The Cruellest Game

Twenty-two

I retreated into Highrise again, into what had once been the comforting womb provided by my beautiful home. Although this time only for a few days. I had already planned what I would do if Robert was convicted, in theory anyway, but I did not yet know if it would be possible.

I remained devastated by all that had happened and would for the rest of my life. However, in a way, I had done my grieving. For my son, for the life I had once lived, and indeed for the man I had once loved. In order to survive I had to move on, at least to the best of my ability. And if I were to have any chance of doing so, I could not stay at Highrise long term. Not only did I no longer have the money or the will to maintain the place, but the home I’d once thought so perfect was now just a constant reminder of the sham of my marriage and the tragic loss of my son. Although, of course, I really needed no reminder.

I also had to remember that I was not yet quite forty. I would celebrate my fortieth birthday later that year — to use the accepted term, even though I felt as if no celebration of any kind would ever be part of my life again. Unless I were to follow in the footsteps of my dearest boy, I could reasonably expect to live another thirty, even forty years. And I had already rejected suicide. That would be the ultimate defeat. I wasn’t going to allow my supposed husband and his wicked wife to defeat me in anything. Not any more. Robert’s shocking courtroom revelation of how Brenda had used our son like some worthless puppet in order to execute the worst possible revenge on his father and me had made me even more determined about that. To me, Brenda Anderton was quite simply a murderer, every bit as much as was Robert, who had now paid the proper price for her actions. I wasn’t going to allow myself to become another of her victims.

But, somewhat bizarrely, I needed Robert’s help before I could move on.

Once the trial was over I finally opened the letters he had sent me. It seemed strange to take them from the back of the kitchen cupboard, into which I had flung them immediately upon receipt so that they would be out of sight, and to know that I was touching what he had touched. It would once have been unthinkable for me to have left unseen any word at all from this man. But I had done so for months. And there they all were. Twenty of them. Every one had remained unread and unanswered, but he hadn’t given up writing them.

I checked the dates of the postmarks as best I could and ripped open the first, which he had sent me right after he was arrested. Its content was predictable. This was a letter full of guilt and remorse concerning his double life and the way in which he had bigamously married me, and his grief and even greater sense of guilt over Robbie’s death. It also protested his innocence of any involvement in Brenda’s death. He had written:

I tossed the letter angrily to one side. I was surprised that I could still feel this level of anger towards Robert, but I most certainly did. The letter just emphasized to me the fantasy world in which, I now knew, he had always existed. Ever since he’d met me anyway.

For a start, he had never married me. He’d committed bigamy with me. How could he, even in the wildest imaginings of his twisted mind, have thought that I could bear to visit him, let alone want to? Finally, what on earth did he mean by his plea to be allowed to ‘try to explain’? How could anyone, even plausibly ingenuous Robert, explain away what he had done? The calculated callous way in which he had conducted his double life over such a long period, and the terrible consequences of his actions, could never be explained. Not to me anyway.

The contents of the letter were exactly what I had expected, which is why I hadn’t opened it or any of the others. I was fairly certain the rest of them would be merely more of the same, but I opened them just in case, and glanced quickly through.

One of the quite early letters contained information about our financial situation. Robert said he wanted me to have access to what funds remained. He told me that the lottery money had been kept in an off-shore savings account and included the account details and his access code. He also gave me the access codes for his R. Anderson account and an R. Anderton account I didn’t know about. The address for all three accounts was the same — 240a Airport Road, Bristol — and meant nothing to me. This certainly explained why no incriminating correspondence concerning any of these accounts arrived either at Highrise or, presumably, at the Exeter property he’d shared with Brenda. But did Robert have yet another home, I wondered? The man really was a box of tricks.

I kicked myself for not having opened any of the letters earlier as this information may have made life easier for me. Then I read on. He explained that 240a Airport Road, presumably conveniently situated close to the airport he regularly flew in and out of, was just an accommodation address, saying: ‘It probably wouldn’t be possible to open a bank account with an accommodation address nowadays. But sixteen years ago, and with a little creativity, you could do it.’

Well, he could do it, anyway, I thought wryly. And I could only imagine just how ‘creative’ he had been. Then I got to the important bit.

I tossed the letter to one side. He didn’t want to face reality. He was sorry. Nothing new there then. And how dare he in any way blame our poor dead son for anything. Robbie wouldn’t have minded if his father had said he couldn’t afford to send him to Kelly. He would have understood. He had been that kind of boy.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t known before the alleged amount of Robert’s lottery win. I’d not even bothered to ask him. After all, by the time I’d learned about it I’d been pretty sure there wouldn’t be much of it left. I thought about our lifestyle for a moment. Robert must have spent several thousand pounds every year on fine wine alone. Looking back, it had become almost an obsession, and I knew that some of the bottles he’d acquired had cost over £100 each. Our cars were always luxury models bought new as Robert said he didn’t want either of us driving vehicles that may have been misused by someone else. Our latest, the top of the range Lexus hybrid with all its extras, had cost over £50,000. Then there was the upkeep of Highrise, not to mention its initial purchase. Even without the fall in interest rates it seemed to me rather more surprising that the cash had lasted as long as it did than that it had now run out.

Another letter asked if I would try to visit his daughter, Janey, who was in local authority care and had apparently been placed with a foster family. Not for the first time I marvelled at the man’s cheek. There was no question of my visiting Janey. While, of course, I felt dreadfully sorry for the poor child, an innocent caught up in all of this, I could not get involved with her in even the most spurious of ways. I was still having enough trouble coming to terms with my own situation.

The most recently received letter had been written soon after Robert’s conviction. He had been returned to Exeter, a local prison which took male prisoners on remand from all over Devon and Cornwall, but was now awaiting transfer. He might even be sent to Dartmoor, he said, if he was considered low risk enough for a category C establishment. The irony of him possibly being locked up in the middle of the moor he’d so loved to roam, often with our poor dead son, was not lost on me.

Predictably the bulk of the letter was another outpouring of self-pity, full of his despair at the prospect of spending fifteen years in prison: ‘without you being there for me. Locked up in some dreadful place and I now know that my life is over, and that is made all the worse by the knowledge that I brought this all about myself.’

Yes, I thought, and our son’s life is over because of you too.

He still maintained, however, that he was innocent of the murder of his wife Brenda. That he had been wrongly convicted. He wrote:

I skimmed over most of the rest of it. Just more of the same. Yet again he begged me to visit: ‘It would mean everything to me. I don’t expect you to love me any more, but just to know that you didn’t totally hate me would give me some will to live, and to fight on to prove my innocence.’

I bundled up all the letters again and put them back in the cupboard.

Then I considered what to do next. I found that I rather wanted to speak to Pam Cotton. She hadn’t been at all what I had expected in a barrister, not out of court anyway. After Robert’s conviction she and my solicitor Marti Smith had insisted on taking me for a drink in a pub near the court. For them I think it had been something of a celebration at getting the right result. For me it had been more of wake really. Pam had been kind to me, her star witness as she referred to me. Albeit after quite a few drinks had been consumed, she had even given me her mobile number and told me not to be afraid to call if there was ever anything she could help me with. I called. And she answered straight away.

I cut to the chase.

‘I–I just wanted to ask you... Robert has never admitted that he killed Brenda; do you believe there is any chance at all that he might be innocent?’

‘No chance at all,’ replied the barrister at once. ‘Guilty as hell. And rightly found to be so by twelve people of average ignorance.’

‘What?’

‘Herbert Spencer’s definition of a jury,’ she said. And she chuckled.

I didn’t. I wasn’t in the mood for any sort of attempt at humour.

‘But wouldn’t you have expected him to confess, to confess in court?’ I continued. ‘I mean after breaking down the way he did and revealing all that stuff that Brenda had told him?’

I could hear a sort of harrumphing sound down the phone. ‘No chance of that, either,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at the bar for almost twelve years and I’ve never yet experienced a Perry Mason moment. They never confess. The evidence Robert gave about Brenda is about as good as it gets. But all he told the court was what she’d said she had done. Even though he seemed to more or less break down he still wouldn’t admit what he had done. And that’s par for the course.’

‘I see,’ I said, but I still felt, and I suppose sounded, uncomfortable.

‘What’s brought this on, Marion?’ Pam asked. ‘You’re not still carrying a torch for the man, are you?’

In spite of myself I managed a hollow laugh. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I certainly am not. It’s just that, well, he’s been sending me letters I’ve not opened. Until now. And even in the last one, which only arrived yesterday, he’s still protesting his innocence. I mean, is that normal?’

‘I should say,’ responded Pam. ‘You must know the old adage. There’s not a guilty prisoner in any jail in all the land.’

I ended the call and thanked her. I certainly wasn’t going to share with her what I intended to do next. I called Marti Smith, my solicitor, and asked if she could advise me on the technicalities of arranging to visit Robert. I knew that as he was no longer on remand I would need a visiting order which had to be approved by him, not that, from the tone of his letters, I thought there would be a problem with that.

‘And there’s something else I need you to do for me first, some paperwork I need you to deal with,’ I told Marti.

Less than two weeks later I found myself on my way to Exeter Prison, the imposing Victorian-built penitentiary situated quite centrally in the lovely old county town. I was not looking forward to seeing Robert again, and in such a place, but it had to be done.

I passed through security, enduring the indignity of a body search, which brought back unwelcome memories of my own brush with the law. The prison officer who searched my bag removed the sheaf of paperwork I had with me and glanced at me curiously.

I explained that these were legal papers I needed Robert to sign.

‘Did you know you could have arranged a legal visit in a private room with your solicitor present?’ he enquired.

I nodded. ‘I didn’t want to make it too formal,’ I said.

The officer removed my pen from my bag and then replaced it.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But if your husband agrees to sign, then I’d like you to indicate that to us before handing him a pen. For your own safety and his.’

I agreed, wondering at this new world where even a pen could be regarded as some kind of weapon. Although maybe the officer was watching his back as much as anything else, because Robert had presumably already had plenty of access to a pen in order to write to me, before and after his conviction.

He was waiting at a small table in a big room, along with a number of other prisoners already with visitors. He looked as if he may have put on even more weight. His complexion was now quite unhealthily pallid, and he seemed to be sweating. His hair was still short and, I thought, perhaps just beginning at last to turn grey at the temples. He stood up and half smiled as I walked towards him and for one awful moment I was afraid he was going to lean across the table and attempt to kiss me. But I think he saw the expression on my face. Anyway, he sat down again smartly. I sat down opposite him.

He spoke first.

‘I can’t tell you what it means to me that you’ve come here,’ he said. ‘When I was told that you’d applied for a visiting order it was the first good news I’d had in months—’

I interrupted him then. There was no point in stringing him along.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Robert,’ I told him coldly. ‘I have come to see you for one reason and one reason only. I need your cooperation. It appears we have run out of funds and I no longer have any income at all. I have to sell Highrise and I can’t do it without you. Not easily anyway.’

I slammed the necessary paperwork down on the table.

There had definitely been hope in his eyes when I’d walked into that room. I saw it fade as I spoke.

‘Not Highrise?’ It was a question rather than a statement.

I nodded. ‘I have no choice. We have no choice.’

With resignation, and without saying anything else, he looked down and began to read the papers before him.

‘You maintain ownership of one half of the property,’ I told him. ‘This document just gives me the right to dispose of the place and its contents as I see fit. Your share will be put in trust for you until your release.’

He glanced up at me.

‘Do you think that makes any difference to me?’ he asked. ‘Now?’

I shrugged. ‘I just wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to take anything from you. I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want to touch anything of yours ever again.’

I spat out the last words in spite of knowing I shouldn’t. After all, I was there to persuade Robert to do my bidding, not to vent my latent fury on him for its own sake.

He did not reply. Instead he looked down again at the papers on the table. I noticed that his hands were trembling. I waited.

I’d thought about asking Marti Smith to approach him. Or, as I assumed would be the correct procedure, to ask for the approach to be made by Robert’s solicitor. But I’d known I would stand a better chance of getting what I wanted in the least problematic way if I went to visit Robert and asked him directly. It was an uncomfortable thing to do. But I had been fairly confident of the feelings he still held towards me. And of his tremendous sense of guilt. And actually I still was. In spite of my outburst.

Eventually, after what seemed like a very long time, he looked up at me again.

‘Is this what you really want, Marion?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But think of the memories? Do you really want to leave Highrise? I mean, maybe I will appeal successfully. There is nothing standing in the way of us having a life together now. Perhaps we could rebuild our life? Is that out of the question, Marion?’

For a moment or two I was speechless. Then it was like the waters breaking, as words and thoughts I had barely voiced even to myself poured out of me.

‘Do you ever listen to yourself, Robert?’ I stormed at him. ‘You’re crazy. Mad. Crazy. Do you honestly think any woman in her right mind could countenance a future with a man who’s done to her what you’ve done to me? Our son is dead because of you. We don’t have a home. We certainly don’t have the slimmest hope of any life together ever. Even if I were stupid enough to consider such a thing, neither of us have the means to keep Highrise going. How could you have thought that your lottery money was going to last for ever? It was a miracle you kept all those ridiculous balls in the air for as long as you did. I have a mountain of bills to pay. I have no money even to refill the oil tank. It may be April but every room in the house is still freezing except the kitchen and that’s where I’ve existed all winter. Since your arrest I’ve barely been able to feed myself, or the fucking dog. And I wouldn’t have been able to do so at all without the generosity of the vicar’s wife, of all people, and others in the village, the neighbours you never wanted anything to do with. You’re a fucking maniac, Robert. A total fucking maniac and I was too blind to see it. Our poor fucking son had to die before I could see it. Then I saw it all right. Now I fucking see it. So just sign these fucking papers, will you, and then that will be the end of everything...’

I stopped abruptly, suddenly aware both of my use of language and that my voice had risen until I was shouting at virtually the top of it. The room around us had fallen almost silent. The same prison officer who had earlier searched my bag was walking purposefully towards us. He stopped walking when I stopped shouting.

Robert merely stared at me. His eyes blank and yet filled with pain. His jaw slack. I wondered if he really was crazy. I thought he must be to have done what he did. Sometimes I wondered if I too were crazy. Driven that way by this madman before me.

I glanced towards the prison officer and made a show of taking my pen from my bag. The officer stepped forwards, again. Watchful. I placed the pen on the table alongside the legal papers. Without another word Robert picked it up and signed in each of the places Marti Smith had marked.

That was it. He had with those few signatures given me the right to sell Highrise, to walk away from the place and from him for ever.

I half snatched the papers from him, shuffling them into some sort of order as I stood up, swung round and prepared to leave. Then he spoke once more.

‘Will you come and visit again?’ he asked, almost plaintively. ‘Will you? If only to tell me how you’ve got on, and if you’ve sold the place?’

I could barely believe my ears. I turned round to look at him one last time. His eyes were pleading. His lips were trembling as well as his hands. I didn’t give a damn.

‘Your solicitor can do that,’ I said, my voice deliberately expressionless. ‘I never want to see you again as long as I live.’

I began to walk across the visiting room to the exit. As I did so I could hear a kind of strangled wail. It hardly sounded like Robert, more like the anguished cry of a wild animal. But I knew it was him.

I did not look back.

When I arrived home, or rather to the place I now thought of as having once been my home, I took the signed papers from my bag and flipped through. I felt no sense of triumph. This really did mark the end of it all. The end of an era. The end of a lifetime. I felt mostly sorrow. But I also experienced perhaps just a glimmer of hope for some kind of future, something I knew I had now denied Robert even more than Exeter Crown Court had.

I did want to start again, if it were to prove to be possible. I would never stop grieving for Robbie. But I was damned if I was going to grieve for his father too, and let that man destroy whatever might be left for me.

I called an estate agent that very afternoon in order to put Highrise on the market. And I called Marti Smith to tell her Robert had signed. Then I set about giving the place a massive spring clean and generally making it as presentable as I could in order to sell. The next day I planned to tidy the garden, particularly at the front, where visitors first arrived at the property. I needed to get out fast, I really did. And I was prepared to do anything necessary in order for that to happen, including ensuring that the price was right.

Ultimately, and thankfully, the old house sold surprisingly easily. Or perhaps not that surprisingly. I put it on the market for more than £50,000 less than the price suggested by our major local estate agent, and ultimately agreed to sell for almost £100,000 less than his estimate. Ironically, it was Robert who had always said, when I’d gone to car boot sales or markets, that everything has a price, and everything will sell at the right price.

I was more readily prepared to accept a low offer for Highrise because the prospective buyer was, unusually, neither in a chain nor in need of a mortgage. I just wanted to get out of the place as quickly as possible, and he just wanted to move himself and his family in as quickly as possible.

At around the same time the inquest into Robbie’s death was eventually held in the North Devon market town of Barnstaple. It was a curious affair. I attended with my father. Dad had offered to accompany me, and for the first time since the nightmare had begun I did not turn him away.

I wasn’t required to give evidence and did not have to be at the hearing. But I wanted, indeed, needed to be there to witness the final chapter in my son’s tragic story,

The coroner for Exeter and Greater Devon, Dr Elspeth Hunt, had been supplied with written reports from the ambulance service and from the Scenes of Crime Officers. DS Jarvis was the principal witness.

He briefly outlined how he had been called to Highrise on the night of Robbie’s death and had found my son hanging from a beam in his room.

‘My first reaction and that of the paramedics and other police officers called to the scene was that this was a case of tragic suicide,’ said Jarvis. ‘However, subsequent events have led us to believe that there was probably a third party involved.’

‘Indeed, Mr Jarvis,’ agreed the coroner. ‘And the involvement of this third party is something that has recently become a matter of record in another court, has it not?’

‘Yes, madam. However, the third party concerned is deceased and we are unable to take our investigations into the death of Robbie Anderson any further.’

‘So I understand. You are speaking of Mrs Brenda Anderton, are you not, whose husband, Robbie Anderson’s father, was recently convicted of her murder?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘And you were quite right, Mr Jarvis, to be reticent about naming a person who can neither answer the allegations made against her nor be brought to trial. However, I think it is important for this court, the sole task of which is to ascertain the cause of Robbie Anderson’s death, to be able to place on record that all known aspects of this case have been considered.’

‘Yes, madam,’ said DS Jarvis again.

‘And so, also for the record, Mr Jarvis, can you confirm that no other person is being investigated regarding the death of Robbie Anderson?’

‘I can, madam. In fact, our investigation into the young man’s death has now been closed.’

Within just over an hour the coroner announced her verdict on the ending of fifteen years of bright and promising life.

‘Under the complex circumstances of this case, and because there is insufficient evidence to come to any other conclusion, I am delivering an open verdict,’ said Dr Hunt.

I had been ready for that, of course. DS Jarvis had already indicated that there could really be no other ruling, and both he and my solicitor, Marti Smith, had explained the legal situation to me.

The coroner then went on to offer her sympathy to Robbie’s family.

‘I can only imagine what this fine young man’s parents have been through following his tragic death,’ she said. ‘This really is the kind of case I would like never to come my way again.’

She did not mention further that one half of Robbie’s parentage was in prison. As I left the court, my arm through Dad’s, I did feel hurt that in the annals of law the circumstances of my son’s death would never be fully explained nor recorded.

None the less, I also, finally, felt a sense of closure.

The sale of Highrise was completed in mid-June, just over six weeks after my accepting the buyer’s offer. Everything went extremely smoothly. But I suppose it does when you’re damned near giving a house away.

I didn’t care. In fact, I didn’t give a damn. I just wanted to leave the place and never see it again. And I would still have enough money to begin to rebuild my life. I didn’t know how long it might take me, or even if ultimately I would find the will to do so, but I was going to give it a good try.

During that six-week period I called in a clearance firm and accepted another doubtless derisory sum to clear Highrise of most of its remaining furniture and decorative pieces, all of Robert and Robbie’s clothes which were still there, and indeed most of my own clothes and personal possessions.

Then I spent a sizeable chunk of the proceeds on a new hairdo. I wanted to change everything about myself, and my full head of curly brown hair was probably my most distinctive feature. It was a big thing for me to do. My hair had been much the same since my teens, except for the grey roots. I determined to do it in style, so I took the train to London and splashed out on the full works at Vidal Sassoon’s Mayfair salon. I wanted a totally different look. I had my hair straightened and went for a very short geometric cut, typical Sassoon, and a full white-blonde peroxide dip. I then took a cab to John Lewis in Oxford Street and bought myself a black leather jacket, black leggings and a couple of those cotton print dresses everyone seemed to be wearing that you put on over leggings. I had a long way to go before adopting Marti Smith’s unique sharpness of style, but I had to admit to myself that my clothes shopping was somewhat influenced by my solicitor. More than anything, I wanted to look modern. After all, I was finally about to leave behind what had been, even in the very good days, a kind of time-warp existence, and project myself into the modern world.

I discarded the dated nearly black trouser suit that I’d worn in order to travel to London and left John Lewis wearing the leather jacket I’d purchased over one of the print dresses and the leggings. I couldn’t help looking at myself in every mirror I passed, if only to check that the woman in the reflection really was me. I seemed to be well on the way to at least looking like a different person, and it was only by more or less becoming a different person that I thought I would ever have a chance of moving on from the enormity of all that I had lost.

I thought I was getting there, although the day that would have been Robbie’s sixteenth birthday, the 28th of May, was predictably black. But I coped. Just about.

I even threw a little farewell party for the people who had been so kind to me: Gladys and the Reverend Gerald, the Farleys, the Jamesons and Marti Smith. I’d also invited Pam Cotton, but she’d been in Truro prosecuting a crooked Cornish county councillor. At least, Pam said he was crooked. Seriously so.

The rest of us drank all that remained of Robert’s wine and got quite squiffy. Well, I did, anyway. And Gladys too. She wobbled on her feet a bit and looked rather weepy as she enveloped me in a great big hug and said: ‘You will come and visit, won’t you, Marion? We’re going to miss you, you know.’

I promised that I would, but had no intention of doing so.

When I left Highrise Farm a couple of days later I needed only a couple of medium-sized suitcases to carry what was left of my personal possessions. On one of the wettest and windiest days of the worst June on record I loaded the cases onto the back seat of the Lexus, my only legacy, really, of all those years with Robert. Then I loaded Florrie into the rear compartment behind her doggie guard, started the engine, and drove dry-eyed and without a backward glance up the lane away from the place I had so loved, from the place that had once been my wonderful dream home, and from a life I had also thought to be wonderful.

I suppose I surprised myself a little. But I had, of course, already wept so many tears that there were probably none left. Highrise represented only misery now. It reminded me only of great tragedy and great loss.

Suddenly I found that I couldn’t wait to put it behind me once and for all.

I hoped eventually that I might be able to return to teaching as a career, albeit after some retraining, perhaps in a place where I was not known. Meanwhile I thought I might travel for a bit, visiting places I had never been to, which held no memories for me of my other lost life.

But first I had arranged to visit my father for a couple of weeks. It was a long time since I’d actually stayed in the old cottage attached to the little garage he still ran part-time on the outskirts of Hartland. And even longer since I’d been inside the garage where I knew I would find him once I’d realized he wasn’t in the house.

He was down in the inspection pit working on an old MGB roadster. He’d seen me a couple of times since I’d acquired my peroxide-blonde geometric hairdo, so he’d already got over the shock. Well, got over it enough to no longer mention it, anyway. He came to the edge of the pit and peered up at me.

‘Don’t suppose you can give me a hand, maid?’ he asked. ‘Young Jim Hickson, you know, lives with his mam up by the church, needs to get to Bude tomorrow ’bout a new job. Bleddy young fool’s never learned how to look after an MG exhaust. Drives everywhere fast as he can whatever the state of the road and he’s really scuppered it this time.’

I bent down so that I could clearly see the end of the B’s exhaust pipe hanging at a terminal angle.

‘Needs a whole new system, of course, but I’m damned if I can get the parts in time,’ Dad went on. ‘Two or three days, they say, so I’m just going to have to patch ’er up...’

He was a lovely man, my dad, kind, trustworthy, always trying to help people. It was just like him to be putting himself out for a neighbour, a young man I knew he had seen grow up. If only I could have married a man like him, I thought to myself, not for the first time.

I straightened up and smiled down at him.

‘So it’s the old bean-can trick is it?’

‘It sure is,’ he said. ‘Fiddly bleddy job, too, and ’twould be a damn sight easier with two pairs of hands.’

‘I’m not sure I’d be much help,’ I remarked casually.

‘Oh yes, you would.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I persisted.

‘Come on, maid.’ It was Dad’s turn to persist. ‘When you worked with me as a slip of a girl you were a better mechanic than any boy. You should have carried on with it, you know. You were a natural. You won’t have forgotten, I’m sure of it.’

I studied him carefully for a few seconds. I didn’t know how closely my father had followed Robert’s trial, if at all in view of the distress I knew it had caused him, nor how fully some of the less dramatic evidence, the technical stuff, had been reported in the press. But Dad’s entire concentration appeared focused on the task confronting him. There certainly seemed to be no edge to his remarks.

I relaxed. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best. Got any spare overalls?’

Dad climbed up out of the pit.

‘I’ll find you some, and I’ll fetch a can,’ he said, beaming at me. ‘Still my right-hand girl, eh?’

He disappeared into the cottage. The bean-can trick, as it’s known, involves vertically slicing open a tin can, cutting out a strip, and fastening it around a blown or broken exhaust pipe. It could only ever be a temporary job, but with a bit of luck, would get young Jim Hickson to Bude and back.

While I waited for Dad to return I rummaged around the garage looking for a couple of jubilee clips with which to secure the makeshift repair.

During what I now regarded as my long sham of a marriage to Robert I’d left the whole of the early part of my life behind me and never talked about my perhaps unlikely knowledge in certain areas. Nor would I have been sure, then, how much I’d retained. In any case, Robert had believed in a pretty clear demarcation in our roles. He’d been the man and the engineer. He’d looked after our vehicles and everything mechanical and technical. He’d not had the vaguest idea that I might also have been capable of doing so.

But my father knew me well. I had indeed forgotten very little from those long ago days working alongside him in his garage.

I’d realized that as soon as I’d started my deadly work on Brenda Anderton’s car.