He glanced up at me.
‘Do you think that makes any difference to me?’ he asked. ‘Now?’
I shrugged. ‘I just wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to take anything from you. I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want to touch anything of yours ever again.’
I spat out the last words in spite of knowing I shouldn’t. After all, I was there to persuade Robert to do my bidding, not to vent my latent fury on him for its own sake.
He did not reply. Instead he looked down again at the papers on the table. I noticed that his hands were trembling. I waited.
I’d thought about asking Marti Smith to approach him. Or, as I assumed would be the correct procedure, to ask for the approach to be made by Robert’s solicitor. But I’d known I would stand a better chance of getting what I wanted in the least problematic way if I went to visit Robert and asked him directly. It was an uncomfortable thing to do. But I had been fairly confident of the feelings he still held towards me. And of his tremendous sense of guilt. And actually I still was. In spite of my outburst.
Eventually, after what seemed like a very long time, he looked up at me again.
‘Is this what you really want, Marion?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But think of the memories? Do you really want to leave Highrise? I mean, maybe I will appeal successfully. There is nothing standing in the way of us having a life together now. Perhaps we could rebuild our life? Is that out of the question, Marion?’
For a moment or two I was speechless. Then it was like the waters breaking, as words and thoughts I had barely voiced even to myself poured out of me.
‘Do you ever listen to yourself, Robert?’ I stormed at him. ‘You’re crazy. Mad. Crazy. Do you honestly think any woman in her right mind could countenance a future with a man who’s done to her what you’ve done to me? Our son is dead because of you. We don’t have a home. We certainly don’t have the slimmest hope of any life together ever. Even if I were stupid enough to consider such a thing, neither of us have the means to keep Highrise going. How could you have thought that your lottery money was going to last for ever? It was a miracle you kept all those ridiculous balls in the air for as long as you did. I have a mountain of bills to pay. I have no money even to refill the oil tank. It may be April but every room in the house is still freezing except the kitchen and that’s where I’ve existed all winter. Since your arrest I’ve barely been able to feed myself, or the fucking dog. And I wouldn’t have been able to do so at all without the generosity of the vicar’s wife, of all people, and others in the village, the neighbours you never wanted anything to do with. You’re a fucking maniac, Robert. A total fucking maniac and I was too blind to see it. Our poor fucking son had to die before I could see it. Then I saw it all right. Now I fucking see it. So just sign these fucking papers, will you, and then that will be the end of everything...’
I stopped abruptly, suddenly aware both of my use of language and that my voice had risen until I was shouting at virtually the top of it. The room around us had fallen almost silent. The same prison officer who had earlier searched my bag was walking purposefully towards us. He stopped walking when I stopped shouting.
Robert merely stared at me. His eyes blank and yet filled with pain. His jaw slack. I wondered if he really was crazy. I thought he must be to have done what he did. Sometimes I wondered if I too were crazy. Driven that way by this madman before me.
I glanced towards the prison officer and made a show of taking my pen from my bag. The officer stepped forwards, again. Watchful. I placed the pen on the table alongside the legal papers. Without another word Robert picked it up and signed in each of the places Marti Smith had marked.
That was it. He had with those few signatures given me the right to sell Highrise, to walk away from the place and from him for ever.
I half snatched the papers from him, shuffling them into some sort of order as I stood up, swung round and prepared to leave. Then he spoke once more.
‘Will you come and visit again?’ he asked, almost plaintively. ‘Will you? If only to tell me how you’ve got on, and if you’ve sold the place?’
I could barely believe my ears. I turned round to look at him one last time. His eyes were pleading. His lips were trembling as well as his hands. I didn’t give a damn.
‘Your solicitor can do that,’ I said, my voice deliberately expressionless. ‘I never want to see you again as long as I live.’
I began to walk across the visiting room to the exit. As I did so I could hear a kind of strangled wail. It hardly sounded like Robert, more like the anguished cry of a wild animal. But I knew it was him.
I did not look back.
When I arrived home, or rather to the place I now thought of as having once been my home, I took the signed papers from my bag and flipped through. I felt no sense of triumph. This really did mark the end of it all. The end of an era. The end of a lifetime. I felt mostly sorrow. But I also experienced perhaps just a glimmer of hope for some kind of future, something I knew I had now denied Robert even more than Exeter Crown Court had.
I did want to start again, if it were to prove to be possible. I would never stop grieving for Robbie. But I was damned if I was going to grieve for his father too, and let that man destroy whatever might be left for me.
I called an estate agent that very afternoon in order to put Highrise on the market. And I called Marti Smith to tell her Robert had signed. Then I set about giving the place a massive spring clean and generally making it as presentable as I could in order to sell. The next day I planned to tidy the garden, particularly at the front, where visitors first arrived at the property. I needed to get out fast, I really did. And I was prepared to do anything necessary in order for that to happen, including ensuring that the price was right.
Ultimately, and thankfully, the old house sold surprisingly easily. Or perhaps not that surprisingly. I put it on the market for more than £50,000 less than the price suggested by our major local estate agent, and ultimately agreed to sell for almost £100,000 less than his estimate. Ironically, it was Robert who had always said, when I’d gone to car boot sales or markets, that everything has a price, and everything will sell at the right price.
I was more readily prepared to accept a low offer for Highrise because the prospective buyer was, unusually, neither in a chain nor in need of a mortgage. I just wanted to get out of the place as quickly as possible, and he just wanted to move himself and his family in as quickly as possible.
At around the same time the inquest into Robbie’s death was eventually held in the North Devon market town of Barnstaple. It was a curious affair. I attended with my father. Dad had offered to accompany me, and for the first time since the nightmare had begun I did not turn him away.
I wasn’t required to give evidence and did not have to be at the hearing. But I wanted, indeed, needed to be there to witness the final chapter in my son’s tragic story,
The coroner for Exeter and Greater Devon, Dr Elspeth Hunt, had been supplied with written reports from the ambulance service and from the Scenes of Crime Officers. DS Jarvis was the principal witness.
He briefly outlined how he had been called to Highrise on the night of Robbie’s death and had found my son hanging from a beam in his room.
‘My first reaction and that of the paramedics and other police officers called to the scene was that this was a case of tragic suicide,’ said Jarvis. ‘However, subsequent events have led us to believe that there was probably a third party involved.’
‘Indeed, Mr Jarvis,’ agreed the coroner. ‘And the involvement of this third party is something that has recently become a matter of record in another court, has it not?’