Day 3: 17 April 2026
No cycling today. It’s usually a gym day, but in a weak moment I managed to convince myself that the reason I keep falling asleep at 7pm is because I’ve been overtraining, so I’m scheduling in a rest day. My sponsorship is up to £300. Amazing!
What makes a good relationship
One of the questions most asked by journalists is whether I saw any indication of Trimaan Dhillon’s true character whilst Alice was going out with him. And parents and friends often want to know the warning signs so they can check up on their own families. The answer is more difficult.
We are supposed to be aware of relationships which move on too quickly, those that involve love-bombing, gaslighting, controlling behaviour, dishonesty and excessive monitoring. Yet each of these can be difficult to spot or explained away by circumstances or masked as protective behaviour.
Dhillon was a serving soldier. Depending upon how you view this, it is a vocation that demands respect and those who follow it should have high levels of integrity, but conversely, the job may lead to extended periods abroad and makes forming and maintaining relationships more problematic. So, the fact that he tried to move the relationship on quickly (a warning sign) was not particularly surprising.
Controlling behaviour is a real danger. On one level, it involves physical and mental violence and is easy to identify, but very often it develops slowly and can be difficult to spot. There are many different levels and many different personality types that make its identification a very confusing minefield. Dhillon’s particular brand was to persuade Alice that his control was simply concern for her wellbeing; that she should drop certain friends because he knew they were toxic; she should send pictures of where she was and what she was doing so he could admire her; that she should miss a party because he was going to take her for a lovely meal. In the early days she never viewed him as controlling, although I’m sure that she would have identified this retrospectively.
The signs of controlling behaviour that I saw made me feel uneasy, when they should have made me alarmed and I will be forever haunted by not reacting more strongly to them. I think that many of her friends and family had other evidence, and if we had known each other’s thoughts then we would have been much more worried. I also know that if I had been better educated about controlling behaviour, then I would have had more chance of identifying it and intervening.
I never particularly warmed to Dhillon. I felt that he was self-centred, a bit weak and shallow. He was not someone I would have chosen for Alice, but conversely, I didn’t see him as being particularly dangerous. Later in the relationship when Alice knew that he had been dishonest and ended the relationship, I was relieved.
A startling fact is that at the time we had a Golden Retriever dog called Cassie. She was incredibly friendly and loved everyone. Always rushing to say hello to new callers and loving to be fussed. Dhillon clearly wanted to be Cassie’s friend, yet she would never go to him. The first and only time she took exception to anyone, proving that she had better judgement than I did.
