Mark was starting to get a barbecue going in the back garden of the end terrace cottage he and Gemma had bought a few months previously. She’d be back from a court visit shortly – having tried, no doubt, to make the case for a probation order rather than a prison sentence on behalf of one of her hapless regulars – and he’d promised her they’d make the most of the still light, mid-July summer evenings. Having tried paper and twigs, he was already onto the firelighters but with little luck so far. He pondered that perhaps it represented something of an allegory for his recent life – it had been difficult to get things started since his release on parole the previous winter, after just over six years in prison.
They had decided on Petworth as a suitable place to start their life together, between Littlehampton, home to the probation office that Gemma was based at, and Farnham, where her mother rattled around in the large mock Tudor house she’d been left with after Gemma’s father died. Mark had used some of the money he had saved from the wreckage of his marriage to Fiona, and which he’d had no need or chance to use while in prison, for the deposit and Gemma had arranged a small mortgage – £25,000 wasn’t a bad price and it was a lovely area and a nice place to live. However in spite of that, and even after just a few months, Mark couldn’t throw off a general and growing feeling of dissatisfaction, or maybe more accurately of boredom, with his situation.
The market town of Petworth itself was picture-postcard quaint: cobbled streets around the centre, and home to a growing number of antique shops, reflecting its rapidly developing reputation as a centre for the trade. The imposing Petworth House was the major – really, only – tourist attraction; it dominated the town but Mark knew little of its history, apart from the fact that prior to being handed over to the National Trust shortly after the Second World War it had belonged to various aristocratic families. He was more familiar with the little stone cross in the local cemetery commemorating the 32 boys and masters who’d been killed when Petworth Boys Schools was hit, supposedly mistakenly, by German bombs in 1942. Apparently the bombs had been aimed at Petworth House itself, which presumably and according to local gossip was being used at the time for military purposes of some sort.
Things hadn’t happened for Mark as he’d envisioned when he was counting time and making plans at Ford Open Prison, just down the road from Littlehampton. Completing his sentence there explained his contact with the probation office in Littlehampton and with Gemma in particular. He had tried his hand at this and that, but nothing had taken off. Most recently, and trying to benefit from the growing antique market, he had been buying and selling bits and pieces of antique furniture. He’d immersed himself in recent copies of the renowned Miller’s Guides to Antiques and Collectables and idled away a good few hours, merging into days, following up local ads and pottering around at auction viewings and sales. He fancied he had become something of an amateur expert and had even managed to sell a couple of nursing chairs and a Victorian rosewood wheel barometer at a recent furniture sale, but really that had only just covered the commission he ended up being charged. Nonetheless it had been reasonably pleasant inveigling his way into the local antique scene, and the chance of making a real find and potential profit added some interest and even excitement to the whole endeavour. At the same time as dabbling in the trade he’d made a few acquaintances at sales run by Weller’s, who had recently expanded from running just agricultural and livestock auctions. Their morning sales invariably led to a few of the regular buyers and dealers heading for a liquid lunch at the Angel Inn in the centre of town. Mark was a good deal younger than them, most of whom looked well past fifty; he hadn’t changed his style of dress from pre-prison days and liked to think his Wrangler shirt, Levi’s, brown leather jacket and cowboy-style boots set him apart from the Barbour jackets and check shirts favoured by the professional antique dealers. To be fair, though, they were a relatively interesting bunch and Mark had enjoyed these almost weekly events, even if the tales of bargains and profits became more and more incredible as the afternoons wore on. The thing was, it just wasn’t enough or what he wanted; he knew it was basically a distraction, one which Gemma was becoming increasingly irritated by. Even though Gemma had been understanding up to a point about the difficulties he would inevitably face after a lengthy spell in prison, her snide comments and digs about her bringing in all the money had become gradually more frequent. It was a little unfair; after all, the problems faced by ex-cons was something she was more than familiar with, given her own job. He’d kept on top of the domestic jobs, the shopping and cooking and cleaning, but she always managed to point out something that hadn’t been done in the appropriate time or manner.
***
Mark was only thirty-three: just over ten years ago his life had seemed to be mapped out, and in retrospect in a far from unpleasant manner. He’d got a lecturing position in the Sociology Department at Sussex University after completing his Masters’ degree at Kent and within a year or so was beginning to be seen as something of a rising star in the discipline. He’d published a few papers in respected, subject-specialist journals and even been paid a reasonable publisher’s advance for editing a collection of classic social theory extracts deemed suitable for undergraduate students. He had been well liked in the department and popular with the students too; he’d always had a sort of naturally outgoing streak which enabled him to mix with the older members of the Sociology department as well as the more trendy, newer staff and post-graduates. Looking back he couldn’t believe how he’d let Justine, one of his first post-graduate students, have such an effect on him and his future. Sure enough, she was gorgeous, but he wasn’t too bad either and had always managed to do pretty well for himself; and Fiona, his ex and only wife, had her good points too. He had taken his eye off things. In what eventually had become a rather desperate attempt to impress Justine, he’d given up on his marriage and then tried to get his hands on Fiona’s family’s money by removing his in-laws.
Even though he had certainly had plenty of time to think and plan while serving his prison sentence, Mark had tried to avoid any detailed over-analysis or examination of just what had happened. The truth of the matter was that it certainly didn’t reflect well on him and he’d never been one for too much self-criticism. It undermined his sense of who he was to imagine that he must have been obsessed with Justine, and that he had let his paranoia that she would want something more take over his life for those few years. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of it was that when he had tried to work through it in his head, it was evident that she couldn’t have really meant that much to him. In the end, however much he tried to rationalise things, there was no getting away from the fact that a mixture of egotism and greed had been a pretty key motivation.
He had never really managed to work out just why he’d been so greedy or whether that was merely masking something else. Why hadn’t he been satisfied with what he had, like his now ex-colleagues at the university, who were all no doubt living very comfortably in expensive, gentrified properties in his favourite town, Brighton? He had always felt that he had more about him than most of them, so why had he wanted more? It was painful for Mark to accept that it must have been down to his self-centredness, mixed with arrogance and greed – perhaps not surprisingly he had found it easier to put the ‘might-have-beens’ aside.
Nevertheless, and for whatever reasons, at the time he had allowed his concerns and distrust about Justine and his best friend, Tom, to cloud everything. While in retrospect those concerns might have proved justified, that hadn’t warranted his risking and then losing everything he had worked for, even though that had come quite easily. Irrespective of any explanations for what might have been going on in his head, he had devised and carried through the murdering of two people whom he had, in point of fact, grown reasonably fond of. In terms of any conventional attempt at a label, he had become some kind of psychopath; he had, albeit unwittingly, taken on the persona and career of a serial poisoner, and in a cock-eyed way with some degree of success. And it had all been for nothing. That bitch, Justine, hadn’t understood or supported him. When it came to it she had abandoned him like a shot and played the part of the innocent dupe, and Tom, supposedly his best friend, even blood brother, had taken advantage of the fall-out. Mark still reckoned that if it hadn’t been for Justine’s lack of imagination and nerve everything would have worked out fine. It was all water under the bridge now, though.
***
Mark opened a can of Foster’s lager. It had been over eight months since his release, after serving just under six years of his life sentence for murder. On the face of it that had been quite a result. He was fortunate that there had been a general shift towards emphasising the rehabilitation of prisoners in the early 1970s and he had made sure that he played the part of the model prisoner – not overly sycophantic but not too arrogant or difficult to manage either. He had succeeded in convincing everyone, including most critically the Parole Board, that he was a reformed character and certainly no danger to the wider public. It hadn’t taken him long to realise that the key indicators needed to get an early parole date were to demonstrate genuine remorse and to satisfy the experts that the crimes themselves were clearly out of character, driven by a kind of temporary loss of control, and therefore would never be repeated. Although his crimes had certainly attracted a good deal of publicity at the time they had faded from the general consciousness since then. Even Mark found it somewhat difficult to believe that he had convinced Jean, his mother-in-law, that he actually found her attractive, while at the same time slowly filling her with a mixture of illegal drugs and natural poisons. And after she had passed away without any suspicion resting on him, a similar strategy had worked on his father-in-law, Gordon. That might not have involved part-way seducing him, as he had done with Jean, but the fact that his father-in-law had pretty much given up on things, including his health, after Jean’s death made it that much easier. Nonetheless, Mark hadn’t been able to help the same thought coming back to him time and again during his prison sentence: if it hadn’t been for Justine’s bloody self-righteous indignation, if she’d supported him, then he – in fact, they – would have got away with it.
Of course, the parole requirements meant that he would be on ‘licence’, as they put it, for the rest of his sentence, and subject to recall should he offend again, but he had no intention of that – or no intention of ever being caught and recalled, at least. Initially Gemma had been his probation contact and support during the final stages of his sentence and the pre-parole period. She had accompanied the senior probation officer and her boss, David, on his initial visits to supervise Mark after he’d been transferred to Ford Open Prison, and then taken him on herself after David’s surprise early retirement. Gemma was young, twenty-three, when he first encountered her, and just a few months into her first job since graduating, typically (and a little ironically) with a degree in Sociology. He liked the way she wore close fitting clothes that highlighted her figure, the pencil skirts and tight designer jeans in particular. To begin with, he hadn’t been able to work out whether she was really posh or just radiated it. He had soon realised there was no pretence.
After years of celibacy and without any recent practice, Mark had enjoyed charming and intriguing her and she had seemed to like the attention too. Sure enough, soon after his release they had become an item and then moved in together. They had played it by the book and had come clean about their relationship; and so as to avoid any conflict of interest, the official supervision of his rehabilitation had been passed on to one of Gemma’s colleagues, Mathew. A somewhat more typical example of the probation officer role than Gemma, or to put it more accurately an absolute stereotype of it, Mathew was a slightly earnest, bearded ex-hippy type who enjoyed the opportunity to have an articulate client with whom he could discuss music, film and any other examples of cultural coolness that he could engineer into their conversations. Mark found Mathew’s snobbish take on any and all of those topics profoundly irritating, but he had always been a good manager of other’s impressions of him and was happy to play along with things. After he had lent Mathew a couple of his Balzac novels there was no looking back. Mathew was convinced they had made some kind of intellectual contact with one another and Mark had no reason to disabuse him; he was well aware of the sense in keeping his parole supervisor on side.
Thinking back, Mark realised how easy it was to forget unpleasant things; as with most ex-cons he’d vowed never to go back, but by contrast with them, he liked to think he meant it. When Gemma had met him at the prison gates on his release last November, Mark had been convinced that he would just enjoy whatever life threw at him and that anything would be better than the last few years. He wouldn’t care what he had to do or what he had or didn’t have, he would relish just being away from the petty constraints of institutional life. However, and as he was well aware from having come across studies on the recidivism of offenders when teaching the sociology of deviance in his previous existence, the memories receded pretty quickly; really, when he took the time to reflect, his personality hadn’t changed that much after all. Maybe the personality he had used to convince the Parole Board had, but not the real one.
Post-prison, things had started quite nicely. Gemma had kept her job and he’d settled into the flat above a florist’s in a small parade of shops just out of the centre of Littlehampton; it was not far from Gemma’s apartment, close to the station and overlooking the river Arun. In fact, going well over and above the usual post-release support offered by the probation service, and presumably without their knowledge, Gemma had found and arranged the renting of the flat for him before his release. Mark had given her access to his share of the divorce settlement, which considering his status as a convicted criminal hadn’t been too bad. Somewhat paradoxically, the murder of her parents had left his ex-wife a very wealthy woman and she hadn’t objected to Mark’s solicitor sorting out a reasonable deal from the sale of the house they’d bought together; no doubt she’d just been glad to see the back of him and to move on with her life.
The first few months and over the Christmas and New Year had been pretty good. Gemma and he had not been a couple immediately, although Mark assumed that they both thought that was inevitable. From their first meeting at Ford Open Prison, the atmosphere and rapport between them, along with the comments and looks they gave one another, had convinced him they had a future. After his release, it had been Mark’s intention to play it reasonably cool to begin with, and certainly not to appear too desperate. He had made it clear that he wanted to keep in touch with Gemma and was pretty sure she felt the same – after all, she had helped arrange the flat for him and taken the trouble to collect him from Ford on his release date. As well as that, she had persuaded her new boss to let her continue with his supervision immediately after release, fortunately a practice that was being encouraged as offering some kind of continuity of support and aid to rehabilitation for ex-prisoners.
In the early days of his life on the outside again they had met regularly for coffee and for what were presumably and officially supposed to be ‘post-release support meetings’; but which went well beyond the required time or usual locations and soon involved them talking and drinking until throwing out time. Mark had even encouraged Gemma to go on a couple of dates with a friend of one of her friends. It might have been taking playing it cool a bit far but his idea had been to act as a kind of sophisticated mentor to her and pretend to help her find a suitable boyfriend, while at the same time letting her see how much more interesting and challenging a prospect he would be. He assumed it had all worked pretty much according to plan when one of their increasingly regular late-night heart to hearts, with him offering her the wisdom of his knowledge of the male species, had led to a hug, and then her letting him slip his hand under her dress. It seemed to Mark that was what they had both been waiting for; he had spent that night at Gemma’s flat. While it had been a few years since he had been touched by anyone apart from himself, there was certainly something special about the way she controlled him while seemingly abandoning herself. She certainly knew how to enjoy herself.
It never crossed Mark’s mind that the managing of it all might well have been the other way around; he always assumed that no one could be as manipulative as he was. He had never doubted his attractiveness to women, and even Justine’s abandonment of him and the subsequent events hadn’t undermined his self-confidence that much. On occasion he had found himself wondering if his tendency to believe in his own superiority had been the cause of his problems, but he never allowed such doubts to take root.
***
Gemma had been quite a catch and Mark had revelled in the excitement and freedom she offered him after years away. After the initial pretence of their official, ex-con and probation officer, relationship, their meetings soon turned into nights out, eating and drinking; and she had certainly proved to be more than the naïve do-gooder that had been his first impression when she had visited him at Ford as a newly qualified probation officer. Mark had soon discovered that she had family money behind her and that her job, while not just posturing, was also and clearly not the vocation he had initially assumed it was for her. There was more to it than that, though. There was a confidence about her he hadn’t noticed straight away; it was apparent in the way she dressed and the way she was when they first made love. Of course, things had moved on since the mid-1970s, and maybe the 1980s would prove to be different, but nonetheless she dressed differently to his previous girlfriends – classy dresses and smart suits which had a timeless air to them rather than the ex-hippy stuff which he’d been used to. Not yet twenty-five years old, Gemma could make herself look either younger or older depending on the context, and with a natural elegance she always managed to look taller than her five foot five. She had fine auburn hair, olive green eyes and a full figure – ‘voluptuous’ might be over-stating it, but she reminded him of Hollywood actresses of the 1930s and ’40s, Jean Harlow, Veronica Lake and the rest. The blouses or shirts Gemma tended to wear under her suits for official court visits had to stretch to the limit to fasten, the material teasing and testing the hold of the buttons in a clearly provocative manner. As well as that, there was an irresistible freshness about her; thankfully she had ignored the wide-shouldered power-dressing that had become something of a fad for professional women after the success of Dallas, the new American soap opera currently obsessing the tabloid press.
In spite of the fact that Mark had been pretty much deprived for almost six years, and arguably might not have been particularly difficult to please, she was certainly equal to anything he could remember, and that included with Justine. He had found it difficult to accept how clearly infatuated he must have been with Justine and over his years away he had become convinced that she had been the real cause of his downfall. It felt good that at last he could see she hadn’t been so special and that Gemma was more than a match. Gemma’s approach to sex had taken him by surprise – it was a strange but exciting mixture of absolute baseness, along with an almost prudish coyness. On the one hand, he found her appearance radiated an innocence and freshness that suggested a cosseted upbringing. Almost by contrast, and while attempting to impress her with his literary knowledge and general sensitivity, he had discovered that she had read Nabokov’s Lolita as well as Justine, Juliette and all of de Sade’s English translations that she could get hold of, and that she wasn’t interested in the more conventional and popular examples of romantic books and dramas. Somewhat bizarrely, it was after one impromptu and pretty wild session that Mark realised it had been watching a documentary on the life of chimpanzees that had turned her on; and she had admitted that watching animals just doing it was enough for her to lose any inhibitions. Mark wondered if it was because he was getting older or just easier to please himself, but within a few months he felt an attraction and closeness which took him by surprise and which had an air of authenticity that he had never really experienced before.
Getting to know Gemma before and since his release had certainly changed Mark’s plans for his future, although if he was being honest he hadn’t really had much of a long-term or clearly worked out plan at all. Anyway, que sera, as it seemed to be turning out; he realised Gemma was good for him and he’d been lucky, even though he reckoned he deserved it.
In fact, although he had his own flat, it wasn’t long after his release before he and Gemma were spending most nights in the same bed, and had decided to buy a place and live together. House prices were still rising at almost ten per cent a year and Mark was keen to invest what money he had as soon as he could. They had decided on Petworth and found a quaint two-up, two-down at the end of a row of four what would originally have been agricultural workers’ houses; the sort of Victorian terraced cottages that were found all over the English countryside. The original, outside toilet had been replaced with a kitchen and shower-room extension in the early 1960s and with the exposed beams and open fireplace it maintained a charm and homeliness which both he and Gemma had been taken with. Conveniently, it was on the Littlehampton side of the town, and the move itself had gone through pretty quickly. Neither of them had to sell and they had moved in together within six months of Mark’s leaving Ford Open Prison.
***
As his mind returned to the barbecue that Friday afternoon, all in all Mark felt quite positive about life. Even though there had been the odd moments of tension between them – usually about his lack of work and direction, which were becoming a little more regular recently – he was looking forward to Gemma getting back from her work. It was a lovely hazy day which always helped his mood, and now that there was some sign of life from the briquettes, things didn’t seem too bad. On the whole, it was comforting to reminisce about the last seven or so months, and his earlier sense of despondency seemed perhaps rather indulgent. It hadn’t been long after his release before Mark had also come to feel something close to affection for Littlehampton, in spite of its unmistakably down-at-heel image — maybe, perhaps, because of it. Wandering around the town, he had liked coming across the occasional commemorative plaques highlighting the Roman occupation of the area. He and Gemma had spent a few weekend lunchtimes eating in the slightly forlorn seaside cafés or harbour-side pubs, sometimes along with random groups of ageing bikers who seemed to see Littlehampton as a sort of emblem of bygone, and missed, days. Gemma’s rented apartment on Pier Road had been particularly cool and was a class above his own; the elegant main room overlooked the river and lighthouse, and beyond that the Channel. They’d spent some intense but special evenings there at the start of the year and of their relationship, including listening to John Lennon songs in the wake of the shock of his murder; he particularly remembered playing Roxy Music’s version of 'Jealous Guy' time after time.
However, after the first couple of months of freedom, as the new year had gathered momentum, and tempering a little his positive mood and feeling as the barbecue at last sprang into life with some gusto, there hadn’t been that much to get particularly excited about. Sure, they had bought the house together and the move to Petworth had been something of an adventure, but that had been about it. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to get his life moving again, but if he was honest about it the latest endeavour, dabbling in the antiques business, showed little signs of taking off for him, and was basically just another example of self-indulgence.
Maybe he had expected it to be too easy, but he assumed with his background as a university lecturer and with two degrees he’d be able to pick up something, and if nothing else some part-time lecturing at least. In fact, after the Christmas break he had given that a go and had made appointments at a couple of local further education colleges to offer his services – the problem was trying to explain a six-year gap in his CV and avoiding having to fill in any awkward questions on application forms about previous convictions. His first attempt, at the College of Technology in Worthing, had been unsuccessful; indeed, he was left with the distinct impression that the two full-time, General Studies lecturers who had met him felt he was over-qualified and potentially some kind of threat to them. After that, he had managed to talk himself into being given a two-hour evening class teaching General and Communication Studies to a group of engineering apprentices at the Chichester College of Technology – a typically uninspired example of 1960s architecture, soulless square blocks with not a curve in sight. The course itself was apparently a compulsory module on some kind of vocational training programme they were enrolled on, but the students themselves had absolutely no interest in improving their communication or general skills. Mark had soon realised why he had been offered those hours. He had struggled through sessions from January till Easter and it had been more than enough to put him off that career path. It had been how he could imagine taking an F stream in some sort of failing comprehensive would be, except that these students were adults, supposedly. Although not overtly aggressive their obvious disdain came over with a slightly threatening air; in particular, he hated having no sensible response to questions about the relevance of it all. One of the most amusing books he’d read while serving his sentence had been Wilt; and Tom Sharpe’s description of Henry Wilt’s experiences of trying to teach literature to bored apprentices in what must have been a very similar type of college had certainly captured the tone of his own brief encounter with similar students. He remembered with some fondness, and maybe slightly rose-coloured glasses, the buzz of teaching bright undergraduates at Sussex University before he’d thrown it all away. He realised how he had revelled in the respect, bordering on admiration, that came with that status; and there had been the added bonus of plenty of young, attractive and impressionable students.
Apart from the academic world which wasn’t looking a likely prospect, drugs was about the only other area Mark had any sort of background in, having dabbled with buying and selling when he was a student himself. In fact, soon after getting out of Ford and with little else to do, Mark had looked up a couple of contacts he’d had in Brighton but to little avail. They’d given up dealing and settled down – it was probably no surprise that the hippy dream was certainly becoming a thing of the past. He had to face it, he was well out of touch with that scene. Even though Mark was aware that it smacked of desperation he had also tried unsuccessfully to get some help in that direction from one of his old university mates, Martin, who had always been well-connected. Their reunion meeting had turned out to be a slightly uncomfortable affair, though; Martin’s record business was going well and he’d been friendly enough on the surface but there had definitely been an awkwardness between them. In fact, it had left Mark feeling quite down – he and Martin had shared many evenings drinking and getting wasted in the old days, just after Mark had started his job at Sussex University and before Justine and his prison sentence, but on this occasion Martin had seemed distracted and keen to get rid of him. Of course Martin was busy with his work but they hadn’t met up for over six years and Mark had hoped for a little more than what felt distinctly like a brush-off. Martin had said enough to suggest that hearing about the murders had both amazed and horrified him; as it apparently had for most of their old friends. He did manage to find out that Martin, Tom, Paul and the rest still met up regularly and that Justine and Tom were still together and apparently on the point of getting married. Martin had clearly felt somewhat embarrassed by the whole thing and had dodged answering Mark’s suggestion that he bring Gemma over to meet up and perhaps have a meal or drinks together.
Mark had driven back to Littlehampton afterwards feeling a complete outsider – they might consider themselves open-minded and hip, but serial murdering was obviously a step too far for his old friends. He’d been close to them all for years, but they had all had it easier than him from the start. Most of his university friends had come from public school backgrounds and well-off families and had all managed to do pretty well for themselves in various legitimate pursuits, including property management and the music business. When all had been going along smoothly for himself, Mark had enjoyed their self-confidence and entrepreneurial spirits; and with his position as a university lecturer and published academic he had felt at least their equal. He could see it had never been a real equivalence, though, and maybe they’d always felt it; they possessed and paraded their own hubris with irritating ease. Background and family status clearly still gave a different and unique kind of arrogance. Anyway, to hell with them, he had his life to get on with.
***
Mark looked at his watch. It was half past five, the sun was still hot on his back and playing on the grass in the field behind the house – surely more than ready for a first cut and bailing for hay. He was glad he’d put his shorts on. Gemma couldn’t understand his reluctance to show his legs but he’d never been comfy with it, unless he’d been on a beach. He had worn jeans, or between 1975 and 1981 the prison equivalent, ever since he was a teenager and he saw little reason to change the habit. The compromise had been to cut an old pair of Wranglers off just above the knee, and to be fair it felt quite good today.
He reckoned Gemma would be back in ten minutes or so – time to put the burgers and a couple of pork chops on the grill. He still couldn’t quite shake off a restlessness that had been with him on and off for a while, and was becoming more on of late, and that was reflected in his mood that afternoon as it veered from contentedness to despondency. It was well into summer and he needed to be doing more than filling time; he’d already done enough of that to last for a lifetime. It had been too easy to let things drift, though. He was becoming too used to basically just pottering around in a desultory but often really quite pleasant way – doing the shopping and cooking, checking local sales and ads. He still had some savings and Gemma’s salary covered the mortgage and other bills. And he always managed to find something to keep him at least semi-occupied. There was that year’s Ashes series to watch and it had been difficult to take his eyes off the third test which had finished a few days ago. The cricket had been unbelievable: England were following on and heading for defeat when Ian Botham played a remarkable innings, 149 runs from 148 balls; then Bob Willis had taken eight wickets, the Australians were bowled out for 111 and the series was levelled. It had been pretty compulsive viewing as well as taking care of a good part of the day and he couldn’t wait for the next match, but it wasn’t moving his life on. Then a couple of weeks before that he’d got side-tracked following the street-fighting and rioting in Liverpool and Manchester. While it might not have had much impact on day-to-day life in rural Sussex, Mark had been gripped by the social significance of it, as well as the anger and hatred shown toward Margaret Thatcher and her government. He could imagine the sociologists he had worked with attempting to analyse and explain it all; no doubt it would encourage a glut of conference papers and PhD proposals. He’d had to fight the fleeting nostalgia he still felt for that life – fair enough, a lot of it might have been the emperor’s new clothes but it was comfy enough and held a certain cachet.
If he was honest about it and even though he wouldn’t call his current lifestyle unpleasant, Mark couldn’t ignore the fact that he was beginning to harbour the occasional concern, or maybe more accurately realisation, that living with Gemma was perhaps not really what he had expected when he’d been planning and fantasising about his life after prison. She was gorgeous and sexy, but maybe not as pliable or, although he hated to admit it, as controllable as he would have liked. Typically, though, Mark was too bothered about his own situation and feelings to give any of his slight doubts more than a momentary acknowledgement before storing them away in the recesses of his consciousness. So what if Gemma didn’t seem to be as easily impressed with him as he’d imagined she had been? That was life, no doubt. Anyway, the way he remembered it she had pretty much thrown herself at him so he had nothing to reproach himself for there. The niggling worry, though, was that he’d got his character assessments spectacularly wrong before, of course. Gemma had made one or two throwaway comments lately that were playing on his mind: nothing specific, but comments the gist of which seemed to be that given the money her family, or more accurately mother, had, she didn’t see why she should be the one working while he managed to occupy himself doing basically nothing. He hadn’t really dwelt on them; although he certainly might have if he had taken the time to consider how Gemma’s take on things was developing.
***
It had been yet another long, hot and pretty tiring afternoon session at the Chichester Magistrates' Court for Gemma. The court itself was an unimposing square block of a building whose main claim to fame had been the appearance there in 1967 of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, for committal to Crown Court after their arrest at Richards’ country house, Redlands in West Sussex, for various drug offences. They had both turned up at the court to plead not guilty and elect for a trial by jury and been faced with a scrum of fans and media reporters outside the building. Although that had been fourteen years ago it was still talked about with some affection by the clerks and receptionists who’d been around at the time. Indeed, the number of celebrities supposedly involved appeared to grow as memories faded, as did the notion that it was all an establishment-organised attack on the Rolling Stones, fuelled by what sociologists might have termed a ‘moral panic’ over the group’s influence on the youth of the country and over hippies in general. Carole on the front desk had kept her newspaper clippings of the event in her desk drawer and insisted on reminiscing about them at any opportunity, seemingly forgetting that Gemma had seen them on her first visit as well as most subsequent ones too.
That particular day’s burglary case against Gemma’s client, Christopher Jones, an emaciated ex-drug addict, hadn’t attracted the same media frenzy that the Stones had. Even the regular reporter for the Chichester Observer hadn’t bothered to show up. Apart from the duty solicitors only an equally skeletal-looking girl had turned up; although a few years younger than Christopher she was presumably his partner. Gemma had prepared her report and, she liked to think, delivered it with some style. It was clear to her prison was not the best place for Christopher to end up, and she had made a strong case for a Community Sentence. However, his appointed solicitor that day, Mr Lane, was not one of her favourites and had obviously been more interested in getting away from the court as soon as he could. He had offered little in the way of mitigation even though Christopher had owned up, pleaded guilty and saved everyone a lot of bother as well as expense. When the leading magistrate started to deliver a sentence of imprisonment for one year Gemma resolved to try to avoid working with Lane again, but the added ‘suspended for two years’ at least provided some satisfaction for her involvement.
She gathered her files together, had a quick word with Christopher, reminding him that any future misdemeanours would automatically revoke the suspension and lead to prison, and went out into the car park and afternoon sun. It was nice enough to put the roof down on her MG midget and boded well for the barbecue Mark said he was going to prepare later. She pulled out of Chichester town centre and on to the old Roman Road and then the A285 to Petworth. There was no need for her to get back to the office in Littlehampton today. She was grateful that her current boss, Gregory, didn’t mind her doing her paperwork at home; although she reckoned he must be getting on for sixty, it helped that he obviously fancied Gemma. She didn’t mind that, though; at least he wasn’t obviously pervy about it. She wondered what it was with men of a certain age, or to be fair any age. The drive itself was a pleasant and picturesque one, right through the best of the South Downs, but that afternoon in court had convinced her even more strongly that it was time for a change; she didn’t intend or need to continue to do what she’d just gone through for that much longer.
In essence, Gemma was pretty much bored with the probation job, and perhaps as a consequence of that, or perhaps anyway, with her life in general. Toward the end of her final year at university, not having much idea of what to do next, she had sort of drifted into it. There had been an advert on one of the university notice boards for a recruitment fair of some kind and Gemma had gone along for no particular reason; she’d picked up various bits of information and leaflets from the different stands, including an application form to work as a probation officer. She had been told by the probation representative that there were good opportunities for graduates and that you could specify what areas you wanted to work in. One of the more interesting courses on her degree had been on crime and society and had involved considering how best to deal with repeat offenders. Perhaps because of that passing interest, Gemma had decided to give it a go and fill the form in, specifying anywhere in the south of England. It had been something of surprise when she was invited to Littlehampton for an interview only a few weeks after graduating with her upper second degree in Sociology. It wasn’t that she particularly needed to work, she was well provided for from her father’s will but she couldn’t face going to live with her mother in the old family home in Farnham. While that might have been comfortable enough, watching her mother‘s embarrassingly desperate attempts to stay young – and, even more excruciatingly, available – was not on her agenda. Gemma had never got on particularly well with her mother anyway but after the way she had treated her father before he died it had become more than that. Over the last few years Gemma had become convinced that her mother was to blame for her father’s death and also for his general and obvious unhappiness. Since going away to university soon after her father’s death, her feelings of indifference had developed into something closer to hatred and she had recently felt a strong and growing desire for revenge of some kind.
As it was, the interview itself had gone pretty well. It had really been more of a conversation with the senior probation manager, David, and the administrator-cum-secretary, Lizzie, at the Littlehampton office. Gemma had always got on well with older people, particularly men, and it had been apparent from the start they were pretty desperate for new staff in the West Sussex region. David was clearly quite taken with her – in a nice, avuncular, if slightly drooling, way. He was an earnest, old school-style probation officer who was probably in his early sixties and approaching retirement; it came over that he clearly felt more than a little disillusioned by recent changes to the probation system. Gemma had the sense to play on this and stress the importance of rehabilitation, and of working on a personal rather than managerial level with offenders. She noted his nod of approval when she mentioned the importance of offenders facing up to the consequences of their behaviour and taking responsibility, but that this could only work in a supportive environment. Lizzie was common sense personified; even though she was a ‘Miss’ and no doubt had always been so, she looked as if she would be the ideal partner, if not wife, for David. It struck Gemma that they probably ran the office like a well organised home, and that gave her a good feeling about the place and job.
Gemma had made the right impression on both of them and sailed through the interview. Although sexism was still rife, the Sex Discrimination Act and the establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission a few years earlier had made things a little easier; and it had helped that the probation service was one area where women were getting some kind of foot in the door and recognition, compared to many other areas of professional work, at least. So she had walked into the job with little planning, or even thought, really. It had been summer 1980 and Mark had been one of her first assignments. Initially she had gone along to the prison visits to observe and be mentored by David as part of her induction period, but David’s disillusionment had been getting to him and he announced he was taking early retirement only a couple of months after Gemma had started to work there. It had seemed sensible for Gemma to carry on with Mark and with preparing his parole report as one of her first proper clients. She had been a little disappointed that David left so soon after her appointment but it had helped that his replacement as her line manager, Gregory, was only a year or two younger than his predecessor and didn’t seem keen to change things around too much.
That was over a year ago, and although there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the job, she had had enough. Initially David had been good to work with: he cared for what he did and worked hard too. Apart from him though, the rest of her colleagues had proved something of a mixed bag. Mathew, who’d taken over the official rehabilitation of Mark when they had moved in together earlier in the year, she found particularly irritating. He had cultivated a ponytail to go with a straggly beard that never seemed to be without the remains of his breakfast or lunch, depending on the time of day, and he wore what she assumed from the reek was the same check shirt for days on end. It wasn’t so much his appearance or slightly stale odour that grated most with her, but his rather ridiculous and supercilious manner with his colleagues as well as his clients, along with his half-baked advocacy of anti-psychiatry, which he appeared to believe offered some kind of way forward for probation. Even though she knew why he did it, the way that Mark played up to Mathew’s unwarranted intellectual snobbishness also really irritated her. On top of that Mathew had tried it on with her when she’d given him the benefit of the doubt and met up with him one evening soon after starting her job.
Her new boss, Gregory, was bearable in small doses; and to be fair his heart was in the right place, he didn’t throw his weight around and, more crucially, he seemed to trust her to get on with things on her own. He’d been parachuted in after David’s retirement and was a typical example of the ex-army personnel who still made up a good proportion of the service; at least he was at the opposite end of the political and ideological spectrum from Mathew. Gregory had brought in as his deputy Howard, a colleague he had worked with in Portsmouth, also ex-army and, as with so many of them, apparently unable to get a job in the police so settling for this as the next best. Along with Lizzie and Jude, a new and seemingly empty-headed part-time worker whom Mathew was busy homing in on now that he’d accepted that Gemma was out of bounds, that was the team.
Surprisingly it was the clients themselves whom she did feel some degree of sympathy with, and generally speaking they clearly did need support to get on with their lives. There had been a few times when it had felt really good to get a result and to see some progress and it did actually feel like she was making a difference, but it didn’t make up for the rest of the job. Aside from her less than inspiring colleagues, the service itself was becoming increasingly bureaucratised and managerialist – the recent emphasis on targets and performance indicators seemed to suit Gregory’s style of management and it was a trend that Gemma could see was bound to continue. It was time for her to take control of her life and to do some of the things she had always intended to; and to get what she felt she deserved. And a part of that would involve getting some degree of restitution – it sounded better than revenge – for her father, or perhaps in truth more for her. Although she hadn’t thought about it in any great depth, something told her that she needed to start to work on sorting out Mark and getting some kind of benefit from being with him.
As she drove past the old parish church at Duncton, a couple of miles from their cottage, Gemma was amazed how quickly the half-hour drive home had flashed by as she pondered the next step of her life. On one level it was so far so good: the job had been a diversion, a stepping stone maybe, but that was all; and being with Mark had turned out pretty much as she had imagined. He hadn’t managed to get anything much going in his post-prison life and had proved reasonably easy to manipulate. That made it sound horribly cold and calculating, which wasn’t really the case. They had had some good times together and she did actually care for him; as she mulled over her tentative plans for the future there was a twinge of guilt, but she knew she could manage that.
Soon after they had got together properly, Gemma had taken Mark to meet her mother and as she had expected the two of them had hit it off immediately. Anne was easily flattered and Mark was an inveterate flirt. Thinking back, Gemma hadn’t done that with any detailed strategy in mind, although perhaps there had been some kind of nascent intuition that it might be useful, even beneficial in the future.
When she had first visited Mark at Ford Open Prison and started working on his parole application – initially with David taking the lead while she was learning the ropes, and then on her own – she had let him, indeed encouraged him, to find out about her own background and life. It was just a matter of letting the man think he was in control. Come to think about it, that was about the only skill she had ever picked up from her mother, and even if it wasn’t one to be particularly proud of, it had its uses. Alongside going through the usual issues and motions involved in sorting out the probation report for Mark, she had initially and at the time purposely painted him a picture of her supposedly idyllic and happy childhood, with devoted and loving parents who gave her everything she wanted. It was, in fact, a picture that was a far cry from the loneliness of a single child, emotionally ignored but materially spoilt by her mother, and an unseen party to the constant whingeing and arguing between her embittered mother and despairing father. Even now she wasn’t certain just what was behind her idea to mislead Mark or whether it had even been intentional; however, in attempting to highlight a comfortable and well-off family background, Gemma realised that she had perhaps overdone things and would have to let Mark know something of her real feelings about her mother in due course.
She remembered her father with great fondness; he had been her hero, really. She missed him terribly. He had always had time for her. When she was younger, on returning from his daily commute to work in the city, he would pull back into the driveway of their detached house in Lynch Road, on the south side of Farnham, and always come straight up to her room to check whether she was asleep and to read to her if she wasn’t. Even when she had been asleep she had woken the next morning and imagined she’d seen him at the door. He had worked long hours in the city and looking back Gemma realised that he must have been driven to distraction and despair by her mother; no doubt his work had been something of a welcome escape for him. She felt a surge of bitterness; and now she would never have him to turn to if things got tough, or to share the special moments of her life with. Although she had no particular interest in getting married, the thought of doing that without a father just wouldn’t seem right.
***
Anne, Gemma’s mother, was a wealthy woman in her own right. She had been left a near fortune from both her father, George, and then her Uncle Arthur, each of whom had held senior positions as well as substantial shares in the Cunard shipping line. Their father, and Anne’s grandfather, Cecil, had worked his way up in the famous White Star shipping line in the early years of the twentieth century and had become a director when it had merged with Cunard in the mid-1930s. He had started working at Oceanic House, just across from Trafalgar Square, as a junior clerk soon after Thomas Ismay – the chairman since the founding of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, more commonly known as the White Star Line – had died and been replaced by his son Joseph Bruce Ismay in the last year of the nineteenth century. Cecil came to the attention of J Bruce Ismay, as he liked to be known, along with the rest of the senior management, for the way in which he took charge of dealing with the public outcry following the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. Hundreds of relatives and friends of passengers as well as general onlookers had descended on Oceanic House in the days after the sinking and Cecil had helped to avoid a public relations disaster for the company by ensuring the speedy and sensitive release of appropriate information. Initial reports had been confused and there had been a suggestion that the Titanic was being towed into New York. It wasn’t until the day after that there was confirmation of the extent of the disaster. Cecil had spent most of the week virtually living in the White Star offices and offering what news and comfort he could to the waiting crowd.
As well as being the flagship for White Star, it was no doubt due to the Titanic being to a large extent Ismay’s project and dream that Cecil’s response to the disaster came to his attention. Indeed, the chairman had himself sailed on the ill-fated maiden voyage and been one of the just over seven hundred survivors after being picked up by the RMS Carpathia steamship. It was little surprise that Anne’s grandfather’s actions in helping deal with the fall-out led to his promotion to a managerial role soon after; and so to his decision to invest all he could in buying shares in the company. After becoming a director in due course, Cecil used his influence to find positions with the company for both his sons just prior to the Second World War and left them his shares when he eventually died in 1938. Although they both survived the war, Anne’s father and her uncle, a confirmed bachelor, died within a year of each other in the late 1950s. Anne was the sole heir, her own mother having died in 1949 of cervical cancer, still pretty much undiagnosable let alone untreatable at the time.
An only child brought up in a privileged environment, Anne was self-centred, selfish and arrogant. She had homed in on Jeffrey Powell, her future husband, in the mid-1950s at a party to celebrate the completion and delivery of the Saxonia Carmania, the first of four Cunard liners which had been commissioned by the company to sail on the Atlantic route to Canada. Almost seven years older than her, he worked in the accounts department at Cunard. He was handsome but considerably less well-off than her – an ideal combination, Anne had felt at the time. They had got married in late 1954 and chosen Farnham as the place to buy their first house. Anne had a hankering for suburban living, increasingly in vogue at the time, and Farnham looked to be an ideal location: within reasonably easy reach of the Cunard offices in London but far enough away from the capital to feel it. It was a substantial detached property built a few years previously and lived in by just the first owner and then for a couple of years only. Even though her father was not particularly convinced of Jeffrey’s suitability as a future son-in-law, he had provided a substantial deposit for the house as their wedding gift, leaving only a small mortgage to be based on Jeffrey’s fairly average salary. He had also made sure that his daughter got the very best and the wedding was a lavish affair. With both her father and uncle highly regarded in the company, the wedding was attended by most of Cunard’s senior staff. The ceremony was held at St Andrew’s, the imposing Parish Church of Farnham, dating back to the 12th century and according to parish records a milestone on the medieval Pilgrim’s Way between Winchester and Canterbury. It had been followed by a reception at the Frensham Pond Hotel, a magnificent building overlooking Frensham Great Pond and with parts of it dating back to the fifteenth century. Previously known as The White Horse its sense of history was enhanced by it having served as a smart and welcome billet for Canadian soldiers serving with the Allies in the Second World War.
Over the years since then, Anne had used every opportunity to throw in Jeffrey’s face the fact that it was her family who had the money and who had provided the house and the rest. She had used that strategy to force Jeffrey to attend to her every need and had never wasted the opportunity to demean him and his background, even if in what she convinced herself was a playful manner, and especially whenever they were meeting with or entertaining any friends or family.
Although she hadn’t been aware of it at the time, years later as she reviewed her feelings, Gemma had realised that her mother had no real interest in her and didn’t really enjoy motherhood, and especially the restraints it might have put on her. However, these could hardly be deemed onerous, particularly as most of the domestic work had been farmed out to nannies, cooks and cleaners. The only times Gemma could remember laughing and playing at home had been when her father was with her. Even that would have been manageable if it hadn’t been for the way her mother had treated her dad when he became ill, which had occurred when Gemma was old enough to be aware of what was happening. Although Jeffrey was only in his mid-fifties, heavy smoking had caught up with him, as with many men of his era, and lung cancer had taken hold. Looking back it appeared to Gemma that Anne had seen her husband’s illness and subsequent death as an opportunity to move on and essentially had done her best to ignore both her husband and her daughter. She had gone on mini-holidays and nights out with Ruth – Anne’s best friend, a would-be socialite who was distantly related to the Cunard family and had become friendly with Nancy Cunard, the only child of the Cunard Line heir Sir Bache, in the years before her death in 1965. Ruth had her own apartment on New Bond Street in the West End and Gemma recalled that Anne seemed to be spending more and more time there once her husband became ill. Sure, Anne had paid for private treatment for Jeffrey but that was doubtless only for appearances’ sake and as some sort of salve for her conscience. By the time Gemma reached her mid-teenage years and even before her father’s illness had taken hold, she had grown to hate the pretentiousness of her mother, and of Ruth for that matter. On top of her swanning around while Gemma’s dad was dying, her mother had decided to take up golf and had joined ‘The Sands’, better known as the Farnham Golf Club, no doubt seeing it as another opportunity for social networking and climbing.
In part because it was expected from the upper sixth formers of Farnham Girls Grammar School, but also to avoid living in the family house with her mother, soon after her father’s death in 1976 Gemma had gone straight to university and then on to her probation job. Although Surrey University was only a few miles away in Guildford, Gemma had made sure she got a place in the halls of residence for her first year and had never moved back to Farnham. However, she had determined at her dad’s funeral that she would get some sort of revenge on her mother in due course. She would never forgive the way her dad had been left knowing his wife was more interested in moving on and socialising than caring for him.
It was odd how all of that played back in her mind on the journey back from court that Friday afternoon. She wasn’t going to forget her father or let her mother get away with how she’d treated him; and, unbeknown to him, Mark would be given a big part to play in helping her carry it all through. As she turned into the parking space alongside their cottage – one of the benefits of it being an end terrace property – she could smell and hear the barbecue and see the smoke drifting invitingly over the side gate into their back garden. Before getting out of her car she dabbed a bit of her oddly-named Opium perfume around her wrists and ears – Gemma thought it was strange that perfume manufacturers used class A drugs to label their products. Gemma felt good that she had made a decision of sorts about her future.
As she wandered into the garden, Gemma could see that Mark was wearing his compromise for shorts, cut away jeans, and a white T-shirt and was oblivious to anything other than the task in hand. Gemma felt a twinge of guilt: he looked happy and really quite cool. He really had no idea of what had been going on in her head ever since she’d sat with her then boss, David, in one of the interview rooms at Ford Prison and helped prepare Mark’s parole application. In actual fact, she had really quite enjoyed helping him sort himself out after his release and then them becoming a couple; and even if it wasn’t true love she had certainly felt some affection for him. It might have been manipulative but in spite of his gullibility to any kind of flattery it had been good fun as well; and to be fair he was better company and better in bed than the various males she had hooked up with at university and since. Nonetheless, Gemma had her motivations and felt they were more than merited; and anyway, they didn’t necessarily preclude some sort of a future for Mark and her. She was prepared to see how things went.
She crept up on him and put her arms round his chest.
‘Hi, you look cool! I hope you’ve got something ready to drink too.’
‘Yes there’s some white wine in the fridge, or else a lager if you’d prefer.’
He was quite domesticated too, which had impressed Gemma. He knew that she would have had a trying day at court and had prepared an inviting-looking side salad to go with the burgers and chops sizzling and spitting away on the barbecue.
Gemma poured herself a glass of Riesling and pulled the somewhat rickety wooden table they had found in the shed into position. Although the shadows were beginning to lengthen it was still a lovely, slightly muggy summer evening. Mark served up his culinary effort; even though food always seemed to taste better when eaten outdoors, it was still quite impressive. They sat in a couple of fold-out chairs, looking out over the fields that backed onto the row of cottages and watching, a way further on, a herd of black and white Friesians meandering back to the farm buildings for their evening milking.
‘You know I do appreciate this, Mark. Let’s go down to the pub for a couple of drinks later on. I’m going to go and have a shower and change. Why don’t you come and give my back a massage after that, before we go out?’
Mark recognised the invitation as a thinly disguised euphemism and couldn’t help smiling; not a bad way to start the weekend, he thought. It was encouraging that it was her idea as well. As usual Gemma certainly looked good in what she termed her ‘court clothes’ and he couldn’t miss the naughty smirk as she brushed past him on her way indoors.
After the initial excitement of the move to Petworth and since living together things had become less spontaneous and even less regular. Of course, he realised that Gemma had a full-time job but then he did more than his share of looking after things. It wasn’t that they weren’t having sex, just that it less frequently involved her taking the lead. He heard the shower spring to life and felt the usual stirrings as he took their plates to the kitchen sink and topped up their drinks.
It was nice to wash the week away and as she let the water sprinkle through her hair, Gemma knew she’d enjoy Mark sorting her out; and she would enjoy playing her part too. And even if it might be that she was using him, as people would no doubt put it, he was having a bloody good time of it as well. She enjoyed sex and it was a source of pride-cum-duty that she always liked to make sure that her partner did too.
***
Her meeting Mark at Ford Open Prison as he was being considered for parole had presented the glimmer of an opportunity that, perhaps even unknown to herself at first, Gemma had been waiting for ever since her father died. It was apparent that he had made a pretty decent job of poisoning both of his in-laws some years previously; and on reading up on his case she discovered that if he’d have been a bit more together and a better judge of character he would probably never have been found out. Gemma knew she was good-looking and had played on that of course, and played on him. Without having any definite plan but just an inkling that he could perhaps help her somehow, she had homed in on Mark as a potential ally in getting back at her mother, even perhaps getting rid of her. Rather pathetically, too, she actually quite liked playing along to the part of a soft, naïve and impressionable young woman coming to terms with work in the ‘real’ world. At the same time she had to admit that she had liked the looks he gave her on her first visit to Ford. Of course, there wasn’t much competition given he had been in prison for around six years, but he had an air of self-confidence bordering on arrogance that she liked, as well as a bit of class too, and he was obviously reasonably intelligent – and, to be fair, reasonable-looking as well. She had expected to be dealing with offenders who had problems reading and writing rather than those with post-graduate qualifications and university teaching experience.
As well as that, though, Mark had proved remarkably easy for her to manipulate. She smiled to herself as she remembered the way he had lapped up her massaging of his ego when he was telling her about the supposedly famous sociologists he’d known and worked with. They might have written the odd, fairly readable and indeed arguably erudite text – and she had enjoyed parts of her Sociology degree at Surrey too – but they were hardly iconic figures of the age or even household names. Harold Garfinkel, David Matza and the like were unlikely to be recognised and mobbed on the streets; and their work might not have moved humankind on a great deal. Nonetheless Sociology had given Gemma and Mark some common ground and getting to know him had proved more fun than she had imagined it would – he had more about him than her previous dates and boyfriends. Actually, it made her quite horny thinking of how she’d managed things since meeting him and since his release last November. She realised that she had been rubbing the soap between her legs for longer than usual and shouted to Mark to come up and see to her. No harm in mixing pleasure with scheming. As she waited for him she found herself pondering briefly on the difference between revenge and vengeance. Maybe revenge implied something more personal and more equivalent too, a sort of balancing out of things. Vengeance could be disproportionate, gratuitous even. It could go over the top.
Anyway, Gemma was quite prepared to take her time: if she had to play the long game, fair enough, but she wasn’t going to forget and she was determined and certain that she’d get what she wanted in the end. Even though Gemma had purposely not gone into that much detail about her childhood and family life, she had told Mark enough to get him interested. After all, his criminal career had involved manipulating his first set of in-laws and even if she wasn’t planning to marry him, her mother was a sort of quasi in-law. Since they had got together after his release, Gemma had hinted pretty strongly that she and her mother were left very well off after her father died, and that her initial description of her childhood as being a happy one was only true in part and that in reality she and Anne had a frosty if not dysfunctional relationship. She passed it off with a little psychological babble about her not being able to face up to and admit to the actuality of her childhood, and how she probably found it more comforting to believe that it had been the way she wanted it to be.
It hadn’t taken long for Gemma to start seeing Mark as a partner in more ways than one. Soon after their first few weeks together, she realised that it might well be sensible for Mark and Anne to get along; something told her that at some stage she would need Anne to trust him and perhaps, even probably, fancy him a little. Gemma was well aware of her mother’s love of any sort of interest or flattery and of Mark’s ability to deliver in that direction.
While there was certainly no love lost between Gemma and Anne, she had to admit that her mother wasn’t a bad looking woman. As with so many women of her background and generation, the cigarettes and drink had taken their toll but with a decent amount of make-up and her expensive dresses she did manage to exude a sort of glamour. As well as that, Mark was in his mid-thirties and probably less than twenty years younger than her mum; so really there was only slightly a bigger age gap than between Mark and herself. Strange how it was definitely more acceptable for older men to have younger female partners or lovers; the other way around always seemed to smack of desperation on the one hand or greed on the other – mind you, no doubt there were always exceptions.
Mark’s self-belief, which had been apparent even given his situation as a lifer trying for parole, had amused her too. He hadn’t thought it odd or even unlikely when she had offered to arrange finding a flat for him in her name, so as to avoid any awkward questions about his past. It seemed he was too full of himself to assume it was anything other than the fact she was absolutely crazy about him and couldn’t wait to spend time with him when he got out. She’d been careful not to overdo it, but had started to plant the idea that, as employment prospects for him might not be too great after a lengthy prison term, maybe they could do something together. She hadn’t actually, or even yet over half a year on, referred to his pretty sound knowledge of poisoning and murder, but had let slip that maybe they could make use of her family’s wealth in some way.
Even before any type of plan had begun to be formulated, Gemma recognised that it would be important to ensure that Mark believed it was he who was the one persuading her – to feed him the ideas and let them take hold and him take over. For now, she must make sure that she and Mark spent more time with her mother, with more regular visits to Farnham. She would have to start to get Anne to trust Mark, but she needed him to know more about how much she hated her mother. Although she had started to hint at it, that was something she hadn’t really gone into any detail about with him. The key was that it would have to be Mark who believed he was persuading her to engineer and carry through any sort of plan.
***
Mark appeared at the bathroom door with a couple of glasses of wine.
‘I’ve done some strawberries and cream for after if you want.’
‘That’s nice. Come on, give me a cuddle; you smell of barbecue and beer. Look, I’ve been thinking, let’s go up to my mum’s tomorrow, I need to talk to her about what she’s going to do with the house and everything. Thing is, I’m getting a little worried ’cos the last couple of times I’ve talked to her she’s sounded a bit odd, and I’m getting a bit bothered about her desperation to find a new man. Even though she looks a bit of a wreck without her make-up, she’s still only in her mid-fifties and I’m not too keen on anyone else homing in on her, and particularly her money.’
That was enough of a hint for now. She wrapped herself in a towel, directed him to the bedroom and lay back and let Mark take over. He really was getting quite adept and seemed to enjoy it too. After she had finished, she undid the buttons on his jeans-cum-shorts, checked he was hard enough and pulled him on top of her. He didn’t take long himself.
‘I reckon all those years away has certainly improved your technique. I bet you’re better than ever now that you’ve had all that time to appreciate what you were missing.’
There was no harm in a little flattery after all; and he was pretty good, she had to admit.
‘Come on, after I’ve tried your skills in the dessert area let’s get dressed and walk into town. I fancy a drink or two tonight.’
***
Although they’d got through another couple of bottles at the Angel Inn in the centre of Petworth and meandered back the half mile or so home well after closing time, Gemma woke up early the next morning. The sun was streaming through the little upstairs cottage window and she could see the cows were already well into their day’s munching and chewing. She phoned her mother and said she and Mark fancied a Saturday drive and would call in and bring something for lunch and maybe spend the afternoon there. Even though Anne had an array of helpers, from cleaner to cook to gardener, Gemma said they’d help sort through and tidy up some of the junk that had been left in the garage since Jeffrey died.
Gemma brought a cup of tea up to Mark and reminded him that they had things to do.
‘You go down to the garage shop and get some cheese and ham for later, and maybe some of their nice bread. I’ll tidy up the barbecue stuff and then we’ll head off to Farnham.’
By the time they were ready to go, it was nice enough to have the roof down, so Gemma drove them up in the MG. The twenty or so mile trip would give her the opportunity to continue to work on Mark. The Downs looked spectacular as they drove up to Haslemere and the borders with Surrey and Hampshire before crossing the A3 Portsmouth to London road at Hindhead, which, according to a newly erected welcome sign, was the highest village in Surrey. As they slowed down to negotiate the congestion in the town centre before heading up to Beacon Hill and the Farnham road, she started.
‘Look Mark, there’s some things about my family you probably need to know. My dad did leave me a decent amount, enough to cover renting the flat in Littlehampton for as long as I wanted and for the car too, but he wasn’t particularly wealthy in his own right; the real family money was and still is my mother’s. She had all the money as well as a pile of shares from her father and grandfather and from what I’ve been able to pick up it’s a small fortune, close on half a million at least. The house itself may have been hers and Dad’s but that’s all hers now of course. Anyway, it was mainly her family’s money which enabled them to get the house in the first place.’
Mark put down the crossword he’d been toying with.
‘Well, sure, I guessed as much. So where does that leave you and us?’
Now she had his attention she pushed on.
‘The thing is, Mum and I never got on particularly well and never will. I’m sure you must have picked up on that anyway. And she’s so desperate to be the centre of attention I don’t trust her with that money. It might seem callous and mercenary but, I mean, it’d be difficult for me if she got herself another man, and from the way she lashes out on her clothes and hair and the rest I think she’s got her sights set somewhere. You know if she did re-marry, any inheritance that might come my way could well disappear.’
She’d finished by the time they pulled down through Frensham and were heading toward Farnham. It would be better to leave it to Mark to come up with the idea of the two of them working together to avoid the scenario she’d just presented. Sow the idea and let it grow. Mark might be a bit slow at times but she knew he wasn’t stupid.
***
The air of affluence and class was apparent as they negotiated the south side of Farnham before turning into Lynch Lane and the impressive detached houses, almost hidden behind hedged and manicured front gardens.
‘Yes, it is bloody impressive down here,’ Mark muttered almost to himself.
Gemma could see that Mark’s brain was whirring. The Times crossword page had long since settled on the floor by his feet.
The family house itself was at the top end of the road, built to a contemporary, but still slightly neo-Tudor style in the early 1950s. It was set in large grounds of at least half an acre; but it wasn’t just the house, it was the furniture and contents that also evidenced more than new money. Anne’s grandfather had invested in what was at the time modern art: particularly impressive were a couple of Maxfield Parrish paintings he’d brought at some sort of private sale when he was in New York on shipping business in the 1930s. The pictures, ‘Winter Sunrise’ and ‘Hilltop’, were hung alongside one another at the top of the staircase. Gemma had pointed them out at his previous and first visit to the house and Mark had resolved to check out the potential value as soon as he got back to Petworth. He had looked into it and had found out that Parrish had died sometime in the 1960s, which made it highly likely that his work must have soared in value since. However, Mark hadn’t yet got round to taking his interest any further.
As the house itself came into view, Gemma felt her usual wave of bitterness. She had been brought up there and stayed until she was almost twenty. It should have been the ideal place to grow up but she had few happy memories of it. She’d felt the solitude, almost abandonment, of an only child and had spent hours and days in her room, or else, and particularly when she was younger, in the trees at the bottom of the garden, often escaping there while her mother and father were arguing with one another, or more typically just not communicating at all.
Gemma parked on the gravelled forecourt in front of the garage doors and they let themselves in through the side door and into the kitchen. They found Anne in the sitting room, looking out over the large rear garden, smoking as usual with a couple of her magazines on the occasional table next to her. Gemma noticed Country Life and Vogue, magazines that had arrived regularly for as long as she could remember. On first impression her mother looked quite elegant and even attractive, but a closer look highlighted the heavily applied make-up doing its best to hide a somewhat ravaged complexion. As was the norm when Anne was growing up, she hadn’t taken much notice of the sun and the fact that her family had been able to enjoy lengthy summer holidays in France and Spain had gradually but inexorably left their mark.
Mark had only met Gemma’s mother on a few brief occasions and it struck him that he’d never really looked at the person who possibly – presumably, really – was his potential mother-in-law. On closer inspection, she looked a good deal older than her fifty-five years – or fifty-six, he couldn’t remember which. In spite of that, she still retained a certain attractiveness, albeit in a strange sort of way. However, the overall effect was oddly disconcerting; he couldn’t quite decide whether it most resembled a kind of faded femme fatale look or, perhaps more accurately, a watered-down type of gothic horror. He could see what Gemma had meant about her not necessarily planning to stay single for ever, or even long. It definitely smacked of a desperate attempt to turn back the years and remain desirable.
Gemma went over and gave her mother a perfunctory kiss on the cheek.
‘I’ll make some sandwiches and tea for lunch – ham and mustard, if that’s okay – then we’ll have a go at sorting through a few of Dad’s things. You stay there, Mother.’
Anne seemed happy enough to let her daughter take charge.
‘That’s nice of you, Gemma. Elaine was here to do some cleaning this morning but she never stays longer than a couple of hours on Saturdays and spends most of that time making herself coffee. I sometimes wonder what I’m paying her for.’
Mark trailed after Gemma into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
‘Who the hell’s Elaine?’
‘She’s mother’s sort of servant really – does a little cleaning and cooking; and washing, ironing and the rest, come to think of it. She was even around when I was a child. It’s strange, you know, but thinking about it my mother didn’t really seem to do very much at all. As well as that there’s even another woman, Alma, who seems to clean once or twice a week as well. Heaven knows what the division of labour is, though.’
Mark thought he’d have a closer look around the house while Gemma was getting lunch organised. He had noticed a few interesting bits and pieces on his only previous visit but hadn’t had time or a particular reason to examine them closely. With what Gemma had told him earlier it seemed sensible to check things out properly.
Although there was no discernible pattern or coherence to the furnishings and décor of the inside, it was obvious that there were some pretty pricey items there. The large, open-plan hall had a couple of matching Victorian spoon back chairs, one gentleman’s and one lady’s, which Mark reckoned must be worth a good £500 each. They still had their original castors as well. He’d have to get the Miller’s Guides out and check them later. In one of the four rooms off the hall there was what he reckoned to be a mahogany dining table along with six matching carved chairs that were equally impressive and presumably valuable. The study, which clearly hadn’t been touched since Jeffrey died a few years back, contained an elegant leather-topped desk and a separate Davenport, as well as a couple of what looked like original Victorian watercolours. In contrast, the chairs and sofas in the sitting room and morning room had presumably been top of the range in the late 1950s but looked out of place and out of time too; and probably of little real value. The 1960s style sideboard and record player were even more incongruous next to a stylish, glass-fronted, and what he reckoned must be late nineteenth-century, walnut bookcase.
As well as the Parrish paintings on the upstairs landing, which he double-checked and resolved to get valued as soon as he could, there was an enormous unattributed landscape done in heavy, dark oils, and an ornate gilt framed mirror. He had no idea about the various china vases and jugs scattered somewhat randomly around the four bedrooms on the first floor – but they’d be worth checking out later.
By the time Gemma called out that lunch was ready, he was well aware that there had been and still was serious money in her family. She caught him at the bottom of the stairs as she was taking a tray of sandwiches through.
‘Look Mark, you’re good with older women, remember you told me all about you and Jean and how you had her eating out of your hand. Why don’t you try your charm on Anne, she’d love a bit of attention and sweet-talking and it might be useful, who knows?’
It crossed Mark’s mind that maybe he and Gemma were coming to the same conclusion, or at least thinking along the same lines. He was fed up with not bringing any money in and she had made it clear that being a probation officer was not the be all and end all for her. Obviously he’d have to be the one to take the lead but maybe she wouldn’t need much persuading if it came to it. It was all very well thinking he had moved on but things hadn’t really happened for him since his release and if he was honest he was getting bored with the lack of direction in his life.
Gemma knew Mark well enough to be pretty sure he’d been weighing up the value of the family’s bits and pieces. Once he’d got the idea in his head that it should all come to her, she could just sit back and let him take the lead, with a nudge here and there maybe. The next step would be to let him know she would be pretty jarred off if any of her legacy went elsewhere and to convince him she wouldn’t actually give a damn if anything happened to Anne. She perhaps hadn’t let her real feelings about her mother come through fully yet. Fair enough, she had laid the groundwork but hadn’t really let rip. It wouldn’t be difficult to do that: even though her father had died four years ago, the memories of that Easter and early summer of 1977 were as vivid as ever.
She had been nineteen and at the end of a year off after completing her A-levels at Farnham Girls Grammar School; and until then she wasn’t sure if she would bother with university. After all, she wouldn’t need a career or even a job particularly. That all changed after her dad had gone. She knew that was the end of her family life and another three years as a student would be the obvious and easiest route away.
It had been a short illness and swift decline. He had been diagnosed with lung carcinoma in the March and had died within two months, from what his death certificate termed a pulmonary embolism. It wasn’t the unfairness of it that got to Gemma, but the way her mother dealt with it, basically implying that he had been a constant burden and disappointment to her. Gemma had sat with him every day, firstly at Frimley Park hospital and then at home when they’d been told it was too late to do anything other than wait. Meanwhile her mother had taken every opportunity to get away, claiming she couldn’t stand illnesses or hospitals and wasn’t any good at nursing. She had spent a good few nights out in London, apparently staying over at her friend Ruth’s apartment. Particularly galling for Gemma, she had even spent that Easter, when her dad was dying, visiting Joseph, an old friend of her Uncle Arthur’s, in his fancy villa, a few miles inland from Benalmadena on the Spanish Costa del Sol. Anne had been her uncle’s favourite, indeed only, niece. As Anne had grown older the regular family speculation over his sexuality hadn’t bothered her; although that had died down after her uncle’s death within a few months of her father’s. Maybe Joseph had been a partner to Anne’s uncle in more ways than one; and if so, good luck to them, thought Gemma. However, even though Gemma was sure that there wasn’t some sort of hideous physical attraction between Joseph and her mother, it was no excuse for her to abandon Jeffrey virtually on his deathbed. It had crossed Gemma’s mind that her mother might even have helped her dad’s deterioration along – and not just with her attitude. She’d been pretty keen to get him on the prescribed medication and to keep him heavily dosed up on it too.
Gemma couldn’t wait until it was her mother’s turn; and as far as she was concerned, the sooner the better. Anyway, it was time to galvanise Mark into doing something useful. She knew he’d been having difficulty getting anything going after prison and would be ready to throw himself into helping her sort things out. The thing was, his neediness was beginning to get to her. He obviously saw a long-term future for the two of them and Gemma knew that she’d need to keep that belief going for as long as it took. It would have to be handled delicately – she would have to balance involving him in her plans while starting to prepare him for the fact that as far as she was concerned there was no way they would be together permanently. As ever, though, one step at a time.
She took her mother’s plate and cup.
‘How about some of that chocolate cake Elaine must have made?’
‘No dear, I’ve had enough, that was very nice.’
‘Look Mother, I’m going to go through some of Dad’s stuff in the study and then the boxes in the garage. It’s been four years now and time to tidy up a bit. Why don’t you show Mark around the garden, and then get him to pour you a G & T or something? Maybe even watch a bit of TV and relax. You two should get to know each other a bit.’
There was no harm in encouraging her to drink and smoke. She winked at Mark and left them to it.
***
Mark and Gemma’s mother walked down the side of the recently cut lawn alongside the immaculately kept borders. Ever since Anne and Jeffrey had moved in soon after their marriage a little over twenty-five years ago, Jim, their gardener, had done two afternoons a week, whatever the weather. With the hot late summer sun high in the sky, it looked like a show garden, a mixture of lavender, peonies and petunias at the front of the flower beds, then an array of hydrangeas and foxgloves, with larger bushes, rhododendrons and magnolias, at the back.
‘My goodness, Anne, this is a lovely spot, you know.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. You know, it’s odd, I’ve never really spoken to Jim, the gardener. He just comes, does whatever it is he does, has a cup of tea from his flask and goes. Jeffrey used to spend hours talking to him. I don’t even know if he’s had a pay rise or anything since Jeffrey’s gone, I just leave paying him to Elaine. You’re right, though, he has done a pretty good job here. I don’t really appreciate it as much as I should.’
Mark couldn’t help himself.
‘Well, it does look in great shape; the colours are fabulous and they bring out the dress you’re wearing, you sort of match them.’
Anne turned towards him and smiled. He really was a nice young man, she was enjoying being in his company and being the centre of attention.
‘That’s nice of you Mark. As I said, it’s awful really but I hardly ever spend any time out here, I just look out and expect everything to be in order.’
Along with the perception that he was acting on auto-pilot, Mark felt a weird sense of déjà vu. Anne might have been Jean, his first, assuming for a moment she would be his second, mother-in-law. He’d tried the same sort of lines on Jean almost seven years ago, and also in her garden, near Rottingdean on the Sussex coast and overlooking the Channel, before plying her with drinks and a variety of drugs. If only he hadn’t been so fooled by Justine he’d have certainly got away with it and wouldn’t have wasted those six years. For the first time what he assumed must have been gradually developing in the back of his mind struck him forcibly; maybe he and Gemma could do things properly, and do them together this time.
Beyond the lawn and the border at the bottom edge of it was the vegetable garden that had been Jeffrey’s domain; although Jim had kept an eye on it, it wasn’t the gardener’s interest or forte really and now it looked tired and quite out of kilter with the rest of the grounds. They wandered past some straggly stems which had presumably hosted sprouts in the past; there were little white plastic sticks indicating what had once been where but the writing on them had long since faded away, much as Jeffrey himself had. Further down, at the end of garden, was almost a mini orchard: four apple trees and the same number of pear trees, with the fruit already visible, and the pears looking as if they’d be ready to pick in no more than a few weeks at the most. Then along the back edge of the grounds a row of silver birch trees and the other side of their boundary fence the back gardens of the equally prosperous houses on Old Compton Lane. It really was very pleasant, somehow relaxing, and Mark felt the first signs of him slipping into a once-familiar, and what he had presumed would be a once-only, role.
‘This is gorgeous, Anne. You know, you should have a party here one evening. With your style I know you’d be a great hostess, and after all it’s been a long time since Jeffrey passed away. Why not live a little?’
He could see Anne was enjoying herself; but perhaps too soon to suggest something a little stronger than G & Ts and cigarettes, maybe that might come along in due course. She did look in her element.
‘Well I suppose you’re right, Mark. It has been a good few years since Jeffrey died and I think I’m over it now, you know.’
Mark smiled. Maybe the fact that she was a two-faced so-and-so would help him move things along.
‘Come to think of it, we could even go up to town and catch some live music. Gemma told me you liked a bit of jazz when you were younger and they still have some good nights at the Marquee. It’s a great place, just off Oxford Street, I used to go there regularly in the early ’70s; and it’s not just kids there, they cater for a nicely diverse audience. You’d fit in fine.’
Gemma’s comment about the potential difficulties, financially anyway, if Anne re-married had been playing on his mind since his pretty perfunctory valuation of the house and its contents. He needed to do a little digging and see what her future plans were and whether she had anyone in mind.
‘You could always take someone along and we could go as a foursome. I’m sure you’ve got a good few admirers.’
Anne lit a cigarette as they finished their tour of the garden and returned to the patio and up to the French windows that opened out onto the back of the house.
‘Well I must say I’ve been out a couple of times with Jenny, an old friend from before I met Jeffrey actually, just for a bite to eat at a nice little restaurant that’s just opened up in Guildford and I did get a bit of attention. You know I didn’t tell Jenny in case it gave the impression of showing off, but I was even given a phone number by a chap who was chatting to us on one occasion and I have actually met up with him for lunch a couple of times since. He’s single, either widowed or divorced – I didn’t want to ask – but seems to be a bit of a minor celebrity in Guildford. They all knew him at both restaurants and he’s certainly got a nice motor, not sure what but certainly expensive looking. But you know, Mark, and this seems a little big-headed, I felt he was too old for me. I didn’t ask him his age of course, but I reckon I could do better and after all in my position I’m not after someone just because of their money.’
Mark played along, and the flannel came out with long-practised and not forgotten ease.
‘I’m not surprised Anne, you look bloody good for your age, you know.’
‘You’re too kind Mark, even if it is just flattery. You know, Gemma’s lucky to have you. The thing is, Mark, even though I’m a lot older than you two I still have my needs.’
That was more than enough information for the moment, he needed to think things through. It felt odd: inevitable but also disturbing. It was as if he was watching himself from outside; and this was what he was actually good at – setting the bait, preparing to pounce.
‘Well, it’s been really nice spending a little time with you today. Let’s go back inside and see if Gemma’s done. And you know, Anne, as well as going to town for a night out, you could always come down and stay with us in Petworth, you must get a little lonely here by yourself. We’d be pleased to see more of you.’
Gemma had finished sorting through the garage and her dad’s study and was leaving the second of two large bags by the outside bin. As Mark and Anne appeared from the back garden, she could see Mark had already taken his new task seriously. He really was pretty adept at manipulating older women; her mum had the self-satisfied demeanour of someone who had been seriously flattered. Gemma almost felt sorry for her.
‘Hi you two, I’ve chucked out all the accounting books and ledgers, they’d be no use to anyone anyway. Why not let Mark try and sell the desk and Davenport, at least? It’ll make a bit of space and you don’t use them anyway.’
Anne seemed happy with that and Gemma suggested Mark take a picture of them to show to his antique contacts as they were too big to fit in the MG for the trip back. It was time for her and Mark to get serious: she needed to see how much prompting he would need. She guessed very little, as long as he assumed he was in control. Today had started things moving but it was probably best not to overdo it too soon.
‘Anyhow, we’d best get going, it’s been nice to help out and I’ll make sure we see more of each other from now on.’
They said their goodbyes and Mark promised to arrange a night out with Anne and also to help her plan and organise an evening do at the house before the end of summer.
***
It was close on five when they left and Gemma suggested she and Mark stop off at a pub on the way back and see if they could get something to eat.
‘We could try the Devil’s Punchbowl in Hindhead, that’s usually pretty good and I’ll pay. And I’ve got to hand it to you, Mark, you really are a smooth operator: from what I could see you were getting on well with my mother and I reckon you’ve got something up your sleeve already.’
Gemma doubted that Mark had any clear strategy as yet but there was no harm in egging him along and keeping him sweet too. She parked on the London Road, finding a spot right outside the front of the Punchbowl and they ordered from the bar meal menu – it was odd how basket meals had become all the rage over the last year or so. The pub had that early evening air of anticipation, as if it was gearing itself up for a busy Saturday evening. They took their drinks to the window seat and waited for the scampi and chips that both of them had gone for. Gemma wanted to see what Mark had been up to.
‘Well look, now you’ve spent some time with her, do you think I’m right to be a little bit concerned about my mother’s intentions, then?’
‘Yes I can see your point, she’s not going to sit around by herself for ever. At the moment I assume you’re in line for it all but you’re probably right, that could certainly change. She mentioned this old guy she’d already had a couple of lunch dates with in Guildford. He didn’t sound like a gold-digger but you can never tell. Rather bizarrely she said he was too old; and if she was planning on snaring someone younger then I could see that could be a different story.’
It was clear to Gemma that she was right about her mother; it was definitely time to get the plan in the open and to make sure Mark was on the same wavelength. She decided to go for it.
‘This might seem callous, and I’ve never told you this really, but the thing is I’ve come to actually hate my mother. It was not so much from when I was young, ’cos she didn’t really get that much involved with me, with all the helpers she had. It was what she did to Dad. Thinking back, I can remember her constantly moaning at him for this or that. I guess I didn’t take much notice of it at the time, but she would go on about him not being rich or successful in his own right, and she’d compare him to her father, of course. It was no wonder he sat and worked or read in his study most evenings. I suppose he had no interest in the type of social networking my mother wanted to get involved with. I remember once when he started playing golf with one of his colleagues who lived out of London like him and she went on and on about him never being around. I think he just gave it up after a few weeks. It came back to me when I saw his clubs and golf buggy lying around in the garage earlier.’
Their food arrived; the claim to be home-cooked might have lacked a little credibility but it looked pretty good all the same, even if the chips would no doubt congeal into the tissues at the bottom of the basket. After they’d decided which of the array of packets of sauces they’d go for, Gemma continued.
‘You know, I don’t think there is anything wrong with two people just growing apart, and if that had been the case I would have accepted things, but it was how she treated him and what she did when he got ill. I’m ashamed I didn’t do anything about it now. I couldn’t stand things but just left them to it. She made him feel a burden, I heard her telling him one afternoon when he was back from the hospital how she had wasted her life on him. I don’t think she actually told him to hurry up and die but she certainly gave him, and me for that matter, that impression. She was busy contacting private nursing homes as soon as he was back home, as if she was doing him a favour; and if he hadn’t gone so quickly she wouldn’t have had him hanging around the house, that’s for sure.’
Gemma found that saying it out loud was, surprisingly, more painful than she had expected, but she could see Mark was taking it in.
‘Look, I won’t go on but she made my dad’s life unhappy and his death even more so. He told me a few days before he went that I was the only good thing that had happened to him. You know, I really hate her for that; and somehow I want to get her back as well. As well as that I don’t really trust her either. I’m not saying she’d leave me with nothing but she’ll always put herself and her enjoyment first.’
They sat back and Gemma ordered another beer for him and a glass of wine for herself. Mark looked a little shell-shocked.
‘Wow, I knew you weren’t close, but I never realised all of that. What a cow; but you mustn’t blame yourself, you were too young to do anything.’
Mark wondered if Gemma had guessed what had already crossed his mind. It was worth a try.
‘This might seem absolutely crazy but I’ve been thinking, I wasted over six years in prison and I’ve not really got anything together since I got out. If you really want to pay her back and get what you deserve too, maybe we could sort something out.’
It was strange but over the years Mark had always referred to murder or death elliptically, he’d never felt able to say it out loud. Come to think of it, ‘sorting out’ was his favourite euphemism.
‘Of course, it is way off the wall and only a thought, and, with my record, hardly feasible.’
Things were working out just as Gemma had planned. That was enough for now. She interrupted him, she needed to reassure him and leave the finer details for the future.
‘Mark, you really would help me, wouldn’t you? That means so much to me; and now we’re together we’d both benefit too. I don’t know, though, let’s not rush into anything. We’ll see how things work out.’
She knew how his mind worked and no doubt he’d have thought things through already, but no harm in spelling it out while they were on the subject.
‘I know you never thought you’d go back there, Mark, but maybe you’re right, and maybe in future we need to make sure we get what we deserve. Let’s face it, if it hadn’t been for you assuming Justine would support you, things would have worked out fine for you. You were bloody clever. I knew that as soon as I met you at Ford Prison. I actually reckon you could do that sort of thing again without anything pointing to you.’
The irony of it was left in the air for now. They were both well aware of it. It had been little over a year since she had been assigned the task of helping to assess Mark’s fitness to be released on licence from a life sentence for the murder of his then in-laws, and after that to help him with his rehabilitation. She pushed on, keeping it at the level of a general idea for the time being.
‘You could take charge, you’ve got the ideas – but you do realise, Mark, if we did do anything I’d support you, I’d be with you absolutely. Anyway, I’m fed up with the probation work, you know that. I want what should be mine anyway; you know my uncle and grandad would have wanted me to have it, they wouldn’t expect me to have to work basically as a glorified dogsbody.’
By the time they’d finished their drinks, they were both well aware they’d made some kind of pact. Gemma felt pretty turned on by how it had all panned out. She’d leave it for the time being though.
‘Come on Mark, let’s get home, I don’t know why but thinking about all this has made me bloody horny.’
It was only about fourteen miles from Hindhead back to Petworth and Gemma put her foot down. She looked over at Mark. He deserves it and so do I. It can be a little bit of advance payment for him, and he’s good at it too. Taking the left fork at Fernland, she pulled hard over into one of the off road tracks heading up toward Castle Copse. She jerked the MG to a halt at the first available gateway.
‘Come on Mark, I can’t wait.’
She almost dragged him round to the back of the car to a patch of grass by the side of a four bar gate enclosing a field heavily populated with a herd of rich, red-brown Sussex cattle. Mark didn’t need much persuading anyway. By the time she’d unbuttoned his jeans and reached into his boxers he was more than hard enough. It was convenient she had chosen a short enough skirt that morning. The grass, weeds and even odd thistle felt good as he pulled her knickers off and rocked in and out of her.
She kissed him.
‘Anyway, those cows don’t look as if they care too much.’