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I can’t believe I didn’t consider it sooner. Why did I assume Gwen was Paul’s first victim? Gwen wasn’t the first person I tried to con, so it stands to reason she might not have been the first to die at his hands either. I shake my head. That poor woman. What did she do to deserve both of us?
I recall how our paths first crossed. A notice had been placed in theBucks Observerfor her husband Bill’s funeral, but Gwen’s was the only name attached to it.
William Wright, 83, passed suddenly at home. He was a loving husband to Gwen, his wife of 60 years. Funeral to be held at St Peter’s church in Avringstone.
Of the many notices I’d read, this was unusually brief. No mention of any family at all, only a wife. Several online searches confirmed the couple had no immediate relatives. It was enough to make me take my black suit to the dry cleaner’s, brush myhairpiece, slip on my clear lens glasses to alter my regular appearance and book a taxi to William’s funeral service later in the week.
I chose a seat close to the back of the congregation so I’d be partially obscured by a pillar. I counted twenty-one mourners, and in the front row, a woman I assumed to be the grieving widow. Following a brief service, Bill’s coffin passed me on its exit into the church graveyard, followed soon after by Gwen. There was something familiar about her. Not the person, but the expression. A simultaneously present yet vacant look. It travelled deeper than grief.
The intimacy of a burial was too risky, so I held back and joined them at the wake later in the village pub.
‘The best thing about being a plain Jane like you is that no one will ever remember you in a crowd,’ Caz liked to remind me. ‘Use that to your advantage.’
So, well practised at blending, I spent an hour or so listening in to conversations to learn all I could about Gwen. Neighbours discussed how she and Bill had moved around Europe for much of their lives, ending up in Spain following his retirement twenty years earlier. They’d returned to the UK only recently after his heart bypass operation. And she’d been widowed within months of moving to Avringstone. There were also whispers of concern over who was going to care for her now, especially with her dementia.
Dementia, I said to myself. That’s what I’d seen in her. It should have registered with me straight away. I’d seen many patients just like Gwen in the care homes I’d worked at in my twenties.
Later, it cost me only £3 online to buy a copy of her house’s title register, which revealed she and William owned it outright. So far, so good. She was ticking every one of my boxes. And within a fortnight, I was nervously standing on her doorstep wearing a blue tabard and carrying a caddy full of cleaning products, explaining how I’d been sent by the local authority to help with her cookingand cleaning needs. It was the first lie in what would be almost a year and half of them.
‘Did Bill organise this before he died?’ she asked.
‘I believe so,’ I replied. She let me in without further questioning.
Over the next few weeks, my visits went from every three days to daily. I dispensed with the uniform and stopped carrying the cleaning equipment after the first visit, so her neighbours wouldn’t associate me as her domestic help. I’d spend hours getting to know her and cleaning her house while searching for documents and photographs to build up a complete picture of the life she and Bill shared, and of course, their financial affairs. I learned everything about them, from their taste in music, films and books, to their holidays and hobbies and their lives before, during and after Spain. I had spare keys cut to her front door so I could be the first person she saw when she woke up and the last person as she went to bed. I learned to recognise her more vulnerable moments and began planting seeds in a mind muddied by weeds and thorns about who I really was. It was all leading up to the day when I first called her ‘Mum’.
I was walking to her house when I spotted her entering the grounds of the church cemetery, barefoot and in her favourite yellow dressing gown.
‘Are you okay Gwen, luv?’ I heard a man I later came to know as Walter ask.
‘I’ve come to see Bill,’ she replied. ‘Where have they put him?’
‘She’s fine,’ I told him. ‘You just get a little confused sometimes, don’t you, Mum? Why don’t we get you dressed and we’ll come later with some flowers?’
My heart thrummed as I waited to gauge her reaction to the ‘M’ word. She didn’t dismiss me outright, but neither did she immediately accept what I’d said.
‘I didn’t know you had a daughter,’ Walter said to us both, surprised.
‘I’ve just moved back to the country,’ I added. ‘I’ve been living abroad.’
Gwen looked at me blankly for a moment before she replied, ‘Yes, you have.’
I could have jumped for joy. Instead, I held my excitement in. ‘Right, let’s get you home, shall we?’ I said. It was as simple as that.
Her neighbours, who hadn’t known her well in the short time she and Bill had lived in the village, accepted my explanation of how the nature of her disease meant she often forgot important events, and even that she was a mother. I also told them that sometimes she swore blind she’d never been married. If any of them doubted me, they never admitted it to my face.
Over the coming days, weeks and months, I reinforced Gwen’s belief that we were mother and daughter. I showed her photos of us together, ones I’d created using an app to superimpose childhood images of me on old pictures of her I’d found upstairs in albums. I’d invent fake anecdotes about us based on stories she’d told me about her and Bill’s life. And because there were times when she remembered very little from one day to the next, it didn’t matter if I slipped up or if my stories contradicted one another. I even found myself rewriting our time together as I went along, to create better shared imaginary experiences.
But something unexpected came from all that effort. In Gwen, I was finding what I’d craved my whole life. A mum. And being around her enabled me to create and shape the childhood I’d always wanted. Which is why I miss her so much, even if so much of it was pretend. Without her, I’m back to being me again. Nobody’s daughter. And I don’t like not belonging to anyone.
My gurgling stomach returns me to the present, reminding me I’ve yet to eat. Before I search the cupboards for noodles or pasta,I take one more look at the laptop. Ann On has vanished. But it doesn’t matter. I can do what needs to be done next by myself.
If Caz taught me nothing else, it was never to give up even when the odds are stacked against you. I failed to contain the situation first time around with Paul, but now I have an advantage. He thinks that this is all over. I’m getting my second wind.
CHAPTER 34
CONNIE
‘Morning Sharon,’ begins Leanne as she greets me at reception. It’s been a while since I last used this identity, so for a moment, I assume she’s talking to someone else. ‘How was your evening?’
