The Cruellest Game (31 page)

I had to concentrate on building my strength and learning to deal with all that was happening. I had various plans in my head, but I had to proceed with care. I was already on police bail after
all.

I suppose it was almost masochistic of me to buy the newspapers, local and national, every day but I could not resist. In any case I needed to know what was going on and what was being said.

In spite of the dawn offensive on my home by Mrs Macintyre and her insistent press escort, the story of which ran in only one newspaper, presumably the one that had stage-managed the operation,
there was not as much coverage of my case as I would have expected. Certainly not as much as there would probably have been before the debacle which had followed the death of Joanna Yeates. But
there was enough to upset me quite badly on most days.

I found nothing, however, anything like as sensational as, six days after my release on police bail, a front-page report in the local evening paper, the
Express & Echo
, which was
not actually directly connected with my case.

A Mrs Brenda Anderton, aged forty-four, had been killed in a tragic motor accident. Her vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, had been in a head-on collision with a milk tanker on the A377 near Mrs
Anderton’s Bridge Estate home. An eyewitness said that the car had been travelling at speed before appearing to fly out of control and hurtle onto the wrong side of the road. The police were
currently investigating the possibility of mechanical failure. Corollas were among the models recently recalled worldwide by Toyota due to a much-publicized problem with sticking accelerators. The
driver of the milk tanker had escaped with minor injuries.

A picture of the dead woman was spread across two columns. And I recognized her at once.

Indeed, I knew her quite well. But I knew her as Mrs Bella Clooney.

There was no doubt about it, even though the report described the woman as having two daughters aged twenty-seven and eleven, rather than a son and daughter aged eleven and twelve, and named her
dog, which had apparently died with her in the accident, as Splash, not Flash.

I read the piece through two or three times to make sure of it all. Then I decided to contact Robert at once, while still parked in the car park of the supermarket where I’d bought the
newspaper. He had even more explaining to do.

My hands were trembling so much that I had difficulty in punching his number into my new mobile. He might have been out of range in the North Sea, of course, but I suspected not. I was right. He
answered his phone straight away. He sounded upset and rather peculiar, which was probably only to be expected under the circumstances, even without the added element of Brenda Anderton’s
sudden death. But there was another note in his voice too – the glum resignation, perhaps, of someone who suspected that the extraordinary game he had played for so long was finally at an
end.

‘You’ve heard the news, I presume?’ I began flatly.

‘What news?’ he responded. Perhaps I had underestimated him. Could he really still be trying to play his cruel game? I reckoned it was more likely that his disingenuousness was just
an automatic reaction. The habit of sixteen years must be hard to break.

‘I have a copy of the
Express & Echo
here and I’ve just read the front-page story of a woman called Brenda Anderton who has died suddenly in a motor accident,’ I
recited as calmly as I could. ‘I recognized her picture, of course, but then, you would expect me to, wouldn’t you?’

There was a brief silence.

‘I see,’ he said eventually.

‘You’d better come to Highrise as soon as you can, hadn’t you?’ I continued. ‘I think we have rather a lot to talk about.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he replied. And this time he did sound beaten.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Exeter. They told me . . .’ He paused. ‘I, uh, heard last night,’ he continued rather obliquely. ‘I just got back.’

I was pretty sure he was telling the truth for once. Not just because of that somewhat contrived airport call, but also, as I’d already turned him out of our home, there was little point,
surely, in him lying to me now.

‘Right. So it won’t take you long, will it?’

He mumbled his agreement. I started the engine of the little Ford, which this time obliged at the first attempt, and drove straight back to Highrise where I unpacked the small amount of shopping
I’d picked up and fed Florrie her favourite treat – a couple of the disgusting-smelling tripe sticks I’d bought for her. Then I made myself a coffee and sat down at the kitchen
table to drink it, with the newspaper spread out in front of me.

I’d confided in the woman I’d known as Bella Clooney, in as much as I’d ever confided in anyone other than, ironically, Robert. She had been the one I had turned to on the
night my son died. She had helped me to take a bath. She had seen me naked. The very thought of it turned the blood in my veins to ice.

Robert arrived less than an hour later. I remained sitting at the kitchen table as I heard a vehicle pull up then drive away again. Another taxi, I supposed. It seemed to take him an
inordinately long time to reach the front door, perhaps he was trying to think of what he was going to say. I’d put so much of the story together now that in some ways it didn’t matter
a great deal any more. But that wouldn’t be the way he would regard it, and numb though I was, I did have a need to hear his version of events.

Somewhat to my surprise – technically this was still his home too – he knocked on the front door.

‘It’s not locked,’ I called out.

I heard the door open and shut, listened as he made his way along the hallway, and watched wordlessly as he stepped into the kitchen. His face was ashen. Again, his long black hair was unkempt
and he needed a shave. There was despair in his eyes. He really didn’t look like my Robert at all. But then, he wasn’t my Robert any more.

It struck me suddenly that not only did I no longer love him – he had destroyed that in me – but I now hated him. I actually hated him.

I gestured for him to sit down opposite me. I didn’t offer him tea or coffee. I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to speak.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he said. His voice was trembling. So were his hands which he laid flat on the table before him.

‘Just tell me the truth, for God’s sake,’ I said, rather more sharply than I had meant to. After all, I didn’t want to put him off his stride. I didn’t want to say
or do anything to stop him telling me everything. At last.

‘I presume that Mrs Brenda Anderton was your wife,’ I said. ‘And I presume that you were married to her before you married me. No long-lost wife in Australia. Instead, a
current second wife, or should I say first, just up the A30 in Exeter.’

He nodded.

‘Well, don’t you think this might be the time to tell me about it?’ I suggested.

He nodded again.

‘But where, where do I . . .’ He seemed unable to finish formulating the question I knew he was trying to ask.

‘Where do you start? At the beginning would be good.’

‘Yes.’ Robert just stared at me. I could see tears welling up in eyes that full of pleading.

‘Please don’t try to play the sympathy card,’ I snapped at him. ‘It’s far too late for that. Just get on with it.’

‘Yes,’ he said again.

I waited. Eventually he did get on with it. Or after a fashion.

‘What I told you when you found out I was really Rob Anderton was all true,’ he began.

I raised an eyebrow.

‘Well, mostly. From the moment I met you I just knew I had to be with you. You were all I wanted in the world. I wanted to be with you and leave everything else behind. I should have told
you about Brenda, of course. I should have explained. But I just couldn’t. It seemed easier to pretend I was a free agent. To carry on as if neither Brenda, nor our daughters, existed. Then I
could be with you, in your world. That was the world I wanted. Your calm, middle-class world; a beautiful home, peace, warmth. Not the crazy place I inhabited with Brenda.’

He spat the last words out, bitterness oozing from every pore of him.

‘Brenda is dead, Robert,’ I said. ‘You seem so bitter. I mean, how do you feel about that? You have a twenty-seven-year-old daughter, it seems. You’d been together that
long, far longer than we had. Are you not shocked? Are you not grieving for Brenda?’

‘Of course I am, yes. But the whole thing between us had become so dreadful, you see—’

‘Other people face up to bad marriages, and to new loves, to changes in their lives,’ I interrupted. ‘Other people separate and get divorced. They don’t just carry on
with two families. Two lives. How on earth did you think you could get away with it?’

He shook his head. I spoke again before giving him the chance to.

‘But you did get away with it, didn’t you, Robert? For sixteen years. And you had a second child with Brenda years after our so-called wedding, years after our son was born. You
bastard. My God, you’re a piece of work. I want to know how you did it, and why. All of it.’

I knew I was talking too much. I wanted him to do the talking. But I couldn’t stop myself.

‘It was the job,’ he said obscurely. ‘Working on the rigs. I realized it might be possible to juggle two families. I became sure I could do it. I told you I worked three weeks
on and two weeks off. Actually, after getting my lottery money, I arranged to work two weeks on and three weeks off. That gave me one week out of five to spend with Brenda. I told her I had to work
longer than average stints away because we needed the money, for the children, you see. And she accepted that. I didn’t think I would be able to pull it off for ever. Definitely not for
anything like as long as I did. In the beginning, you see, I had a plan. When Laura was older, I was going to come clean. To get divorced. To tell you both. You and Brenda. Well, that’s what
I intended, anyway.’

He let the sentence tail off lamely.

‘That’s a pretty familiar story, isn’t it?’ I said sarcastically. ‘The married man who plans to leave the missus when the children get older. Oh please,
Robert.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Make me,’ I snapped.

‘You don’t realize what a lovely little girl Laura was,’ he continued, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Janey is too. Pretty as a picture. Just such a sweet
child—’

‘Spare me,’ I said.

He seemed to pull himself together with a great effort of will.

‘I couldn’t leave Brenda when Laura was a little girl because of what I knew was going to happen to our child,’ he said. ‘Laura had juvenile Huntington’s. She was
diagnosed at eleven. It’s rare but certainly not unknown for it to develop that young. You can have no idea what it was like to watch that lovely normal little girl turn into . . .’

He paused, brought his hands up to his face and fleetingly closed his eyes as if shutting out some unwanted picture. I’d half expected some sort of sob story, and been determined to remain
unmoved by anything he might tell me. After all, with his track record, how would I even know if he was telling the truth? But surely even Robert would not lie about something like this. I was
shocked in spite of myself, and did not trust myself to speak. Instead I waited for him to continue.

‘I don’t know what you know about Huntington’s,’ he carried on eventually. ‘It’s degenerative and incurable. It destroys muscle coordination and ultimately
leads to the most serious mental disorder. Worst of all, perhaps, the younger someone gets it, the faster it progresses. It used to be called Huntington’s chorea, because . . . well, Laura
very quickly began to lose control of her limbs. After a bit she couldn’t even feed herself properly. She started to slur her words. And then there was the mental deterioration. My sweet
little girl became aggressive and disorientated. She couldn’t remember things. I will never forget the first time I went home and she didn’t know who I was . . .’

He paused and glanced at me. I guessed that even in the middle of this surely genuinely harrowing part of his story he was wondering if I had picked up on his use of the word ‘home’.
I had. But I made no comment.

‘We’d only learned what was wrong with her a few weeks before I met you,’ he went on. ‘I will never be able to explain how I felt. I couldn’t cope at all. I thought
maybe I would just take off somewhere, disappear, never come back. That was one half of me. But I suppose I knew I couldn’t just walk out on Laura. Nor on Brenda for that matter. Though God
knows she deserved it.’

‘What do you mean, deserved it?’

‘She never told me there was Huntington’s in her family. Even when we found out what was wrong with Laura, she carried on lying to me. She said she hadn’t
known—’

‘So lying is something else that runs in the family,’ I interrupted sharply. I knew it was small of me, particularly in view of the story he was finally sharing with me, but I
couldn’t help myself.

Robert winced.

‘Didn’t you ever meet Brenda’s parents, or any other relatives?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘She always told me that she never even knew who her father was. Her mother brought her up on her own. But she died when Brenda was thirteen and Brenda was put into foster care. She was
still with her foster parents when I met her. She was just sixteen and I was nineteen. She was about to start training as a nurse, but all she really wanted to do was get married and have a family.
I sort of got carried along with it. She fell pregnant damned near the first time we slept together and that was that really. Before I knew it we were wed.’ He paused.

‘I seem to have the knack of getting women pregnant straight away,’ he said.

‘And your son was the same apparently,’ I blurted out. ‘His girlfriend was pregnant, even though she claims they only had unprotected sex once. He’d only found out the
day he . . . he died. I thought at first that was why . . . why he did what he did.’

‘B-but we didn’t even know he had a girlfriend,’ Robert stumbled.

He was looking deep into my eyes. For a fleeting moment I even longed for the old closeness. But that was long gone.