They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

9 Early July 2007 — Looking back

Roy excited me so much, in those early years. On our first date, those clear blue eyes felt as if they were drilling deep into my soul, and I loved his curiosity — he seemed to genuinely want to know everything about me. None of my previous relationships had ever questioned me the way he did. And I liked it. I felt he really cared. And he made me laugh.

He made me feel wanted and secure, but more than anything, he excited me. It was as if a light that I never knew I had inside me had suddenly been switched on. I felt I was finally clear about my sexuality, and about who I wanted to be with for ever — I didn’t have eyes for anyone else.

His life seemed so glamorous and adventurous, compared to my dull job at the time working as a receptionist — well, at least until I asked him what his first case had been. He blushed and, grinning, told me he’d been called to help on the investigation into the theft of a donkey.

The ridiculous thing was that, even though I really wasn’t fond of my parents, at the age of nineteen I still craved their approval, a life-long habit I have been unable to shake off. My mother, who had banned me from having any sort of sexual relationship with a female after that traumatic incident with Simone, had also been dismissive of all previous boyfriends I’d risked bringing home (most I didn’t). Surprisingly, however, she thought a policeman was respectable and took — almost — a shine to him. It was the nearest I’d ever seen her to showing any warmth to any of my friends.

Poor Roy made the mistake of feigning interest in my father’s model aircraft. He bored Roy for hours on end with stories about his own father’s exploits in the war. Re-enacting dogfights he’d had, shooting down Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Dorniers and Heinkels, notching up his kills. He acted these out like pageants, swirling his little aircraft through the air, reeling off the ammunition and bomb loads each plane was armed with — and had left.

Because it was early days in our romance, it was a while before Roy, who had worked it all out the first time he had met my father, told me he had actually done the maths and realized that my father was making it all up. Fortunately, it amused Roy. I’d been scared he might run a mile after meeting my parents, but he didn’t, he recognized just how very different from them I was. I later learned that one of the attributes of a good detective is to be able to read and understand people. Emotional intelligence. And curiosity.

He never truly warmed to my parents, but he was always scrupulously polite to them, and always curious about them. I admired that about him, and that he was non-judgemental.

Which was just as well as they are complete cheapskates. Like, for example, my mother would buy all her Christmas cards for the following Christmas in the January sales. Not that they had many people to send them to — a few cousins and Joan and Ted. So far as I knew, the only friends they had. But hey, she must have saved at least £2 doing this. Then, oh boy, the night Roy came round and did the traditional thing, of asking my father if he could marry me. My father cracked a bottle of sweet sherry, then after two glasses, which clearly went to his head, effusively declared we must all go out to dinner the following weekend to celebrate — and it would be their treat.

So the next Saturday we went to their local, which my father said had something of a reputation as a good food pub. My father, Roy and I ordered our starters, which was fine, although my mother, frugal to the bitter end, said she couldn’t manage one and would just have one course. But then it came to ordering the mains. Roy went for a T-bone steak, which was the most expensive thing on the menu — not by a huge margin — maybe £7 more expensive than the other mains. My mother, quite appallingly, holding the menu up, turned to him and said, ‘Do you really need that steak, Roy?’

‘Actually,’ he replied calmly, ‘yes, I do.’

If I had to pinpoint the moment when the first fissure in Roy’s relationship with my parents appeared, it was then. A T-bone steak.

And my pathetic father, as if to appease my mother by economizing on the wine, ordered just a half-bottle of house red, to last the four of us all evening.

I loved Roy for his stance over the steak. Loved him so much for that.