as for the rest - it's complex. In a way I wish that they hadn't added the assault and just kept this as an EA situation, although that's less dramatically workable for a radio drama (cos, apparently, it's not real).

I'm normally a film person - but I'm having to catch up on a daily basis at the moment, it's almost unbearably tense.

[That was me delurking, by the way. Listening solidly and independently for about 15 years, listening by osmosis since I was in the womb. Live outside UK so I listen on podcasts. I'm probably Fallon, maybe Adam.]

I might have been weighed because I was an elderly primigravida (delightful term) and weighed 8.5 stone as I always have. I remember there was a formula for working out what was normal for my build taking into account the weight of the baby.
I would expect Helen to be weighed because of her medical history. I think she was under medical care at some point in her original eating disorder so there must be a red flag. My weight didn't change during pregnancy, other than the baby's weight which was perfectly normal, but Helen's must have decreased if she really isn't eating.

I bet I was elderlier than you, enoch......

Pat made some comment about being sad not to see Henry open his presents - half thought Helen would say "You and me both", but instead she just keeps on smiling and waving and pretending she is happy to give up her job to Knob.

Helen replied, "yeah," in a sort of off-hand way, which could have been interpreted as, " was only half-listening, didn't actually catch that," or, "yes, but we had a nice day anyway," or, "yes, but even I, his own mother, wasn't allowed that privilege, because of my bastard husband, and can't anyone see and save me?" And anyone who wasn't privy to the earlier conversations between H & R would probably take it as a sort of filler/ acknowledgement sort of yeah, rather than assume she was agreeing she would also have liked to have seen him open his presents.

kuriusoranj She hasn't really got a basis for complaint that would sound believable, as you say.

I keep hoping that Helen will find her own way of breaking free but at the moment we are left with straw-clutching that the MW will spot it or that Kirsty will talk to her or he'll be arrested for something. Even Ian who dislikes him intensely has now been bamboozled into turning away from her so her prospects seem pretty hopeless to me.

Rob may never need to assault her again - once you've been hit, there's a line which has been crossed. Before it, you think, "at least it's never been physical, so it's okay, every one has disagreements and bad patches," and after, even if it never actually happens again, you know it could, which is different from thinking it could, when it never has. And if they allude to it once in a while, you know they haven't forgotten, either, and that they sometimes think about it, and you don't want to push hem over the edge again.

Wonder how Helen's blood pressure is with all the stress?

Oh I wasn't complaining, Bertrand. The GP signed me off on 3 months paid sick leave on the strength of my advanced age which was 39 and I was as fit as a fiddle.

It's all unspeakably grim.

But iirc they're living in Usha's house. (Unless she sold it to a letting agency while my back was turned. Amside?) Rob rented Blossom Hill on the strength of his Berrow Farm employment and Jess eventually moved in. Then out. And Rob persuaded Helen to move in. (Wasn't she once again in conflict with her family, after moving back to BF with Henry?)

I wonder if the SWs have the Sia track "Alive" playing on repeat. You took it all but I'm still breathing ...