Chapter 1

It was three thirty on Friday afternoon, and I was counting down the hours. At forty-eight I was heading for what may be the most exciting day of my life. I was getting married to someone I considered the most beautiful girl in the world. Jane was being an old fashioned girl, telling me that it was unlucky for me to see the bride on the night before the wedding, so she'd gone to stay the night with an old college friend. I was just going up to my home office to check that I had all the arrangements done when I heard her key in the door.

"Okay, scatterbrain, what have you forgotten?" I called out as I came back down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs I turned towards the front door and froze. She stood there, with her Mediterranean tan, wearing a two-piece suit that probably cost as much as I took out of the company in a week. She looked at me, gave me a big smile and ran the best she could in her tight skirt and high heels, with her arms outstretched.

"Kevin—I'm back."

She tried to kiss me but I turned my head so that her lips landed only on my cheek. Grabbing her arms, I pushed her off me.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Kevin—that's no way to talk to your wife. This is my home. I've come back home."

"Firstly, you're not my wife, and secondly, this is not your home. This is my house and you have no right to be in it." I turned and walked towards the lounge.

"Well, I thought you might be angry, but I think you're taking this a bit far."

I opened a drawer and took out a small card. Picking up the phone I dialled the number on the card. "This is Kevin Bryant ... Yes, the same ... She's back ... Yes, my ex-wife, Lisa ... Yes, she's right in front of me ... Well, you'd better be quick because I'll be sending her on her way pretty soon." I switched the phone off.

"Who was that?" she asked.

"Detective Inspector Maynard of the local police."

"The police ... but I've done nothing wrong."

"Maybe not, but they think I have."

My next call was to my son, Elliott, and the conversation went much the same way.

"Why don't you take a seat, Lisa. It seems that some people would like to talk to you. You're welcome to wait here for them."

It'd been six years since I had seen Lisa, though it seemed like more, so much had happened in that time. I could still remember the day I came home to find an envelope containing her bank cards, credit card and a short note.

Kevin,

I'm leaving to find my true destiny. Please don't waste your time and money trying to find me. You won't succeed, and even if you did you wouldn't change my mind. I hope life treats you kindly and that you find it in yourself to forgive me.

Good luck,

Lisa

The note was printed from my office computer—she couldn't even hand write it.

We had been school-days sweethearts, getting together when I was eighteen and Lisa just sixteen. Back in those days I was considered a high flyer. I used to joke with Lisa that I'd be a millionaire by the time I was thirty. At least, it was a joke to me. I got into Manchester University and studied electronics. Of course, I met plenty of girls at university, but there was only one girl for me. Lisa was the girl that all the boys wanted to date, but she'd just tell them she was waiting for her millionaire. Every holiday I'd be back and we'd be together. Of course, I had to work during the holidays, but we still saw plenty of each other. The surprise came when just after my finals Lisa told me she was pregnant. I say it was a surprise because I thought we'd been careful. However, accidents happen—I always thought we'd get married someday, so why not now.

I graduated with first class honours and had offers from a number of the electronics and telecom giants. That was probably our first disagreement. Lisa wanted me to take a job with one of the big boys, after all they paid well and there was a lot of prestige in working for them. I, on the other hand, wanted to work for a small organisation where I felt I could achieve more. I did it my way and we moved to Somerset. Danvers Electronics was a small company that designed and built navigation aids for yachtsmen and did little work for the defence industry. The company was owned by Bob Danvers, a man in his forties. Two things really attracted me to the company. First was Bob himself. He was an engineer and realised that investment at the sharp end of the company was the most important. His designers worked with top of the range equipment, while the administrators and managers frequently made do with computers the designers had outgrown. The second was the fact that their chief designer was nearing retirement age. I was likely to climb the ladder a lot quicker there than at one of the big companies.

Bob was a genuinely good bloke. Once I'd accepted the job he found a flat for Lisa, bump and me, and paid our deposit and the first three month's rent. My first few months' salary went on buying second hand furniture, preparing for the arrival of Elliott. Lisa really blossomed while pregnant and that bloom didn't leave her after Elliott was born. Within four months she got her figure back—in fact it was better than before. Her breasts were bigger and now balanced her hips. At five foot eight she was taller than most women, and her chestnut hair with blue eyes made her stand out from the crowd. If the boys at school were jealous before, they'd be doubly so now.

We soon outgrew the flat and were looking for a house. Once again, Bob helped us. He convinced me that renting was giving money away and that I should try to buy a house. I only had enough saved for half the deposit, so Bob loaned us the other half. It wasn't all philanthropy with Bob. He knew I could get a better deal elsewhere, and he knew that if I bought a house I was more likely to stay in the area. As the years went by, things got a little easier. I really wanted more children, but we just weren't lucky that way.

When the chief designer retired, Bob confounded my plans by deciding on a restructure. He wanted design and development brought together under one leader. My heart sank when he came to me and asked me to come and meet the Design and Development manager. He took me up to his office. When we got there, the place was empty. He opened another door.

"Oh, he must be in here," he said and pushed me through the door into his en-suite toilet.

As I walked in I was looking straight in the mirror.

"Kevin—meet the new Design and Development manager."

I was somewhat taken aback—no application, no interviews, just being told I'd got the job.

"Well," he said, "are you going to take the job? You'd better bloody take it—I've based this whole restructuring around you."

"Are you sure, Bob? I mean, I was hoping for the design job, but are you sure you want me to run the combined department?"

"I was sure after your first month of working for me. You don't really think I didn't know what I was getting. I made my enquiries before I offered you a job. You and Lisa may look upon me as a benevolent old fool, but if you do, you're wrong. I'm a businessman, and you, young man, are very good for business."

My new position meant a big increase in salary, and I knew Lisa would have no trouble spending it. It seems that we all have our own talents. Mine was for logic, electronics and finding new and innovative ways of doing things; Lisa's talent was for spending money. I made arrangements with Bob so that not all of my new salary would be paid into our joint account—ten percent got diverted to a savings account. Lisa still saw an increase, but it gave me a buffer for rainy days.

Over the next few years the company's defence work increased, largely due to my department's drive to diversify. In the process I filed a couple of patents, having come up with cheaper, better ways of proving the same result. We weren't a large enough company to take on all the work our patents would guarantee, so we allowed our competitors to use some of our designs under a licence, giving us royalties. Since the patents came from my work, Bob insisted I took a percentage of the royalties as an annual bonus, which I used to reduce the outstanding mortgage.

I thought we were doing quite well. By the time I was thirty we had our own detached house in the country, two cars and a good standard of living. When I mentioned this to Lisa once, she reminded me.

"You always said you'd be a millionaire by now."

That was when I realised she hadn't got the joke.

If Lisa was disappointed in me, she did a good job covering it up. Our life was good, we were comfortably well off, our sex life was great, if a little plain, we had a social life. The only real disagreement was about Elliott's education. Lisa wanted him to have a public school (this means a non-state school, private school in the US) education. I argued that the state system was good enough for us.

"Perhaps if you'd gone to public school you would be a millionaire by now, instead of working for some tin-pot electronics company."

"It's that tin-pot electronics company that enables us to have this argument. Without it, we wouldn't have sufficient income to even think of it."

"Ah, so you admit we can afford it. If you loved our son, you'd give him every advantage you could."

Lisa won that one and Elliott went to Kingswood. He went as a day pupil, so Lisa had to take him every day. It cost me six grand a term, but it bought me peace and, what the hell, it was six grand that didn't go on shoes and clothes, or so I thought. To be honest, the fees were far from the worst part of it. No, by far the worst part of having a child at public school is having to socialise with the other parents. At least, that was the case with the ones that Lisa chose to strike up friendships with. They seemed to be stockbrokers, bankers, investment analysts and the like. Not one of them worked in a business that actually made anything. By the time Elliott was in his second year we were being invited to dinner parties and I could only stall for a short while. I tried to get on with them, I really did, but most of the time I found myself biting my tongue. I suppose that's when the rot started. Lisa really looked up to these people—I regarded them as parasites who fed off the work of others.

"I see you've remodelled the garden."

"Sorry, what was that?" I asked.

Lisa stood by the patio doors, looking out into the garden.

"The garden," she said. "You've remodelled it. It looks very nice—what brought that about?"

"After a couple of weeks with thirty policemen and two mechanical diggers out there, it was in such a mess that it was simpler to just dig it up and start again."