The Cruellest Game (37 page)

Ultimately I reckoned the best thing for me to do was to try to live on that joint account overdraft until Robert’s trial. I realized I was merely putting off the inevitable, and sooner or
later the financial mess I was in would have to be dealt with along with everything else. But there was a case for at least waiting until I knew what was going to happen to Robert. That was what I
told myself anyway.

Having made that decision, I turned Highrise into a kind of Hitler’s Bunker, in which I existed in a trance-like state, cut off as much as possible from the outside world.

I could no longer afford to heat the place properly, so I more or less lived in the kitchen, feeding the Aga from the vast store of logs Robert and Robbie had amassed before the nightmare began.
Not only had we regularly culled the abundant sycamores and ash on our land, but there was also that old oak that Robert had acquired and behind a pile of which I had found little Luke Macintyre
naked and half dead. Only I tried not to think about that any more.

Anyway, this long-burning, non-spitting stuff was supposed to be our best wood, to be burned only in the inglenook in the sitting room. But during those few months waiting for Robert’s
trial I burned ‘best wood’ in the range along with whatever else came to hand, every morning loading logs into a wheelbarrow and pushing it straight into the kitchen.

I couldn’t afford to buy the malt whisky I had been numbing my senses with since Robbie’s death, but that, I was forced to admit, might not have been such a bad thing. And there was
plenty of wine in Robert’s wine store. Enough to last one person several months, I thought, even at the rate I seemed to be going through it.

I spent much of each day huddled up in the big old leather armchair pulled close to the stove, Florrie half straddling my lap. Sometimes I watched TV on the little portable I had set up the day
after Highrise had been trashed, and sometimes I tried to read. But I didn’t seem able to take much in.

I dreamed of Robbie sometimes. And of Robert too, though I didn’t want to. Occasionally I thought about sex with him. It was hard to so abruptly lose a good sex life. And also to know
that, whatever happened, you would never want to have sex with that person again. I even fantasized about sex with some anonymous fit young man, as a kind of ultimate diversion. But there
wasn’t much chance of that as long as I remained in the back of beyond. In any case, I was far from ready for a new lover.

I could not stop myself reliving the past, the good and the bad, wondering if things really had been as good as I’d thought, and just how I had managed to remain so unsuspecting for so
long. I remembered driving Robert to and from the local airports. I imagine Brenda had done the same. Presumably sometimes I had dropped Robert off, assuming that he was flying to Aberdeen, only
for him to have been picked up by Brenda. And the other way round. And surely that had involved risk of discovery. But Robert had never let me go into the terminal, even when I picked him up, in
order to avoid the hassle and unnecessary expense of parking, he’d said. At each airport he’d found a tucked-away place for me to park and wait. Just as he had for Brenda, I assumed.
And, in any case, I guess that after sixteen years of getting away with an extraordinary deception you must begin to believe you will never be found out. I certainly had never come close to finding
him out until Robbie died. I felt such a fool. And sometimes almost as angry with myself as with Robert.

As winter deepened and the nights grew bitingly cold I moved the smallest of the two sitting-room sofas into the kitchen and even slept there through the hours of darkness.

Gladys and Tom Farley were regular visitors, although, perhaps to my shame, I rarely invited them in. They brought boxes of food and provisions which apparently the entire village contributed
to. I had no idea how they knew that I had money problems on top of everything else – perhaps my living only in the kitchen had been a clue – but they certainly seemed to have guessed
it and I was deeply touched by their kindness. However, I could not cope with their company and was always somewhat relieved once they had left.

Florrie was my greatest comfort. She never left my side, and everything about her indicated, to me at least, that she somehow understood the depth of my misery. I know every dog owner says this,
but I honestly believe it to be true.

Christmas came and went, and I might not have noticed it were it not for my little band of supporters. Gladys brought me a special box of Christmas goodies: chocolates, nuts, a pudding, some
mince pies, clotted cream, and an oven-ready pheasant.

‘Even a turkey crown’s too big for one,’ she’d said in her businesslike way.

She’d begged me to join the Reverend Gerald and her for lunch at the vicarage, promising: ‘You needn’t worry, luvvie, it won’t be a religious affair. Once the morning
service is over Gerry and I just get stuck in to eating and drinking far too much like everyone else. And if you feel like you want to contribute something, I did hear that husband of yours kept
rather a good wine cellar . . .’

I managed a smile for, I thought, the first time since Robert’s arrest. But I declined the invitation none the less.

‘I’m just no kind of company,’ I said. ‘And I’d honestly rather be alone, Christmas Day or not, until this is all over.’

I sent her on her way clutching a couple of bottles of Robert’s finest claret as a seasonal gift, which I hoped would make me seem slightly less ungracious.

Tom Farley stopped by with a tiny beautifully iced Christmas cake, made by his wife, he said, and he too invited me to Christmas dinner.

‘The missus says you’d be ever so welcome and to tell you all men are bastards,’ he recited deadpan.

I managed my second smile in a long time. But I turned him down as gently as I could, gave him some wine too, and sent my love and thanks to his wife.

‘Tell her she’s dead right,’ I said. ‘And when all this is over and I feel more up to it I’ll pop round one day for a cup of tea and we can discuss the matter
further.’

He went off chuckling. At least I’d managed not to offend him.

Dad, of course, also invited me for Christmas.

‘Or I could come to you, maid,’ he said.

But this time I think he really did understand my reasons for wanting to be alone. Or maybe at heart he didn’t really want to have to cope with me. Either way, he made little protest when
I declined.

He called me on Christmas morning before setting off to spend the day with one of his dart-player pals from the pub. I’d known he wouldn’t have to be alone. Dad was far too popular
in his village for that.

We wished each other Happy Christmas, like you do, which seemed rather surreal under the circumstances. In my case, anyway.

Then I set about obediently roasting the pheasant Gladys had given me, along with accompanying roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts for which I’d foraged in the sorry remains of our
vegetable garden. I made gravy and even bread sauce. I found an unopened – and unbroken – jar of redcurrant jelly at the back of a cupboard and ladled some into a silver dish. I put the
pudding on to steam and scooped the cream into another silver dish. I selected a bottle of the St Emilion Grand Cru 2000, which I knew had been a favourite of Robert’s, and opened it early to
let it breathe. I laid the kitchen table with our best cutlery and one silver goblet. Then I cut the pheasant in half with my poultry shears, placing one half on an anonymous new white plate, and
surrounding it with vegetables. I poured gravy over it and added a generous dollop of bread sauce.

I set my plate on the table, poured some of the wine, and stepped back to admire my handiwork. It looked great. I knew the pheasant was moist and tender from the way it had sliced open; the
roast potatoes were golden and crunchy-looking; the sprouts just right, still firm and crisp. I liked my food. Well, once upon a time I’d liked my food. I stepped forward to take my single
place, almost eagerly at first.

And then it hit me. My single place. The previous Christmas my entire little family had been happy and together for the celebration, it being Robert’s turn for Christmas leave. Or so
he’d told me. We’d set the table in the formal dining room as we always did on special occasions, with the best cutlery, of course, but also the crystal glasses and the wonderful old
dinner service now smashed to bits by his mad first wife.

We’d begun the festive day as usual, with coffee and croissants followed by a glass of champagne. Robert had been in fine humour and had thoroughly embarrassed Robbie with an energetic
rendition of Tom Jones’s ‘Sex Bomb’, directed at me. He’d had to appease our son with a glass of Buck’s Fizz. Then, in front of a blazing fire in the sitting room,
we’d opened our presents, which had been stacked beneath the tall Christmas tree in the bay window.

As usual in the good old days I’d roasted a goose, which I’d served the traditional English way: with apple sauce and sage and onion stuffing. Robert carved the goose at the table.
We all agreed it was much more interesting than turkey, tucked in accordingly, and when we’d finished marvelled at just how much of it we’d managed to put away, accompanied, of course,
by copious quantities of carefully chosen claret.

Last year I’d made the pudding myself a couple of months in advance, and we’d all stirred it for luck. We’d had brandy butter as well as clotted cream and finished off the
champagne. Then we’d pretty much dozed away the rest of the day in front of the fire in the sitting room, with the TV switched on but its content only fleetingly entering our sated
consciousnesses.

I could see it all so clearly inside my head, almost as if it were yesterday rather than a whole year ago. There I was, so secure in the company of my family, cosseted, I thought, by the love of
a wonderful husband, excited by all that the future might hold for a clever, attractive son.

That woman, without a real worry in the world, no longer appeared to have been me at all. Last Christmas now seemed almost like some wicked practical joke. Indeed, my whole life with my husband
and my poor dead son seemed like a wicked practical joke.

The tears I’d tried so hard to keep away were pricking again. The big house, which I had always thought to be the most wonderful home in the world, filled with warmth and love, felt cold
and empty. I felt cold and empty. These were feelings that had begun the day Robbie died and I feared they would never leave me.

I picked up the plate of food I had so carefully prepared and emptied the lot into the bin. Then I threw the horrid white dish, somehow such a stark reminder of all that I had lost, human and
mineral, into the sink with such force that it broke in half. Another wanton piece of destruction in a life already ruined.

I felt sick. I just couldn’t eat a thing. I drank the St Emilion, though. And then I opened a second bottle, desperately seeking oblivion again, my only hope of any rest.

The trial began on Monday the 26th of March 2012. Nearly four months after Robert’s arrest, and almost exactly two months before Robbie would have celebrated his
sixteenth birthday. I had been asked to give evidence against Robert. Because I was not his legal wife I could have been compelled to do so. I needed no such compulsion. I wanted him brought to
justice.

The prosecution called me as their first witness.

‘To set the scene, as it were,’ the Crown Prosecution Service barrister, Pam Cotton, had said a little obliquely. But I thought I understood pretty much what she meant and although
I’d only met her once before, earlier that day in the court’s witness support room, she’d briefed me well enough on what was required.

Thirty-something Pam Cotton was very black and very beautiful. In fact almost disconcertingly so, because at a glance she resembled a Hollywood actress playing the part of a barrister rather
more than a working brief. She was a rare Marlene Dietrich-like creature who wore suits so severely tailored that they were quite masculine in cut, and yet somehow contrived to make her appear all
the more feminine.

I’d walked with her across the main lobby of the court after our earlier meeting and had noticed heads turning. It was obvious that men could not take their eyes off her. I wondered
whether this was an advantage or a disadvantage in her profession. Probably a bit of both, I thought.

Regardless of any of that, the woman had a brain like a bacon slicer.

I was the one in the witness box, but Pam, as she’d instructed me to address her out of court, was the one in control of every bit of evidence I gave. Briefly she took me through my
marriage to Robert, the marriage that had turned out to be such a sham, from the moment we met, through the birth of Robbie, right up to his death, and asked me to tell the court how I had returned
home from an ordinary day at school to make the discovery that our son appeared to have hanged himself.

I swear I could feel Robert’s eyes burning into me from where he stood in the dock towards the rear of the courtroom. I made myself not look at him.

‘Before your son died, did you ever have any suspicions that all might not be as it seemed in your marriage, Mrs Anderson?’ Pam Cotton asked.

I replied that I had not. ‘Indeed, I’d considered myself to be very fortunate,’ I said. ‘I seemed to have everything: a loving husband, a fine son and a beautiful
home.’

‘And after Robbie’s death, when were your suspicions first raised?’

I told her how I had tried to get in touch with Robert to tell him about Robbie, how the Amaco personnel people had appeared not to know of a Robert Anderson, and how they had first mentioned
the name Rob Anderton to me. And I explained how I had come to realize that derrickman Rob Anderton and senior drilling engineer Robert Anderson were probably one and the same.

‘Did you confront your husband with this?’ asked Pam.

I nodded. The red-robed judge, Sir Charles Montague, who looked rather younger than a stereotypical idea of a Justice of Her Majesty’s High Court, his face tanned beneath his judicial wig
as if he’d recently been on a good holiday, coughed and frowned in my direction.