Unravelled: The Inspirational True Story of a Journey out of Darkness

By Vikie Shanks and Lynne Barrett-Lee

When Vikie Shanks met Paul, he seemed to be everything a girl could ever want.

Handsome, attentive, caring and musically gifted, he felt like the antidote to all the bad things that had happened in her life. Sexually abused by her eldest brother and dominated by a violent father, Vikie’s childhood ended with the death of her mother when she was just sixteen.

Unravelled is the story of Vikie’s life with Paul, and the years in which his behaviour and mental state became increasingly erratic. It’s the account of his casual cruelty, his spying, his inexplicable and sudden rages before he committed suicide; of his growing obsession with having more and more children, and of naming them according to a precise set of rules; of how, over a period of years, he all but gutted their family home, tearing down most of the internal walls and removing almost everything but basic furniture, while simultaneously creating a secret home for himself, made out of plywood, in what used to be a shed; and of his secret diaries – the tens of thousands of entries he made, documenting every minute of every day.

After his death, it would be these writings that would provide such compelling evidence of what further tragedy might have happened had he not made the decision that he did to take his own life. Because whatever was wrong with him was like a ticking bomb that even Vikie hadn’t properly heard, as it seemed he’d spent time planning to kill the whole family.