Into The Darkest Corner With Elizabeth Haynes

The main reason I wrote Into the Darkest Corner was because I had a reason to do it – I was taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an annual challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Although I've written all my life, participating in NaNoWriMo gave me the push I needed to write something full-length. Into the Darkest Corner was the result of my fourth year and for the first time I felt I had something really worth taking forward.

So much for the writing process – the plot came from one of those dreams that stays with you like a scent, long after you've woken up. There was no story to it, as such, just a fearful and dramatic sensation of not being believed; the frustration of feeling like I was the only one who could see the truth, as though it was blindingly obvious what was going on but everyone I knew was choosing to turn a blind eye, choosing to turn away from me.

At the time I was working on analysis around domestic abuse, and reading crime reports about people who were involved in abusive relationships. As someone with no personal experience of this, it seemed too easy to wonder why these women (and men in some cases) didn't just walk away, seek help, or even just stand up for themselves. I found myself considering 'what if...' and thinking about the different situations where walking away might suddenly become impossible. What if nobody believed you? What if you weren't sure who you could trust? What if you simply had nowhere else to go?

The police are skilled at dealing with cases of domestic abuse, and there are experienced officers in Public Protection Units around the country who specialise in trying to minimise the harm to individuals and families caused by violence in the home, but there is only so much that can be done when the victim and the offender cannot be kept apart. Statements are taken, harm is assessed, advice is given; where it is appropriate to do so, people are arrested and charged; sometimes measures can be taken to force the offender to stay away from the victim by way of an injunction, such as a non-molestation order. But most of the time the offender and the victim must continue to live side-by-side, in some kind of uneasy truce; if not in the same house, then most likely in the same community – and the risk remains that if your abuser is intent on harming you, how quickly could you summon help? And would you be able to summon help at all?

It's easy to see domestic abuse as something that happens to other people, and no matter how we perceive those women in particular who choose to remain with their abuser for whatever the reason – to keep the family together, or because admitting their situation is somehow shameful to them, or because they love their partner and believe them capable of changing for the better, or because they simply have nowhere else to go – it is sometimes too easy to feel pity or disdain, and thus to judge them for finding themselves in a situation that is often far more complicated than we could ever imagine.

I wanted to make my main character, Catherine, someone who you wouldn't typically see as a victim of anything – an independent, assertive young woman who enjoys life. A woman like many of us, with no real experience of violence... and at the blissful start of a relationship with Lee, who is good-looking, intelligent and charming, a man who turns heads, including those of her best friends. But not only does Catherine have no experience of violence – neither do any of her friends. So in a way it is unsurprising that they choose to believe anything other than the dreadful, shocking truth.

So at its heart, Into the Darkest Corner is about not being believed, about what happens to you emotionally when you have no-one left to trust but yourself, and about what dramatic events it might take to compel you to fight back.