In part four of this account we stated that ‘He’ (Jim Perrin) ‘had left her to die alone’.

Horrific as that sounds we have tried — really tried, to find an explanation for his actions. If he had previously thought, as we all did (and as he had actually told us, after he had left the hospital on the eve of her death) that Jac ‘was a little better tonight’ — why — and here is the glaring anomaly, did he say in both his article ‘Touching the Void’, (this title is plagiarised from a book by Joe Simpson), and in his book West — that he actually knew then that our sister was dying? — and certainly, by the use of subtlety and actual sophistry, in words and phrasing, give the reader to believe that he was with her; both during that last period of time and right up to and including the moment of her death? (actually just before a quarter past midday, not ‘about 11.00 am’ as he wrote).

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Please do read pages 270 and 271 for an understanding of how Jim Perrin distorted the truth about our sister’s last days.  Jac went into the ‘Countess of Chester’ hospital as an out-patient on Wednesday the fourth of May — it is approximately an hour-and-a-quarter’s drive from her house. Jim Perrin writes of that first Wednesday that he ‘came back later bringing her things from home’, (and as we have said in our post: ‘Our account of Jac’s illness’ part 2 she had not expected to stay and had taken nothing with her).  Did he bring her any night-clothes?  No.  Did he bring in photographs of her children? No — only a photograph of himself (ref. ‘Melangell’ Guardian thread 30/07/2010 where s/he disingenuously makes an issue of this).  Our sister had no nightdress of her own until the following Tuesday when she asked for one!  ‘She sent me out into Chester to buy a nightdress.’  Ref. page 270.

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In the course of those last, very few days of her life, knowing how desperately ill she was (although at no point alerting us) Jim Perrin left her. Later, writing in West he ‘describes’ her time in the Chester hospital.

‘By the week-end she had been put on a morphine drip’.  Ref. page 270,  (this was on Saturday, May 7th) — ‘I saw her back onto the ward and left, —   [He left ?] — drove to Derbyshire — and stayed with the Beatty’s.  [He] and I sat outside the ‘Barrel’ Inn at Bretton on Sunday before I drove back to the hospital.’

‘I hurried back to her side…’

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Her daughter was with Jac when he did arrive, and he made it very clear to her that she should leave them to be together.  She regrets with all her heart to this day, as she told her ‘Welsh’ aunt, that she ‘gave in’ to him, that she allowed him to prevail upon her as he did, and that she did not withstand him.

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Saturday:     Jim Perrin left Jac to drive to Derbyshire.
Sunday:       He wrote: ‘I hurried back to her side — stayed with her till the small hours when she had drifted into sleep, and was back next
Monday afternoon.’
Tuesday:     ‘By the following afternoon she was scarcely coherent.’

This was by now Tuesday, May 10th, although she was also, according to him:
‘sufficiently coherent’ to ‘send’ him to buy a nightdress! And of this Tuesday, the last’ night of her life, he writes:

‘ … as she sank into her last sleep.  Her vital signs were fading away.’  pages 270 and 271. ‘Next morning at about 11 a last gentle exhalation of breath and she was gone’.  ‘Her vital signs were fading away’?  He ‘left her’ though?  When later, as he specifically implies, he knew that she was dying why then did he leave  her?

‘… as she slipped into sleep, and beyond that deep unconsciousness.  Next day, peacefully, almost imperceptibly, she died.’

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This is an absolute falsehood: in fact, Jac’s ‘First Love’ talked with her on the telephone for well over an hour after Jim Perrin had left the hospital and two of her sisters also spoke to her (and to Jim Perrin ref. our post ‘Our Account of Jac’s Illness’ part 3) after he had left her on that last night. She was not then unconscious. She was tired and mazy as we have said before, ref. our post ‘Our account of Jac’s Illness’ part 3, but alive and speaking with her sisters about ‘tomorrow’: and, into the early hours, with her ‘first love’. In Jim Perrin’s deceitful writing he all but denied her these last few precious hours of life.

If he should, by some chance, in an attempt at self-exoneration, try to explain this anomaly by suggesting that Jac had instructed him to tell no-one, how then, given his claims of such closeness, could he have so callously left her, really alone, at the last.  He could have had no idea that Jac’s ‘Welsh’ sister would be coming to see her in the morning. Or that any others who loved her would be there. His grief-stricken descriptions of his last hours with our sister are sham.  That he should write of that time in such a deceptive manner is beyond comprehension: it is a travesty.  He was not there.

He was not there with her that evening — (he had left her before her ‘First Love’ and two of her sisters spoke with her) — or that night, or that following morning; or at the moment of her death —  not in fact until the afternoon of the day on which she died.   He was not there with her as she sank into her last sleep’. We find it nearly impossible to believe the depths of this man’s dishonour.

He did not ‘return to her side’ until she had ‘slipped’ away from him forever.  Had it been left to Jim Perrin our sister would have died alone on that lovely May day.

In death she was beautiful, as she had been in life; her face was gently calm, with the appearance of a carving delicately worked in antique ivory.  She was our sister; we loved her and we wish the world to know how things really were.

Jac’s sisters.