Хилари Боннер - The Cruellest Game

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 just want you to know that you did not marry a murderer on top of everything else that I have been. I also want you to know that I love you as much as ever — that was always the only true and honest thing about me probably. I cannot expect you to still feel the same way about me. I just hope that you can bring yourself to visit me while I am on remand and allow me at least to try to explain.

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.

Unfortunately I fear there is very little money left anywhere. Of course, as a rigger my wages from Amaco stopped just as soon as I stopped turning up for work. I’d thought that the lottery money, even after we bought Highrise, would be enough to last us the rest of our lives, Marion. It was just over a million pounds. But low interest rates and Robbie’s school fees, even with his scholarship, meant that for some time now I have been eating into the capital which I’d set aside to provide an income. I’d planned to deal with it. I’d thought I might perhaps try to raise a mortgage on Highrise. But I just never quite got round to it. I suppose I didn’t want to face reality. I’m so very sorry, Marion...

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.’