Page 100 of Me and Mr. Darcy

But I think seeing Mum so happy again blinded me. I didn’t have my investigative reporter head on. When he talked about his past and how his wife had died tragically in a car accident, I didn’t try to corroborate his story, dig deep into his past or check the facts. After Dad died there were months, years even, when I never thought I’d see my mum smile again, and yet here she was smiling and laughing – it was as if she’d come back to life.

I actually felt grateful to him.

And seeing as I’m being totally honest, I’ll admit to you something that I have difficulty even admitting to myself. I was also relieved. I had a girlfriend. I had a life. A job that took up long hours. Now I didn’t have to worry about my mum. Didn’t have to feel guilty that she was alone at Christmas when I went snowboarding.

God, that’s so fucking selfish of me, isn’t it? My mum, who’d given me everything in life, and there was I, thinking about myself. I still beat myself up about that now. I regret to this day that I didn’t ask more questions, pay more attention, spend more time getting to know Ernie Devlin. Maybe then I could have uncovered some clue, something that would have made me suspect. But I didn’t, and I can’t turn the clock back now, can I?

Ernie proposed to my mum just three months after they’d met. Got down on one knee and gave her an antique diamond ring that he said was his mother’s. She was over the moon. She cried when she told me the news. They were going to have a small wedding in the summer, with a reception at the local golf club and a honeymoon on Lake Garda.

But they weren’t the only plans they’d made. They’d also decided to sell both of their houses and buy a place together, make a fresh start. In fact, they’d made an offer on a bungalow in a nearby village.

To be honest, it did all seem a bit soon, but like Mum said, they loved one another and at their age why wait? Put like that, who was I to spoil things? So I was sentimental about selling my childhood home, so what? I’d moved out, moved on with my life, why shouldn’t she?

They booked the registry office for June, which was only two months away, and preparations began in earnest. Flowers, invitations, menus, cars. One day I discovered Mum’s credit-card statement and saw that everything for the wedding had been paid for by her. That’s when I got my first inkling that Ernie might not be everything he seemed. When I asked her about it, she breezily explained that Ernie didn’t use credit cards, he only had a cheque book, and so it was easier this way. ‘And anyway, like Ernie says, once we’re married, what’s mine is his and vice versa,’ she’d reasoned.

I got a bad vibe, but I tried to brush it off. I was just being over-protective; it made sense to pay by credit card rather than cheque; he hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

By this stage they were also getting ready to move into their new bungalow. Both Mum and Ernie had found buyers for their respective houses, and their solicitors were getting all the paperwork ready. All that was needed now was their ten per cent cash deposit so they could exchange contracts.

Ten per cent.

That’s thirty thousand pounds. Which, in today’s current exchange market, is nearly sixty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. And some people will do anything for that kind of money.

They’ll even break someone’s heart for it.

Unbeknown to me, the week previously, Ernie had gone over to Mum’s and told her that his buyer had pulled out at the last minute, that it might take weeks to find a new one, and what was he going to do? Apparently he was distraught they were going to lose their new bungalow and so Mum told him not to worry and wrote out a cheque for the entire deposit. Only she couldn’t remember the name of the solicitor, so Ernie told her to just leave that bit blank – he would fill it in later as he had all the paperwork back at his house.

The first we knew something was wrong was when the solicitor called Mum a week later, the day before her wedding was meant to be, asking where his money was, and several urgent phone calls to Ernie went unanswered. My mum was beside herself. She thought he must have had some terrible accident. That he was lying hurt somewhere. ‘Something awful must have happened,’ she kept saying, over and over, and I knew she was thinking of my dad, of the day she’d found him in the study, how he’d suffered a massive stroke, how it had been too late.

That’s when we got the police involved and it didn’t take long for them to discover Ernie had made the cheque payable to himself, deposited it in his bank account, calmly waited for it to clear, then left the country.

When Mum found out the truth she was actually relieved. That’s my mum for you. Jilted a day before her wedding, by a man she thought loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, who’d stolen her life savings – and yet she’s still thankful he’s not hurt. She’s such a bloody good person, my mother.

Me?

I wanted him dead. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. Not only had he destroyed her hopes and shattered her dreams. Not only had he humiliated her in front of her friends and family. Made her a laughing stock among her neighbours. Betrayed her trust, robbed her of thirty thousand pounds, run up huge debts on her credit card and left her with a huge mess of a wedding to cancel and committed to a house she no longer wanted to buy.

He’d also broken her heart.

And you want to know the worst thing? He’d done it intentionally.

You don’t know my mum, Emily, but everyone who’s ever met her will tell you she’s the kindest, most loving person you’ll ever meet. She trusted Ernie Devlin, and she was willing to give him the whole world, yet he cold-heartedly set out to destroy her with his greed and selfishness. As if she meant nothing. And to him, she didn’t. She was just a means to an end.

I wish I could say that was the end of it, but there were more shocks to come.

Six weeks later Ernie was arrested when he tried to return to the UK. Turns out that Mum wasn’t the only woman he’d duped. Dozens of women had come forward. They all told the same story – he was a widower, they were supposed to get married, they were buying a house together but he didn’t have his share of the deposit . . . Well, you can see where this is going, can’t you?

Mum didn’t attend his trial, but I did. But if I thought I was going to see some remorse, I couldn’t have been more wrong. He didn’t apologise to his victims, ask for forgiveness, or show any shame for what he’d done. As he left the court on the first day he even had the audacity to smile for the photographers.

That’s when I hit him.

I couldn’t help it. Something just snapped inside of me. After everything he’d put my mum through, to see him smiling was just too much. I jumped in front of the reporters and wiped the smile of his face. I was promptly arrested, but because of the circumstances, the police let me off with just a caution. I’ve never been in trouble with the law my whole life, apart from a few parking tickets, but I still don’t regret it. I’m not defending my actions, but as far as I’m concerned, after what Ernie Devlin did, he got off lightly.

On 24 May 2003 he was found guilty and got six years for deception and theft. He was ordered to pay Mum back all that money, plus legal costs, and also had to repay the money he’d stolen from the other women. He declared himself bankrupt. Eighteen months later he was let out for good behaviour.

They say time heals, but I don’t think my mum will ever get over what Ernie did to her. And I know I’ll certainly never forgive him. When I saw him again on the tour after all this time, I admit I wanted to kill him. Or at least beat the living daylights out of him. But we know how the legal system works. I already had a caution. If I laid a finger on him I’d be the one going to jail. Personally I wouldn’t have cared, it would be worth it to wipe the smile off his face, but Mum’s had enough upset in her life. She didn’t need to see me in court, to have it all dragged up again.

So I decided to just ignore him. To avoid him. To pretend he didn’t exist.