accountant without learning a trick or two. She holed up in Geneva while considering the safest refuge. Most of the countries that did not have extradition treaties with the UK were singularly unattractive – Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan. She briefly considered Bahrain, but in the end opted for simply buying new identities for them all, the cost of which would have bankrolled a small war. Then she enrolled her children in very expensive boarding schools in Switzerland and bought a farmhouse in Lombardy which she spent her time renovating, more or less happily. Ida never forgave her for the loss of Buttons, or anything else, for that matter.
So who did kill Wendy Easton?
Craig the lifeboatman. Craig Cumming killed Wendy ‘in a jealous rage’, according to the prosecution at his trial. He had gone round to the victim’s home, Thisldo, in the hope of rekindling his relationship with her. In evidence, Detective Inspector Anne Marriot said that Craig Cumming killed Mrs Ives (who also went by the name Easton) with a golf club which was kept in the garage. The golf club might indicate a spur-of-the-moment act of rage, the prosecution argued, but the golfing gloves that Cumming was wearing – it was a warm evening at the height of summer – were evidence of premeditation rather than spontaneity. Cumming’s phone records showed that he called the victim fourteen times in the two hours previous to the killing.
Wendy Ives, who was separated from her husband, Vincent, had previously confided in a friend that she was scared of her former boyfriend, after he started following her to work. Reading from a written statement outside the court after the trial, Mrs Ives’s daughter, Ashley, nineteen, said, ‘I am pleased that justice has been done, but no one can replace my mother, taken so cruelly from us by this man. She was the kindest, most loyal, most generous person in the world.’
Craig Cumming was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve a minimum term of fifteen years.
Trouble at t’Mill
On the way, they made a detour up to Rosedale Chimney Bank to stretch their legs and look at the sunset that was flooding the vast sky with a glorious palette of reds and yellows, orange and even violet. It demanded poetry, a thought he voiced out loud, and she said, ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s enough in itself.’ The getting of wisdom, he thought.
There was another car parked up there, an older couple, admiring the view. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ the man said. The woman smiled at them and congratulated the ‘happy couple’ on their wedding and Jackson said, ‘It’s not what it looks like. She’s my daughter.’
Marlee chuckled when they got back in the car and said, ‘Right now they’re probably on the phone to the police, reporting us for incest.’ She had startled the woman by giving her the bridal bouquet. The woman had looked unsure, as if it might be bad luck.
‘I know I’m egregiously cheerful,’ Marlee said to Jackson (he filed the word ‘egregiously’ away to look up later), ‘but I expect it’s just hysteria.’ She didn’t seem hysterical to Jackson. He’d seen a lot of hysteria in his time. ‘You know what it’s like,’ she continued. ‘Demob happy, school’s out and all that.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Jackson said, although he didn’t, because he’d never personally jilted anyone at the altar. His life might have been better if he had.
Josie had already been pregnant when they married, so Marlee would still exist (the non-conception of beloved children always a stumbling block to the if-I-could-live-my-life-over-again fantasy). He and Julia had never married, never even come close to it, but Nathan would have happened anyway. And if he had never married the evil, thieving Tessa, he would probably still be a rich man and would have been able to afford the wedding his daughter had wanted, instead of allowing ‘the in-laws’ as Marlee had already been calling them, only mildly ironically, to pick up the tab. ‘Why not?’ she said. They were ‘filthy rich’ and, having only sons and no daughters themselves, they wanted to make a big deal out of this ‘union’, as they called it. ‘And anyway,’ Marlee added, ‘they love me like a daughter.’
‘No, they don’t,’ a curmudgeonly Jackson responded. ‘I love you like a daughter. They “love” you like the prospective mother of their grandchildren. You’re just a brood mare for their bloodstock, so they can continue to inherit the earth ad infinitum.’ Yes, it had