The Cruellest Game

Twenty-one

The trial began on Monday the 26th of March 2012. Nearly four months after Robert’s arrest, and almost exactly two months before Robbie would have celebrated his sixteenth birthday. I had been asked to give evidence against Robert. Because I was not his legal wife I could have been compelled to do so. I needed no such compulsion. I wanted him brought to justice.

The prosecution called me as their first witness.

‘To set the scene, as it were,’ the Crown Prosecution Service barrister, Pam Cotton, had said a little obliquely. But I thought I understood pretty much what she meant and although I’d only met her once before, earlier that day in the court’s witness support room, she’d briefed me well enough on what was required.

Thirty-something Pam Cotton was very black and very beautiful. In fact almost disconcertingly so, because at a glance she resembled a Hollywood actress playing the part of a barrister rather more than a working brief. She was a rare Marlene Dietrich-like creature who wore suits so severely tailored that they were quite masculine in cut, and yet somehow contrived to make her appear all the more feminine.

I’d walked with her across the main lobby of the court after our earlier meeting and had noticed heads turning. It was obvious that men could not take their eyes off her. I wondered whether this was an advantage or a disadvantage in her profession. Probably a bit of both, I thought.

Regardless of any of that, the woman had a brain like a bacon slicer.

I was the one in the witness box, but Pam, as she’d instructed me to address her out of court, was the one in control of every bit of evidence I gave. Briefly she took me through my marriage to Robert, the marriage that had turned out to be such a sham, from the moment we met, through the birth of Robbie, right up to his death, and asked me to tell the court how I had returned home from an ordinary day at school to make the discovery that our son appeared to have hanged himself.

I swear I could feel Robert’s eyes burning into me from where he stood in the dock towards the rear of the courtroom. I made myself not look at him.

‘Before your son died, did you ever have any suspicions that all might not be as it seemed in your marriage, Mrs Anderson?’ Pam Cotton asked.

I replied that I had not. ‘Indeed, I’d considered myself to be very fortunate,’ I said. ‘I seemed to have everything: a loving husband, a fine son and a beautiful home.’

‘And after Robbie’s death, when were your suspicions first raised?’

I told her how I had tried to get in touch with Robert to tell him about Robbie, how the Amaco personnel people had appeared not to know of a Robert Anderson, and how they had first mentioned the name Rob Anderton to me. And I explained how I had come to realize that derrickman Rob Anderton and senior drilling engineer Robert Anderson were probably one and the same.

‘Did you confront your husband with this?’ asked Pam.

I nodded. The red-robed judge, Sir Charles Montague, who looked rather younger than a stereotypical idea of a Justice of Her Majesty’s High Court, his face tanned beneath his judicial wig as if he’d recently been on a good holiday, coughed and frowned in my direction.

‘Could you please give an audible answer, Mrs Anderson, for the court record,’ he said.

‘Yes, I did confront my husband.’

‘And how did he respond?’

I told the court how Robert had tried to explain it all away, using his desire to leave his past behind and start a new life with me as an excuse for everything.

‘And at this stage what did he tell you about his marital status?’

‘He told me that he was probably still married to another woman, and that was partly why he’d assumed a false name, but that his wife had left him and disappeared to Australia and he’d absolutely no idea where she was or how to find her. Neither could he, therefore, even be certain that she was alive.’

‘I see,’ Pam Cotton allowed herself a dramatic pause. ‘Perhaps you would now tell the court, Mrs Anderson, how you came to meet and, it seemed, become friends with the woman you knew as Mrs Bella Clooney.’

I told the first dog-walking story, and related how we’d exchanged phone numbers and began to meet quite regularly for walks.

‘But you were never invited to the home of Mrs Bella Clooney?’

‘I wasn’t, no.’ There seemed to be no need to mention my uninvited visits. After all, I had never actually crossed the threshold of number 5 Riverview Avenue.

‘And did your husband ever meet her in your company?’

‘Yes. The night Robbie died. The police wanted me to find someone to be with me. I think it’s routine, isn’t it? We never had many friends, as a family. We always seemed to be enough for each other...’

The memories flooded over me again and for a moment I lost my thread. I opened my mouth to speak again, but no words came.

‘Are you able to continue, Mrs Anderson, or would you prefer to take a break?’ asked the judge kindly.

I nodded. ‘Yes, but c-could I have a glass of water?’ I stumbled eventually.

This was duly provided. I took a deep drink and did my best to pull myself together, aware that I was standing unnaturally straight, as if the physical act of doing so might in some way prop me up emotionally. I was wearing the same ancient navy suit I’d worn to both Gran’s and Robbie’s funerals, and I’d lost so much more weight that it was falling off me now, as were all my clothes. But I hadn’t any spare cash to spend on a new outfit, and in any case, I’d no wish to splash out on anything new for this particular occasion. Neither had I been to a hairdresser since before Robbie’s death, and my hair, displaying prominent iron-grey roots, was now well below collar length and had lost much of the curly bounce Robert had always professed to love so much. I knew my face was haggard and drawn. I thought I looked like a victim, all right, and suspected that suited rather well the purposes of the prosecution barrister. Certainly the contrast between my lacklustre appearance and her confident glamour could not have been much greater.

‘Are you ready to continue now, Mrs Anderson?’ asked the judge, again quite kindly.

I said I was. But actually I had no idea what I’d been saying. Pam Cotton stepped in.

‘Mrs Anderson, I asked you if your husband ever met the woman you knew as Bella Clooney in your company.’

‘Yes,’ I said, finding my voice and some of my brains again. ‘I phoned her the night Robbie died and she came over to be with me. She was still there when Robert got home from the rig, earlier than he’d led me to expect.’

‘And how did they respond to each other?’

I told her how Robert had been quite rude but I’d understood that was because he was in shock and would have hated any outsider to be there. Bella had seemed to behave normally.

‘But, of course, I didn’t know her very well. Not at all, as it turned out...’

Pam moved on from there to ask how I’d eventually discovered that Bella Clooney was actually Brenda Anderton and that we shared a husband. I told her, as I had the police, about seeing the newspaper story after she’d died, and how I’d recognized her from her picture.

‘You had no doubt that Brenda Anderton and Bella Clooney were the same woman?’

‘None at all,’ I said.

She took me through my second confrontation with Robert and I related how he’d finally admitted everything to me.

‘And what about Mrs Anderton’s death, did you discuss that?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘I know it’s dreadful but I was more interested in what he’d done to me...’

I paused again.

‘Rather than what he might have done to her,’ I added.

‘“Rather than what he might have done to her”,’ Pam repeated. ‘What do you mean by that exactly, Mrs Anderson?’

I thought for a moment before replying.

‘I’m not quite sure,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t think I suspected him of anything then. I don’t think it occurred to me. Not until after I’d called the police anyway. Actually, not until after the police came round and questioned me about it all.’

‘And then?’

‘Then, well, I began to wonder, yes. I still found it hard to believe that he could have been responsible for his wife’s death. But I did know he had been with her, staying at the house they had together, their home, just a day or two before the accident.’ I paused. ‘Or whatever it was.’

‘I see.’ Pam stared at me for a few seconds, then turned her back to me and walked towards the jury box.

She still had her back to me when she asked her next question.

‘Mrs Anderson, perhaps you would tell the court if your husband knows anything at all about motor cars?’

‘Yes, he does,’ I responded honestly, again telling her what I had told the police.

‘Robert always serviced our vehicles himself and just took them to a garage for their MOTs. He also seemed able to carry out most repairs unless they required specialist equipment. He’d been a professional car mechanic before going to work on the rigs, and he was very good at it.’

As the significance of what I’d said sank in, an audible gasp reverberated around the courtroom.

‘No further questions,’ said Pam Cotton, returning to her seat.

I was then cross-examined by Robert’s defence barrister, Mr Joshua Small, a sharp-featured little man whose stature matched his name. It was not a pleasant experience. His very first question was aggressive, and designed, I was quite sure, to shake any confidence I might have.

‘Mrs Anderson, do you really expect the court to believe that you shared your life with a man for sixteen years, and had a son by him, and yet you had no idea at all that he had another life, another wife and another family?’

However, this was a question I was ready for, because it was one I had asked myself so often.

‘You can believe what you like,’ I snapped. ‘But I am telling the truth, and that’s all I can do. I trusted Robert absolutely and had no idea that he was leading a double life, no idea at all until after our son died.’

The defence barrister, who had what I found to be a disconcerting habit of standing with his head tilted backwards and slightly to one side, gave a small snort of disbelief.

‘He must have been extremely convincing,’ Mr Small responded. ‘Indeed, rather more convincing than most people would consider possible. Would you accept that to be the case, Mrs Anderton?’

‘I don’t know what “most people” might think,’ I said. ‘But if you’re asking me if Robert was a good liar, then the answer is a resounding yes. Indeed, he was a far better liar than I would have thought possible. Far better.’

Another little gasp could be heard in the courtroom. It was only later that I realized just how significant that remark must have seemed. At the time I merely I thought I’d dealt with the first barrage rather well, and I probably had, because Mr Joshua Small seemed to tone down his aggression after that and only asked me a couple of more innocuous questions.

After I’d finished giving my evidence I was able to watch the rest of the proceedings from the public gallery. I was fortunate to have been called first because, painful though I knew the experience would be, I did not wish to miss a moment of Robert’s trial. My father had said he was too distressed to see his supposed son-in-law, who he had been extremely fond of, in court. And I’d managed to fend off Gladys. So I was alone in the gallery, but actually much preferred it that way.

There followed evidence from the young police officer who had been first on the scene when Bella was killed. He explained how her vehicle was found on the wrong side of the road having collided with a milk tanker, as I’d read in the paper.

‘We believe Mrs Anderton was killed instantly,’ he told the court.

DS Jarvis then gave his evidence. He was coolly professional, and somehow more articulate than I would have expected, as he summarized the police case against Robert. He spoke of Robert having both motive and opportunity, just as he had explained it to me.

And he told the court that Scenes of Crime Officers had found a set of overalls belonging to Robert, which he apparently kept in the garage of 5 Riverview Avenue, and forensic examination had revealed clinging to the overalls small particles of accelerator cable.

‘Were forensics able to establish precisely where these particles had come from?’ asked Pam Cotton.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied Jarvis. ‘From the damaged cable of Brenda Anderton’s Toyota.’

Pam Cotton emphasized the point as usual by repeating it, then began to take DS Jarvis through other aspects of Brenda Anderton’s life.

‘Is it true, Detective Sergeant, that, following the death of Brenda Anderton, you have now closed your investigation into the abduction of Luke Macintyre?’ she asked.

Jarvis agreed that was so.

An expert witness in automotive forensics, Mr Maxwell Brown, a man approaching retirement, I thought, with rather more white hair in his bushy eyebrows than on his head, was then called to the stand. He had apparently been brought in from Bristol to give a second opinion after the initial examination of Brenda’s car.

Pam Cotton made quite a performance of establishing that Brown was considered to be the foremost in his field. He stood even more upright than I had done in the witness box, shoulders thrust back, like a soldier at attention, while she asked him to explain what he believed had caused Brenda Anderton’s fatal accident. At first he appeared to reiterate the theory which I’d initially read in the Express & Echo.

‘Following a thorough investigation of Mrs Anderton’s vehicle, assisted by the original Devon County Constabulary team, I am quite certain that the accelerator pedal jammed,’ he said. ‘Mrs Anderton was unable to decrease her speed, so in an attempt to do so she switched off the engine. It was this that ultimately had fatal consequences because she was, of course, then unable to steer, the electronic steering system having been disabled. And it was at this point that her car swung across the A377 into the path of an oncoming milk tanker.’

‘Have you been able to establish the speed at which Mrs Anderton’s car may have been travelling when it collided with the tanker?’ Pam Cotton asked.

‘Probably between seventy and eighty miles per hour,’ replied Brown.

‘And you feel certain that she was simply unable to slow down.’

‘Yes. All the evidence points to that.’

‘So, could you please, Mr Brown, tell the court what caused the accelerator pedal to jam?’

‘Yes, indeed. Strands within the accelerator cable had been cut, so that it was only a matter of time before the cable would split fully into two halves, thus rendering it impossible for the driver to control the throttle.’

‘You said the strands within the accelerator pedal had been cut, Mr Brown?’ Pam continued. ‘Do you mean deliberately cut?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘And there is no doubt about that.’

‘No, none at all.’

‘Is it possible to say when this damage might have occurred.’

‘Not exactly. It would depend largely on how much mileage the deceased had covered in her car. Not all the strands had been cut, and the intention was presumably that the rest of them would break after a period of time when the strain on them became too great, which would have been most likely to occur when the vehicle was travelling at a higher speed.’

‘So, is it possible for you to state, Mr Brown, whether or not the damage to the accelerator cable could have been executed, say, as much as three or four days before the incident which led to Mrs Anderton’s death?’

‘Oh yes, easily, depending on the subsequent mileage, of course.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Brown, no more questions,’ said Pam after another of her dramatic pauses.

I realized that she was trying to establish early on in the jury’s minds a timescale confirmed by an expert, so that they would later more easily accept that Robert would have had the opportunity to sabotage Brenda’s car even though he was in the middle of the North Sea when she died.

Mr Joshua Small was on his feet at once to cross-examine.

‘Mrs Anderton’s vehicle was a Toyota Corolla, was it not, Mr Brown? It is well known that many of these vehicles were recalled three years ago due to alleged problems with accelerator pedals sticking, so could not this fatal collision have been a tragic accident?’

‘No. Absolutely not. The strands within the accelerator cable had definitely been cut. The problem with the Corollas, as with other Toyotas, involved strands breaking due to wear and tear. And it was actually later models than Mrs Anderton’s which were recalled by Toyota.’

‘And yet the Devon County Constabulary and their forensic unit at first accepted that this fatal collision was an accident, did they not?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘And was it not only after DS Jarvis interviewed Mrs Marion Anderson and was told of Rob Anderton’s double life, and all that entailed, that the car was re-examined?’

‘Yes, that was the case.’

‘So surely the fact that these strands had been cut and not just broken due to wear and tear could not have been that obvious?’

‘Pretty obvious, in my opinion.’

‘But not, it would appear, in the opinion of the forensics experts who examined the car the first time round?’

‘Apparently not. No.’

‘And surely the fact that the accelerator function of these particular cars has been so suspect must still give rise to some doubt?’

‘Not in my opinion, no.’

‘Mr Brown, could I ask you when you actually inspected this vehicle yourself?’

‘When I was asked to do so by the police, a few days after Mrs Anderton’s death, because of concerns relating to the initial examination of the car.’

‘So, not until after you had actually been given cause to doubt that the mechanical damage had been caused accidentally?’

‘Well, no, but—’

‘So it would seem reasonable to refer to the opinion of those who first examined the car, and who did not already have a hidden agenda, would it not?’

‘I had no hidden agenda,’ blustered Maxwell Brown. ‘I was asked to examine the car in order to give a second opinion. I am now relating my findings to this court to the best of my ability, and I do object—’

‘Yes, indeed, Mr Brown,’ the barrister interrupted thunderously. ‘I am quite sure you do object. But it is the duty of this court to explore all aspects of this case, and as far as I can see you at least were never in a position to conduct your investigation into the condition of Mrs Anderton’s car in as independent a manner as might have been desired. No further questions, My Lord.’

Robert was the first witness to be called by the defence. I suppose Mr Small QC was relying on his apparent plausibility, but I may have already partially scuppered that with the jury. Even so, Robert seemed to be his usual calm and credible self, to start with at least. It seemed hard to believe he could be capable of murder.

Unlike me, far from having lost weight, Robert looked considerably heavier than when I had last seen him. He had the beginnings of a double chin and his belly strained against the confines of his light-grey double-breasted suit, a suit I had never seen before. I was vaguely aware that a prison diet was supposed to be high in both stodge and fat, and I assumed this was the cause of his weight gain. After all, Robert had been remanded in custody for almost four months. His hair, cut shorter than usual, was still coal-black, though.

Mr Small began by establishing that Robert had been away on a North Sea oil platform at the time of his wife’s death.

‘I’d gone back to work two days before,’ said Robert. ‘Then I returned to Exeter after learning that Brenda had been killed.’

‘When you were in Exeter with your wife Brenda would you normally also have driven the car in which she died?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Robert.

‘And so, had that car been tampered with in any way you too could have been at risk, as well as your wife?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Robert again.

Pam Cotton was on her feet as he spoke.

‘Objection, My Lord. Counsel is grossly leading the witness.’

The judge half smiled at Joshua Small. ‘Come along now, Mr Small,’ he interjected mildly.

‘I apologize, My Lord,’ said the defence barrister, pausing briefly before asking his next question.

‘Would anyone else have also been at risk, Mr Anderton?’ he asked.

‘Well, yes, of course. My younger daughter Janey. And I would never do anything that might harm Janey.’

Joshua Small then asked Robert about the double life he had led, which Robert admitted with humility.

‘I am ashamed now of what I did and the way I lived,’ he said. ‘I believe that I was responsible for the chain of events that have led to all the terrible things which have happened to...’ He paused, perhaps searching for words. ‘To both my families,’ he concluded.

Mr Small asked him if he could explain to the court why he had embarked on his extraordinary double life in the first place. And Robert began to relate the same story that he had told me, concerning the legacy of Huntington’s and his inability to cope with its inevitable effect on his wife and daughters.

‘I just wanted to escape from it all,’ he said. ‘I know it was weak of me, but I am not a strong man. Yet I could not bring myself to leave my wife and the poor sick child we had together brought into the world. When I learned that Brenda was expecting another child I felt betrayed by her, and yet all the more bound to her side. And even less able to reveal the truth about my double life to either Brenda or to Marion.’

Pam Cotton began her cross-examination by addressing the question of logistics, which she had already set up in her questioning of Maxwell Brown.

‘Would you agree, as already indicated by one of the country’s leading experts in motor forensics, that your whereabouts at the time of the incident which claimed your wife Brenda’s life is irrelevant, Mr Anderton?’ she enquired.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Robert replied.

‘But I think you do, Mr Anderton. As an accomplished mechanic you would be perfectly able to cut through a cable in such a way that it would continue to function for some miles after receiving your attentions, would you not?’

Mr Small began to rise to his feet, but Robert answered so quickly and forcefully that he lowered himself back in his chair without raising the objection he had seemed to be preparing for.

‘I didn’t touch the car,’ said Robert.

‘That’s as may be, Mr Anderton, but you must then at least accept that the cable could have been cut in such a way by a person or persons unknown.’

‘I suppose so,’ Robert muttered grudgingly.

‘Yes. And, of course, if you knew that damage had been done you would then presumably have been able to avoid driving the vehicle again before going back to work in the North Sea, would you not?’

‘But I didn’t know—’

‘All right, Mr Anderton,’ Pam Cotton interrupted. ‘Can we just agree that, with your prolonged absences, your wife Brenda would have been the principal driver of the Toyota?’

‘I suppose so, yes. But my daughter, Janey, was often with her. I have said already, I’d never do anything to put Janey in danger.’

‘I was coming to that, Mr Anderton,’ said Pam easily. ‘You have already told the court about the dreadful illness which your eleven-year-old daughter will ultimately develop and how difficult you found it to cope with that, have you not?’

Robert agreed that he had.

‘So, might it not be possible, Mr Anderton, that you may have been prepared to leave to chance the possibility of your daughter being in the motor car with her mother when the accelerator cable finally split, and indeed her survival, rather more than you would have done were she a well child?’

Pam spoke slowly and deliberately, clearly selecting her words with great care.

Robert, who must surely have been extremely disturbed if not infuriated by this line of questioning, kept his voice level and his manner respectful.

‘I would never do, and have never done anything that might harm Janey,’ he repeated. ‘Nor any of my children.’

In spite of everything I could feel a certain pervading sympathy for him in the court. But then, Robert had always been good at manipulating emotion.

Pam Cotton, however, moved on swiftly to deal with that too.

‘Mr Anderton, you have painted a picture of your actions which seems to me to have little relation to the bitter truth, which is that you maintained a cruel charade for sixteen years regardless of the feelings of either of the women in your life. Is that not the case?’

‘It’s not how I saw it,’ muttered Robert so quietly that he was asked by the judge to repeat his reply and to speak up.

‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ responded the prosecution barrister. ‘But wouldn’t you accept that many men and women have to deal with serious illness within their families? Do you really feel that justifies the course of action you chose to take?’

Robert’s aura of humble self-confidence began to desert him. He looked up at the high ceiling of the courtroom as if seeking inspiration. In the end his reply was just one word.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No,’ repeated Pam. ‘You admit that you have been responsible for unleashing a terrible and tragic sequence of events. Can the illness within your family be regarded as justification for any of that?’

‘No,’ replied Robert again.

‘No,’ repeated Pam again.

‘And yet you went to quite extraordinary lengths over an astonishing period of time, for sixteen years, in order to keep the existence of your two families secret from each other, did you not?’

‘Yes.’ Robert seemed to have more or less run out of words. And even at that moment I could not stop myself reflecting that that, at least, made a change.

‘So when this double life of yours started to unravel following the death of your son, were you not afraid that your first wife would eventually expose your activities, which were, of course, criminal, and all that remained of your fragile house of cards would collapse, probably leading to legal action against you?’

‘Well, yes, I was afraid of that, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ interrupted Pam Cotton. ‘And just how far were you prepared to go to protect your unusual lifestyle, Mr Anderton?’

‘Well, I don’t know really...’ stumbled Robert.

‘Surely you went at least as far as to threaten your wife Brenda if she exposed your activities to Marion? Surely you did that?’

‘Well, yes. I suppose so. But I only threatened that I would leave her. That’s all.’

‘Are you quite sure of that, Mr Anderton?’

‘Yes. Absolutely. I am not a violent man. I wouldn’t make any other kind of threat.’

‘So, there is no question that you would even have considered murdering your wife in order to protect your double life?’

‘No. Of course not. I didn’t consider it and I didn’t do it.’

‘But just how far would you go to wreak revenge against someone you may hold responsible for the death of your beloved son?’

Robert looked startled, shaken even, by this new approach.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘I think you do, Mr Anderton. I think you do—’

‘No.’ Robert interrupted the barrister this time. ‘I told you. I blame myself for Robbie’s death. I blame myself because of the crazy lifestyles I imposed on both my families.’

‘You blame yourself,’ Pam repeated. It seemed to be a habit with her, if not all barristers, to emphasize almost every significant point by repeating it.

‘Yes, I blame myself,’ said Robert again.

Pam stared at him hard.

‘No, Mr Anderton,’ she barked. ‘That is not the truth, is it? Isn’t the truth that you had reason to strongly suspect that your wife Brenda had in some way been responsible for Robbie’s death. Very good reason indeed.’

Another of those gasps went round the courtroom.

Robert seemed not to know what to say.

‘I don’t know, I–I just didn’t know, I couldn’t believe that...’ he stumbled.

‘But I think you did believe it, Mr Anderton,’ Pam Cotton continued. ‘Certainly your second wife, Marion, the woman you married bigamously, the woman you said was the love of your life, she believed that Brenda was responsible for Robbie’s death, didn’t she?’

‘Well, yes. She was quite sure of it, from the moment she recognized Brenda’s photograph in the paper after — after the accident. But I c-could never believe that Brenda would have done such a thing, not even when she told me...’

Robert stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, as if he had only just realized exactly what he was saying. But it was too late. Pam Cotton pounced.

‘When she told you what, Mr Anderton?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’

‘C’mon, Mr Anderton. I am sure the jury is already guessing what you were about to say. The entire court is ahead of you now. Would you please tell us what your wife said? What she told you about Robbie’s death?’

‘I uh, I can’t. It was too awful,’ Robert said.

‘Oh yes, you can, Mr Anderton. Oh yes, you can. You were about to say “when she told me that she had induced Robbie to kill himself”, or words to that effect, were you not, Mr Anderton?’

‘Objection, My Lord,’ cried Joshua Small.

The judge leaned forward.

‘You will not put words in the defendant’s mouth, Mrs Cotton,’ he commanded.

‘I’m so sorry, My Lord,’ said the prosecution barrister, looking anything but.

‘You do not have to answer that question if you do not wish to, Mr Anderton,’ the judge continued.

Robert didn’t seem to hear him. But neither did he speak. His shoulders drooped. I could see from his body language that he was close to tears.

Pam Cotton had no mercy.

‘Just tell the court what your wife said, Mr Anderton,’ she repeated loudly.

The judge cleared his throat and looked as if he might interject again. But he didn’t. Perhaps he wanted to know what Brenda Anderton had said to Robbie as much as the rest of the court. And maybe he also thought the court should be told.

Robert looked as if he might fall over.

‘Yes,’ he said. It was almost inaudible.

‘Would you please speak up, Mr Anderton,’ instructed the barrister.

Robert nodded.

‘She told me she had been to see Robbie on the d-day he died,’ he began falteringly. ‘She said she knew the day of the week Marion taught at Okehampton College, she knew he would be alone studying for his mocks. He invited her into the house. After all, he knew her, knew her as Bella Clooney. She told him who she really was, and that his father had lived a double life full of lies and duplicity. She said it was easy to convince Robbie that his life wasn’t worth living, that he might as well end it, that she would help him, make it easy for him...’

Robert stopped abruptly. He looked grey and drawn, as if he were about to break down.

I hadn’t expected that. Robert, even at his most vulnerable, had proven himself over many years to be so controlled.

I just stared at him. My worst fears were being realized. But it didn’t seem quite right somehow. Pieces of the jigsaw were still missing, I felt sure. There had to be something more. After all, Robbie was an intelligent and well-adjusted boy. He would have realized that nothing Brenda had said actually meant he didn’t have a father, however crazy, who loved him. And he still had me. He still had his mother. Surely that would have counted for something.

Pam Cotton waited a few seconds, for Robert to continue perhaps. But when he did not she piled on the pressure.

‘Your son was fit and healthy, just fifteen years old with his whole life in front of him. He was clever and talented, that rare mix of an academic and a sportsman, was he not?’

‘Yes,’ muttered Robert.

‘So come on, Mr Anderton. Come on. What else did your wife say to him? What on earth did she say to him, to make him want to take his own life, to take his own life straight away, without even confronting you, or speaking to his mother? What did Brenda say to your son, Mr Anderton?’

Robert’s eyes seemed focused on some unseen point in the middle distance. It was almost as if he were somewhere else, perhaps back with Brenda listening to the terrible revelations she’d made concerning the death of our beloved Robbie. Never mind a pin, it was as if you could have heard a piece of thread drop in that courtroom.

‘Why don’t you tell us exactly what Brenda said to him, Mr Anderton?’ Pam Cotton repeated. ‘All of it. Because you know, don’t you? Brenda told you, didn’t she?’

Robert nodded in a vague sort of way. His voice when he spoke again seemed to come from a long way off.

‘She said she wanted me to share Robbie’s pain, to understand why he felt his entire life had been destroyed...’

‘Yes, Mr Anderton. But what did she say to him?’

‘She said — she said she told him about the Huntington’s, and about his older half-sister who already had the full-blown disease and was unable to function as a human being any more. She told him how we were just waiting for Janey, for his younger half-sister, to become ill too. We didn’t know when it would happen, but we knew it would happen sometime, because in their cases the disease was carried one hundred per cent... there was no chance, not even a slight chance, that Janey might not get it... she told him all of that...’

Robert paused again. He was holding on to the front of the witness box for support. He looked absolutely defeated.

‘Go on, please go on, Mr Anderton,’ said Pam, much more gently now.

‘Everything she said was true, it was all true, except for one thing...’

Yet again he seemed unable to continue. Yet again Pam encouraged him, her voice quite soft, cajoling almost.

‘Please tell us what that one thing was, Mr Anderton,’ she coaxed.

Robert was still holding on to the witness box. He looked down at his hands so that I could no longer see his face. His voice was weak and strained, but the words were clear enough. Frighteningly, shockingly clear.

‘She told him that I was the carrier. That I was the one who carried the deformed Huntington’s gene, not her. She said she’d told Robbie that he too would get Huntington’s, that it was a hundred per cent certain. And so, and so... would any children he fathered.’

Even Pam Cotton seemed stunned.

‘She told him that you were the carrier of Huntington’s,’ she repeated, stressing the point as usual, but I thought she was just operating on autopilot.

I remembered once reading that barristers are reluctant to ask questions in court to which they do not know the answer. There was no way Pam Cotton had second-guessed that piece of evidence. And neither had I. Nor anyone else it seemed. This time it was not a strangled gasp which could be heard in the courtroom, but more of a loud and sustained rumble.

I could not at first quite take in what I was hearing. However, Pam Cotton swiftly gathered herself together and began to speak again, determined, it seemed, to clarify every aspect of Robert’s devastating evidence.

‘And did she say how your son responded to that terrible news?’

‘She told me that h-he broke down, and said at once that he couldn’t carry on. That... that he didn’t want to carry on.’

‘Indeed. And, of course, not only did your son believe himself to be the recipient of quite terrible news about his own health and his own future, but he’d just learned that he was about to become a father himself, had he not?’

‘Yes,’ said Robert.

‘And he presumably would therefore have believed that he would be passing on this awful disease to his own child, is that not so?’

‘Yes,’ said Robert again.

‘Did your wife, did Brenda, know that Robbie was about to father a child?’

‘Not when she went to Highrise that day. She said, she said...’

Robert looked even more as if he were about to collapse. But he didn’t.

‘She said that was a bonus,’ he continued after a brief pause. ‘A bonus, for God’s sake. She said Robbie told her about the baby right away. About how he’d just learned that he was going to have a child and, of course, yes, he then believed he was going to pass on a terrible disease to that child. She said it was easy after that, easy to convince him, or let him convince himself, she put it to me, that he’d rather die than face what he then believed the future to hold. And easy, she said, easy to help him do it.’

‘So how exactly did your wife say she helped your son to kill himself?’

‘She told me she suggested hanging, because it was quick and rarely failed, and he just meekly accepted what she said. He was broken, just broken. My poor boy...’

Robert wiped tears away from his eyes with one hand.

‘Just repeat what she told you,’ encouraged Pam Cotton. ‘Just tell the court exactly how Brenda said she helped your son to take his own life.’

Robert nodded, and took a big gulp of air.

‘She... she said she helped him move his desk below the big beam that ran across the ceiling of his room, then sent him to find a length of rope, and helped him rig it all up. Then... then she just... just watched him do it. That’s what she said. She stood there and watched him climb on the desk, put the rope around his neck, tighten it, and jump. She stood there and watched him choke to death. Our wonderful boy. Then she left, went home as if nothing had happened.’

Robert’s voice was high-pitched now, almost hysterical. His shoulders were heaving. Tears were pouring down his cheeks.

I had always been so certain that Robbie had not killed himself, or not unaided anyway. And I’d been so sure, from the moment I discovered who and what she really was, that Brenda Anderton was the one responsible for his death. But I hadn’t actually come close to imagining anything like this, to guessing the terrible lie which had made Robbie not want to live any more. I didn’t want to think about what he must have been feeling, what he must have been going through on the day he died. I realized there were tears running down my cheeks too.

The judge coughed and again looked as if he were about to speak, perhaps to ask Robert if he were able to carry on. Even defendants in a murder trial are treated with that sort of courtesy in an English courtroom.

Pam Cotton, however, was in full flow. She made sure she didn’t give the judge time to interject before firing off her next question.

‘And so you believed that you then knew the truth about the death of your only son, and that your legal wife was responsible for it,’ she barked. ‘You therefore decided to wreak the ultimate revenge. You decided to kill her, did you not? You decided to kill your wife Brenda. Is that not the case, Mr Anderton?’

Robert’s jaw dropped. It was as if he had not considered at all the impact of what he had just told the court. He stopped weeping as if a switch had been thrown.

‘No, no!’ he cried. ‘I hated Brenda then, of course I did, but I’m not a murderer. I would never kill anyone, not even her, not even after what she’d told me she’d done. In any case, I could never really believe she’d done it. Not to Robbie. He’d never hurt anyone—’

‘Oh come on, Mr Anderton. You idolized your only son, ironically your only healthy child. Your wife Brenda told you she helped him to die. Encouraged him to kill himself. You must have felt this justified taking her life too. Didn’t you, Mr Anderton? Isn’t that what happened, Mr Anderton? You murdered your wife in revenge for the death of your son, did you not?’

‘No, no,’ said Robert more quietly. ‘I told you, when I thought about it, I didn’t even believe her. Not really. I thought she was just trying to hurt me, to make me suffer too. I certainly never planned to hurt her. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t.’

But Robert was no longer at all convincing. Not only had he proven himself to be a most accomplished liar over the years, which my evidence alone had made clear, but also his own evidence had been muddled throughout to the point of being totally contradictory.

‘No further questions, My Lord,’ said Pam Cotton.

The court seemed curiously silent. Then the judge glanced towards Joshua Small.

‘Do you wish to re-examine, Mr Small?’ he asked.

The defence barrister, apparently as stunned as all the rest of us and quite clearly previously unaware of the evidence his client had just given, climbed to his feet.

‘I do, My Lord,’ he said, without any real certainty, I felt.

He turned to Robert.

‘Mr Anderton, how could your wife possibly have known that she would be able to persuade your son to kill himself?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Robert muttered.

‘In confronting Robbie and exposing her real identity to him she surely risked ending her entire charade without necessarily wreaking any significant revenge against you at all. So what would she have done if your son had not proved so susceptible? What would she have done if he had simply picked up the phone to call his mother?’

Robert looked down at his hands and said nothing.

‘You must answer the question, Mr Anderton,’ instructed the judge.

Robert looked up.

‘Brenda told me she had been prepared to kill him if necessary.’ His voice was barely more than a whisper but the court was so quiet there was no need for the judge to ask him to speak up.

Joshua Small QC seemed to turn rather pale. Rather desperately, I felt, he sought some sort of recovery.

‘Mrs Anderton planned to kill a fit and athletic teenage boy. How exactly?’

Robert looked appealingly towards the judge. Sir Charles Montague merely stared at him.

‘She told me she had taken a carving knife with her,’ Robert said, again in almost a whisper. ‘From the kitchen... it was in her handbag. She always carried quite a big bag...’

His voice, already so tiny, faded away.

A kind of embarrassed titter reverberated around the court. In spite of the awfulness of Robert’s latest revelation, I understood. There was something almost surreally comical about the concept of this middle-aged woman seeking out Robbie at Highrise with a carving knife concealed in her handbag.

Joshua Small was no longer at all the super-confident QC of earlier in the day. You could just see how much he regretted having asked that question. He really was a man in a hole unable to stop digging.

‘But did you really think your wife would have been capable of using a knife on Robbie?’ he blustered on.

‘No, of course not,’ said Robert, his voice louder and stronger. ‘I’m sure she couldn’t have.’

Small ended his re-examination, and did his best to continue with the case for the defence, which, it seemed to me, had been more or less totally scuppered by Robert’s performance. The defence barrister had been left with damned near nowhere to go.

He called, as had doubtless been his intention before Robert’s outburst, one of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary forensic team who had initially examined Brenda Anderton’s car.

From the beginning John Parsons, a big man in his early forties, looked as if he’d rather be almost anywhere other than Exeter Crown Court that morning. He stumbled over his words and was clearly ill at ease. After all, he must already have been well aware that he and his colleagues had missed something rather important when they’d first examined the Toyota. The little matter of deliberate sabotage had totally escaped them.

However, Mr Small pushed his point gamely.

‘Is it significant that any question of these strands being deliberately cut only arose after the police learned that there may actually be people — indeed, they came to believe, one person in particular — with reason to want Mrs Anderton dead?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘And does the history of the accelerator system of Toyota Corollas continue to cast an element of doubt on this?’

‘I’m not sure I understand, sir,’ said John Parsons.

‘I am asking you if the possibility that the death of Mrs Anderton was due to a tragic accident caused by mechanical failure might indeed remain,’ continued Small.

John Parsons finally grasped that he was being thrown a professional lifeline.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. Absolutely.’

But it was clear that his evidence was having little effect on the jury or anyone else in the courtroom. This was technical stuff. And it paled into insignificance compared with the excitement provoked by Robert’s appearance in the witness box, which the press were later to widely describe as having offered ‘scenes of the highest possible drama’ and a ‘spectacular courtroom revelation’.

In any case Pam Cotton put paid to it in one brief onslaught.

‘Obviously the original forensic team can be totally forgiven for allowing their initial opinion to be coloured by the unfortunate recent history of certain Toyota motor cars,’ she said. ‘And furthermore there was initially no reason at all to even consider, really, the possibility of suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs Anderton. But, Mr Parsons, when you were asked to re-examine the vehicle, along with a more experienced man, the UK’s acknowledged leader in the field, and in a more thorough and detailed way, was it not then abundantly clear to you and your team that strands of the accelerator cable of Mrs Anderton’s vehicle had been deliberately cut?’

Parsons coloured slightly. ‘Well, not entirely,’ he said.

‘C’mon now, Mr Parsons,’ Pam Cotton persisted. Another of her favourite phrases. ‘Come on, now. Surely you were then able to tell whether or not the threads had been deliberately cut? So, were they?’

‘Yes. They must have been, I suppose.’

‘You suppose, Mr Parsons? Surely you must now accept beyond any reasonable doubt that the damage to the vehicle’s accelerator cable was not caused by mechanical failure?’

‘Well, yes,’ Parsons agreed with obvious reluctance, looking more uncomfortable than ever.

‘And so you must therefore accept that the cable threads were cut by someone wishing to harm Mrs Brenda Anderton, do you not?’

John Parsons glanced pleadingly at the judge, who in turn fixed a disapproving look on Pam Cotton.

‘The witness cannot possibly be in a position to answer that question, Mrs Cotton,’ he said.

‘Of course not, My Lord, I do apologize,’ the barrister responded, again looking almost anything but apologetic.

‘No further questions,’ she added, once more taking her seat.

Ultimately the cases for both prosecution and defence, including the opening and closing statements of both barristers, took eleven days to complete. On the twelfth day Sir Charles Montague sent the jury to deliberate their verdict.

They took less than four hours. And their decision was unanimous, the foreman told the court. Guilty. Robert had been found unanimously guilty of murdering his first and only legal wife.

Still protesting his innocence, the man I had once so loved, the husband who had never really been mine, was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation from the judge that he serve a minimum of fifteen years.

As I left the court, hurrying past the press gathered on the forecourt, I did experience a certain sense of satisfaction. The woman directly responsible for my son’s death was herself dead, and the man I now held indirectly responsible for the entire tragedy had been jailed for life for her murder.

They had both got no less than they deserved and I felt no compassion for either of them. Not any more. It wasn’t enough, of course, because nothing could bring my beloved Robbie back.

But at least a kind of justice had been achieved.