Twisted Page 3

  ‘My client has obtained an up-to-date detailed list of Mrs Fulford’s business and private bank accounts, as well as her projected earnings for the next financial year, which as you can see, Mr Henshaw, are substantial.’

  Lena gripped her fingers tightly, watching as Henshaw flicked through the copies of her bank accounts. It was unbelievable – Marcus had somehow got his hands on all her personal details, not only of her savings, but all her different projects and they were so up-to-date she hardly knew the amounts herself. She wanted to get up and slap her husband’s gloating face, sitting across from her smirking as if he expected praise for obtaining her private information.

  Henshaw gave a light cough. ‘You originally agreed to a Collaborative Divorce meeting between our clients, Mr Lyons, so an amicable settlement could be reached. I am not prepared to discuss your requests at the present time, and I will need to have a consultation with Mrs Fulford before we agree to any of Mr Fulford’s demands.’

  ‘By all means, but it is very obvious that the marriage was in difficulties for a considerable time,’ Lyons observed loftily. ‘Mrs Fulford left her husband with no other alternative than to leave the marital home. Admittedly that was some time ago, but he has had time to reflect and realizes that reconciliation is no longer an option. It is a very emotional decision for his own wellbeing as Mrs Fulford put her work and ambition before any attempt to show she desired the marriage to continue.’

  Lyons flicked his notebook closed and shrugged. He opened his nasty little briefcase and replaced his paperwork and notebook and then gave a cool look towards Lena.

  ‘Kind of a reversal of fortunes, is it not, Mrs Fulford – it’s usually the wife who makes claims on her husband’s earnings and estate. However in this instance it is quite obvious that you, as a successful businesswoman, will be made an example. No discrimination meant due to you being a woman, but I think my client has asked for only what is fair and his right as your husband of seventeen years.’

  Lena simply sat there as Lyons and Marcus did more handshaking before leaving. As the door closed behind them she wanted to scream. How dare he claim that he had always been encouraging and helpful? He had done nothing, everything had always been down to her. She drank the remains of her water and placed the glass down, her hand shaking. He was divorcing Lena claiming that it was due to her unreasonable behaviour, that she had placed too much effort and energy into her work and career and added to that it appeared she had not acted quickly enough because Marcus had put in his divorce petition first.

  ‘What if I refuse to give him a divorce? I don’t care if it never goes to court.’ She got the words out with difficulty.

  ‘I’m afraid the divorce proceedings are already in motion, and to be honest even without a divorce your husband can still claim to be given financial security,’ Henshaw replied. ‘You can counter-claim but quite frankly it really does not make any difference because it does appear that the marriage has broken down irretrievably.’

  She was tight-lipped with anger. ‘You tell me why a fully able-bodied man can have the audacity to want me to pay alimony. Why doesn’t he get a job? I refuse to pay him anything, and I am not going to sell the house. He can sue me and if he thinks he is going to get a percentage of my companies, he can go to hell. It just is so unfair, he was the one that walked out for his so-called trial separation, it was not my suggestion but from what I can gather I have to be the guilty one and made to pay out to him.’

  Henshaw allowed her to rant on, until she burst into tears.

  ‘He left me, I didn’t leave him, and it’s disgusting,’ she said through her sobs.

  Henshaw passed her a box of tissues and she plucked one out and blew her nose. He held up the copy of her accounts Lyons had given him.

  ‘These could have been printed off anywhere from downloaded files and impossible to trace back to a particular printer. Is there someone in your business that would have given him access to all your company accounts?’

  She sighed and shook her head. As Marcus had nothing to do with her work, it was unlikely he had ever had more than a fleeting conversation with the staff she employed. The older women that did the sewing were in the country and hardly ever came to London. She couldn’t think how he had obtained such recent figures; some of the future earnings she hadn’t even calculated herself.

  ‘I don’t how he knew so much about Kiddy Winks – my God, I’ve only just got it running smoothly. He was never interested in any of my business ventures when we were together, not one iota, he never helped me in any way at all. I don’t know how he has got all those details.’

  Henshaw sighed and gave a quick glance at his wristwatch. ‘Well somebody has evidently had access. Obviously he had access to your joint bank accounts, but the copies of your business account statements are as recent as last month.’

  ‘Maybe Marcus or Lyons hired one of those professional hackers,’ Lena suggested.

  ‘Possible, but very risky for Lyons as a respected divorce lawyer. I’m sorry to say it would appear somebody close to you is untrustworthy. That said, it would eventually have been necessary to divulge that information to Mr Lyons. You see, you may decline to give him a divorce, but the reality is after a separation of two years your husband can be granted one without you agreeing. He simply files for a divorce on the grounds your marriage has broken down irreparably.’

  ‘Christ, you sound as if you are on his side,’ she snapped.

  ‘Absolutely not, Mrs Fulford, and I will endeavour to find the best solution to your predicament as is possible. I will in the interim require you to give me your own estimation of the value of your property and also the value of its contents.’

  ‘He’s not getting so much as a stick of furniture. I bought the lot. He never paid for anything.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I am afraid he is entitled to—’

  She snatched up her handbag. ‘I don’t think you heard me, I used the inheritance from my grandparents to put the deposit on that house, and to help start up my business. None of it came from him and I am not giving him a cent, and he can drag me through whatever court he wants because I am not prepared to prop that loser up as I have done for the past seventeen years.’

  Henshaw didn’t attempt to stop her as she swept out, banging the door behind her. He had seen it all before, though as Lyons had said it was usually the husband who screamed about being used and refusing to pay up. Lena Fulford had a sizable amount of wealth, albeit hard-earned, and from what he had learned her husband had not been very successful – in fact, to the contrary. However, seventeen years was a long marriage, they had a daughter together and somewhere at some point there had to have been positive times. He sighed and checked his watch. His next appointment was due in half an hour; in the meantime he would look through the copies of Mrs Fulford’s earnings left by Lyons in the hope that he might be able to persuade her to make a deal with her husband for a one-off payment, no strings attached. He would leave it for a few days for her to cool down. As he plucked a tissue from the box and picked up her empty glass left on the table, he reflected that people’s marriages never ceased to amaze him; she was such an attractive woman, beautifully dressed, very classy, unlike her husband. He had to admit Marcus Fulford was a good-looking man, but there was something seedy about him, and to have worn the dark sunglasses throughout the meeting proved to Henshaw that he was probably afraid to look his wife in the eyes. Maybe that was at the root of their marital problem – he was scared of her, or perhaps he had been in awe to begin with and it had gradually been chipped away by his own failures. At some point he had gained enough strength to walk out.

  Henshaw, a wily old man, guessed there would be another woman at the root of it, but neither had brought up a third party as a reason for the divorce. A weak man like Marcus Fulford, he was certain, had someone, and it had to be someone very close to Lena to have passed on such personal details. Gone were the days of extramarital affairs affecting the results of divorce proceeding
s – they no longer had any bearing on the outcome. It was now immaterial whether one’s spouse had been unfaithful; all the court needed was evidence of the breakdown of the marriage. It had been so much easier in those days!

  Chapter 2

  Agnes Moors had left a message that she was going to collect the dry-cleaning and then do the grocery shopping so would not be back until after lunch. She had made sure the kitchen was spotless and gleaming – in fact the whole house was always polished to within an inch of its life. She had a mild obsessive-compulsive disorder that Lena put up with, simply because she was such a methodical and good housekeeper. Irritating little things, such as her obsession with straight lines, the way she organized the cushions on the sofa, the bed, and even the decorative pillows were an anathema to Lena – everything had to be too neat and precisely lined up. The curtains had to be exactly symmetrical, each drawn across the same distance, no showing of the silk lining that Lena rather liked, so it was a ritual that Agnes would hang the curtains dead straight and Lena would flick them around and tie the coiled loops more loosely.

  Agnes was about sixty, square-shouldered, thickset, with an oval-shaped and age-lined face, and small unblinking piercing brown eyes. She wore reading glasses when she worked so that she could see every speck of dust or finger mark. She used over-the-counter hair dye, and it was hard to detect her original colour, as her hair was now reddish brown with darker almost black streaks and a quarter inch of grey growth at her roots, which were very obvious as she had a prominent widow’s peak.

  Lena, still seething, had uncorked a bottle of wine and sat fuming about the meeting. She opened a bag of Kettle Chips and munched one after the other, unable to think about anything other than the fact she felt as if she was being harassed and for no reason but Marcus’s greed. It took a while for her to eventually calm down; she had a shower and dressed in her towelling robe and then returned to the kitchen. She’d forgotten that she had switched off her mobile at the morning’s meeting and switching it on now she saw that there were now fifteen unanswered calls, and numerous text messages about a new delivery of fabric from India. Simply scrolling through them made her head ache. She realized that she had not heard from Amy, and there was no message or text from her. However, there were two from her school requesting Lena make contact regarding Amy’s attendance. She rang Amy but it went straight to voicemail, and checking the time was after three, she decided she’d wait until classes ended at four before calling the school matron. She was not unduly concerned – often, if Amy had been on a sleepover, she returned to school later than usual.

  Lena replied to a few text messages that needed to be attended to directly, but then didn’t have the energy to return a couple of social calls. Instead she sat scrolling through her contacts, wondering if there was anyone who could have been passing over information to Marcus. She also wondered if one of her women friends might have been having a closer friendship with her husband than she knew about. No names jumped out, and in many instances she had not even been in recent contact with them. It started to really niggle her, as Henshaw had said whoever had passed on her business details would have to have had access to her accounts and it was more than possible it was someone very close to her. She tapped her fingers on the polished glass surface of the kitchen table. Who knew her password? Someone had to have gained entry into her computer, but she doubted anyone would know it; the only possibility was Amy, although she always hated anyone – even her daughter – using her computer.

  Agnes arrived with the dry-cleaning and groceries, and began to unload the shopping, crossing backwards and forwards to the cupboards.

  ‘Everything go all right earlier today?’ she asked.

  ‘No, and I don’t want to talk about it.’ Lena picked up her half-filled glass of wine. ‘I’ll be in my office. See you in the morning.’ She paused in the doorway and cocked her head to one side. ’Agnes, have you ever used my computer?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Is there a problem with it?’

  ‘No, I’m just concerned that somebody has been going through some personal files.’

  ‘You mean you’ve had some kind of virus?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t leave anything out for dinner – I’m not hungry.’

  Agnes continued putting away the remaining groceries, then wiped around the sink, and gave a squirt of glass polish to the kitchen table that didn’t really need it. Deciding she’d take the dry-cleaning upstairs the following morning as Lena was clearly not in the best of moods, she turned off the lights, and since it was by now almost five she let herself out and went home.

  Lena was in her Spartan immaculate high-tech office. Shelves and filing cabinets were the only furnishings apart from her desk, computer, printer and telephone. It was clear of any knick-knacks. Her filing system was brought up to date every Monday; mail to be checked over was in a drawer in her desk as she hated it piling up on the desktop. She paid bills promptly or by direct debit, and records of these and wages for domestic staff were in separate compartments. She had a small cash box with usually two or three hundred pounds for any emergency, and always kept receipts, which she collected regularly to be switched to her tax drawer. All her bank statements were clipped together in yet another drawer. Everything was neat and orderly with nothing out of place, and it really frustrated her to think that someone had to have had access to be able to give such details to Marcus and his solicitor. Question was, exactly who, and she sat wondering if it was Agnes, but somehow she didn’t think it could be, and then depressingly she began to return to the idea that it had to be Amy. Amy would be the only person that could possibly guess her password, and it made her feel so betrayed that she at first wanted to cry, but then became really angry.

  Amy’s mobile went yet again to voicemail. Frustrated, Lena called the school communal house phone. A bright girlish voice answered and Lena said she wanted to speak to Amy Fulford, as it was quite urgent. The matron came on the line, and said that they had been trying to contact her, as Amy had not turned up for school. Lena was perplexed, but hardly concerned as she suspected that Amy had simply decided to stay, as naughty as it was, with her friend who had arranged the sleepover.

  Harriet Newman, the mother of Serena Newman, answered the phone and sounded rather confused. She knew that her daughter had asked Amy to spend the weekend, and they had collected her from the school at eleven forty-five on the Saturday morning. However, Amy had said that she wanted to see her father on the Saturday afternoon, and would return in the early evening. Serena had been very disappointed as they had arranged to go to see a film together, but Amy had never turned up. Mrs Newman presumed that the girl had decided to stay with her father, as she knew that Amy often did so when not at home with Lena.

  ‘Did you try to call her?’ Lena asked nervously.

  ‘Obviously, yes we did, and I left you a message on your house phone, but we never heard back from anyone. Serena went to the film with some other friends and we returned her to school Sunday evening.’ Mrs Newman sounded more irritated than concerned, as if Lena was blaming her in some way.

  Lena realized that with the dinner party, the pending solicitor’s meeting and other things on her mind she had not bothered to check any missed calls on her landline since Saturday. ‘Thank you, I’m sorry to bother you. I think I will just call her father and sort it out as she has not returned to school.’

  ‘Well, I can understand you must be worried. Serena told me you’re going through a divorce so it has to be a difficult time,’ Mrs Newman said, more friendly now.

  ‘Yes it is, but Amy is handling it very well as it’s amicable. We’ve made sure she didn’t find herself caught in between us. Thank you again.’

  Lena replaced the phone, angrier because the least Marcus could have done was to let her know that Amy was staying with him. She had a good few sips of wine before she called him, only to reach his voicemail.

  ‘Hey, it’s Marcus, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’
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  Trying to keep her voice from becoming shrill, she said, ‘Can you please ask Amy to call me? She is not at school and I am concerned as she has made no contact with them or with me.’ She sat beside the phone, willing it to ring, even while admonishing herself for being stupid and impatient, but she was angry at having to call the last person she wanted to talk to, especially after their meeting that morning. She finally turned her attention to her computer to check the latest emails but there was nothing of any urgency and she didn’t feel like looking at any business arrangements for the following day as she would first have a serious talk with her daughter, and insist she drive her to school to apologize personally.

  Amy’s bedroom was just along the landing from her office, with a sign hanging on the door: ‘Privacy Please’. Usually she was very aware of giving Amy exactly that, knocking before entering if she was at home, and rarely if ever going into the bedroom when she wasn’t. Agnes changed the sheets, cleaned and collected any dirty laundry and dry-cleaning. This evening Lena opened the door and stood looking into the room. It was not at all girly or draped in pink, but tasteful, with pale blue fitted carpets, white curtains and wooden slatted blinds. The small double bed had a duvet and frilled pillows, and an old teddy bear that Amy had kept since a toddler. He was worn and moth-eaten with one glass eye missing but was very much loved. She used to always carry ‘Teddy’ around and sleep clasping him tightly, although at about eleven years old, she had stuffed him into a drawer for some reason. Lena couldn’t recall exactly when he had resurfaced but he was now always placed on her pillow. A pair of mule slippers were left on the floor beside the bed, but the rest of the room was exceptionally tidy. Fitted wardrobes took up an entire wall – the sliding doors opened to a bank of drawers and then full-length hanging sections. Winter coats were hung together and all her winter dresses and skirts were colour-coordinated and then there were a few evening dresses and rows of shirts and jackets. Her jeans were folded on the top shelf of the wardrobe alongside hats and scarves. Rows of boots and shoes were lined up along the bottom. Lena didn’t touch anything, she just stood there admiring how neat and tidy everything was. It was hard to believe this was a bedroom of a fifteen-year-old; there were no posters of rock stars on the walls, in fact they were devoid of any kind of pictures apart from some family photographs. The bedside cabinets were uncluttered, with only an alarm clock, two matching lamps, bedside house phone and a stand for her mobile. Beneath their tops were rows of paperback books, all stacked together by size and width. Lena looked at the large antique dressing table; this was placed in front of the window and faced the large garden. A hairbrush and comb were in a blue pottery jar next to a hand mirror and a large bottle of ‘Daisy’ perfume sat beside a tube of moisturizer.