A Perfect Christmas (7 page)

‘They eventually found all the cartons from the hijacked lorry stacked in disused outhouses behind the factory, and the key to the padlock and a bloodied crowbar, wrapped in a sack, hidden in the glove box of my car. I was stunned rigid, and had absolutely no idea how the boxes or key and crowbar had got where they had found them. Regardless, I was cautioned and taken down to the station for questioning. Meanwhile all my staff were interviewed. All of them had solid alibis. I was the only one who couldn’t prove what I’d been doing. When I’d arrived home from work the previous evening, Nerys had told me she was suffering from a migraine. As soon as Lucy was put down for the night, she had taken a sleeping tablet and gone to bed. She didn’t wake until Lucy did, at six-thirty the next morning. She tried to cover for me but as soon as the police started probing about what we’d done that night . . . listened to on the wireless, et cetera . . . she had to come clean and admit that she had taken a tablet and gone to bed and had no idea what I’d done then. The evidence against me was overwhelming. My insistence that I was innocent carried no weight. Thankfully the driver pulled through so I wasn’t charged with actual murder, but I was charged with grievous bodily harm and theft. I received a fifteen-year sentence.

‘It all seemed to happen so quickly but all the time I was convinced that the police would realise their terrible mistake, find the real villain and then I’d have my life back. When that cell door closed behind me in prison, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Nerys got a visiting order as soon as she could. I wouldn’t allow her to bring Lucy, though, as I didn’t want her visiting a place like that. Nerys had made an effort to look nice and be positive when she first arrived for the visit, and I tried hard to assure her that, despite what we’d heard, it wasn’t that bad. But she couldn’t keep up the pretence for long and broke down, telling me how hard she was finding life without me and that neither of us during the lead-up to the trial had given a thought to how she was going to manage for money, to take care of Lucy and herself. And also, what about the business? Had I someone in mind to run it for me during my absence? Someone that I trusted implicitly.

‘I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about such important matters and made proper arrangements. I put it down to my faith in the British justice system and a jury finding me innocent, so that I wouldn’t need to consider such matters. In fact, Nerys had been constantly telling me that anyone only had to look at me to see I wasn’t capable of doing what I was accused of, and to stop worrying. I trusted all my staff, several of whom had been with the firm longer than I had, but none of them was the right person to head up the business while I was inside. But how was I going to find someone who could do that on my behalf when I was in prison? Nerys said that I needed to put my affairs in the hands of a solicitor, give him my power of attorney, and he could then appoint someone to take care of the business and make sure that she and Lucy were taken care of financially. I felt stupid for not thinking of that myself. I asked her to make a visit to our family solicitor and have him draw up the documentation, which I would sign the next time she came on her monthly visit.

‘When she next visited, against my wishes she’d brought Lucy along with her, telling me that regardless of how I felt about not wanting my daughter to see me in prison, she felt strongly that Lucy needed to see her father and her father needed to see her, and she intended to bring her each time. I was in fact overjoyed to see my daughter, and how well she looked and how Nerys was looking after her. Any worries I’d had that she might already have begun to forget me were unfounded. The smile on Lucy’s face when she first clapped eyes on me was a sight to behold. I was glad Nerys had brought her in. These monthly visits from the two women I loved most in the world, and the regular letters Nerys wrote to me in between, would make such a difference to helping me through my period of incarceration.

‘Before I knew it the guard was announcing there were only five minutes left. Nerys was crying when she hurriedly dressed Lucy in her outdoor clothes. It would be a whole four weeks before she saw me again, she sobbed, and I was having a job not to weep myself because of the backlash this scene could cause me afterwards with some of the nastier type of inmates. By the time Nerys had finished dressing Lucy, the guard was announcing that visiting time was over and all were to take their leave. We had just said our goodbyes and Nerys was about to go when she remembered she hadn’t given me the document to sign for the solicitor.

‘The guard was really getting annoyed with the stragglers by now but I knew this couldn’t wait for another month . . . the business would be suffering without someone at the helm and Nerys needed money to live on. Not caring what trouble I’d get into, I ignored the guard and told Nerys to give me the document. She took it out of her bag, then from the envelope, and turned the pages over to the one I needed to put my signature on. After I had signed on the dotted line, I realised we’d need someone to witness my signature. Thankfully Nerys was able to use her charm on the guard and he obliged, if only so as to be rid of us so he could have his tea break. As I was being escorted out by him I turned and looked back into the visiting room. Nerys was at the exit door, gazing back at me. There was a look on her face . . . at the time I thought she was upset to be going off into the freedom of the world, leaving me shut up inside those high walls. But, thinking about it later, I realised how wrong I was. She was saying goodbye to me as she knew she’d never see me again.

‘When a week had passed and I hadn’t received any correspondence from Nerys and there was no answer when I telephoned her on my permitted weekly call, I was extremely concerned that either Lucy or she was ill. Another week passed and still there was no word by letter or telephone. I became very worried that something awful had happened to them, lots of different scenarios going through my head, none of them pleasant. I couldn’t sleep, eat, and was having difficulty concentrating on my job in the prison laundry. When visiting time came around again and Nerys did not appear or send any word to me, I became frantic.

‘It was bad enough dealing with the day-to-day living in that place, which was as bad as any stories I had heard, let alone worrying that something was wrong with my family while there was nothing I could do about it. The only thing I could do was write to my solicitor and ask him to find out what was going on. What an agonising wait to hear back from him that was! A week later, when I was pulled off my shift in the laundry as I had a visitor, I knew it had to be important for them to interrupt me at work. I really believed . . . prayed . . . it was Nerys who’d managed to get special dispensation from the governor to explain to me the reason for her silence. I was terrified it was something to do with my daughter but grateful that I’d be receiving some answers at last. My visitor wasn’t Nerys but my solicitor, Charles Gray. The grave expression on his face sent a chill through me.

‘He told me he that he was most surprised to receive my letter as he’d not been approached by my wife to have any papers drawn up concerning a power of attorney. After I’d been in touch by letter, he paid a visit to the house. A woman answered the door. When he announced who he was, she introduced herself to him as Nerys Thomas and seemed very surprised when he explained to her the reason for his visit. She told him that I must have had a brain seizure since the last time she had seen me. On her last but one visit I had informed her to contact a solicitor and have her given power of attorney so that she could take care of the business on my behalf and be able to access funds in my bank accounts to look after herself and my daughter. She showed him her copy of the document she’d had drawn up, which I’d signed.

‘Having handled not only my affairs but my father’s before him, Charles Gray knew my signature well enough to know this wasn’t faked. The firm Nerys had used to draw up the documentation and deal with the legalities was a very reputable one.

‘Charles then asked her why she hadn’t visited me since I’d assigned my affairs over to her and told her that I was extremely worried something had happened to either her or Lucy. He said she seemed really shocked that I was so worried as, after I’d signed the papers and given them back to her, I’d told her that I was handing over everything I owned to her as my way of apologising for the humiliation I’d brought on her by what I’d done. I’d also said that I couldn’t expect her to wait ten years for me, so she was to divorce me and feel free to meet someone else. My only stipulation had been that she should raise Lucy on my behalf, with the child believing that her father was dead so that she didn’t grow up with the stigma of being related to a convicted criminal. I’d left her in no doubt that I meant what I said as I was going to make sure that she didn’t receive any more visiting orders.

‘She told Charles Gray that she had done her best to talk me out of it but I wouldn’t budge. Therefore she’d had no choice but to build a future for herself and Lucy without me in it. She asked him to give me her best wishes when next he saw me.

‘I was struck dumb by these revelations and started to question if indeed her version of events was the truth and I was losing my mind. Then Charles asked me why, when I’d checked over the document and seen what it stated wasn’t actually according to my instructions, I’d still gone ahead and signed. That was when the truth dawned on me. Nerys hadn’t wanted me to examine the document before I’d authorised it. She had obviously brought Lucy along with her that visiting time, against my wishes, in order to distract me from the document until the very last minute, so that I wouldn’t have time to check through it. Then a terrible thought hit me like a sledgehammer. It could only have been Nerys herself behind my being put away in the first place.

‘I could see by the look on his face that Charles was thinking the same as I was, and said as much to him. He asked me just what exactly I knew about Nerys when I’d married her. It struck me it was hardly anything, and what I did know I had taken her word for. I had no choice but to accept that all her words of endearment to me were lies. To her I had been nothing more than a meal ticket. She was obviously on the lookout for a suitable victim to fleece and had found it in me that night I went into the hotel. But all the whys and wherefores . . . whether she’d had an accomplice who carried out the attack and theft for which I was framed, or whether she’d paid someone to do it . . . were irrelevant now as the document I had unwittingly signed was watertight and there was nothing even a clever lawyer like Charles could do about it. Nerys was now the legal owner of all my possessions.

‘No words can describe how devastated and guilty I felt for losing the family home I’d been born in and all the happy memories of life there, along with the business my father had worked so hard to build. But far worse than that was the loss of my precious child. I didn’t have anyone else to blame but myself, though, for falling for Nerys’s scheme. The only consolation I had was that she must love my daughter as if she was her own or she would have put her in an orphanage.

‘I was released on parole after ten years but they seemed like a lifetime to me. I’d had no visitors and no idea how my daughter was faring with Nerys. Release brought me little joy as I’d nothing to come out to. I knew I had no chance of getting back any of my possessions but I badly wanted to see my little girl, even from a distance, just to satisfy myself that she was well and happy. After settling in at a hostel, I paid a visit to my old home. To my shock I found that Nerys no longer lived there and hadn’t for ten years. She must have sold up and moved as soon as the house became hers. The present owners had no forwarding address for her. I would have asked Charles Gray’s help in tracing Nerys but found he had died years before, and there was no one left working at my old business who would remember me or feel any inclination to help me. I had no choice but to put my past life behind me and get on with the one I had instead.

‘The prisoners’ welfare people had secured me a job as a labourer at a lumber yard, where I could sleep in one of the outbuildings. That was one of the conditions of getting parole – that I had a job and somewhere to live. I knew from the moment I met my new boss that I was going to hate working for him. He was squat, thickset and brusque, in his late-sixties, and he and his thin, mean-faced wife lived in a ramshackle filthy old place on the premises. I was expected to do as I was told, no questions asked, and be eternally grateful that I had somewhere to rest my head, never mind that it was a rotting shed with just sacking for a mattress. The food I was given was not fit for pigs. My hours of work were from six in the morning until the boss decided I’d finished at night. After deductions to cover accommodation and food I received ten shillings a week, barely enough to buy myself any personal things, let alone clothes.

‘I’ve never had any aversion to hard work, my parents certainly believed in it, but being worked each day until I was fit to drop, and treated like I was the scum of the earth while being expected to show gratitude, was something I wasn’t prepared to tolerate. I stuck the job for three months until I’d managed to save up five pounds and walked out of the job without a word to my boss as I didn’t believe he deserved an explanation.

‘Knowing I’d got to take care of my money until I found another job, I stayed in a hostel for homeless men that night, in a large dormitory surrounded by types as bad as any I’d been in prison with. Next day I spruced myself up as best I could and went looking for work. I wasn’t fussy, would have taken anything suitable. All I was asking was to be given enough of a wage to manage on and to be treated like a human being. I was obviously expecting too much.

‘Two weeks later I’d visited that many places asking after work I’d lost count, but each time a prospect looked promising, as soon as I told potential employers about my time in prison and that I had no fixed abode, I was shown the door. My money was all gone by this time so I couldn’t even afford the two shillings a night to stay in the hostel. I was starting to look really shabby as it’s very difficult to keep yourself looking clean and tidy when you’ve no facilities other than the public baths, for which you need to pay. And I needed money for food more than for hot water. With no job and nowhere to live, I had no choice but to live rough. That was over five years ago.’