Blue Beard

I never liked Blue Beard as a story.  It gave me the creeps, and I avoided it. I thought it was a strange morality tale that bolstered the fantasy of dead women and taught us to allow men their secrets…sod that, I thought!

Then, a couple of years ago, the story started to tap on my shoulder and nag at my edges. Perhaps it was about more than I had first assumed?

Haunted by the regular chime of real-life women being attacked, murdered and abused, something started to click. I needed to tell this story – not to understand Blue Beard, but to breathe life into the women he tried to control. I needed to express the rage, grief and heartbreak so many of us experience and yet feel powerless to change. At this point in history, Sarah Everard had been murdered, and the ensuing chaos of her vigil had captured the public’s imagination. However, for me, it was the murder of Zara Aleena that really brought home my anger and my loss. She was just walking home. A week later her family, friends and people she would never know, met at the spot where she was killed and walked her memory home. In silence. I cannot even write about this without weeping. This was the moment that I knew I wanted to walk Blue Beard’s victims home. I wanted to use my craft, my platform and my experience to make a small difference.