Twenty Years a Stranger (The Stranger Series Book 1)

by Deborah Twelves

  Yet now here he was, being portrayed as the villain of the piece. Grace was slagging him off right, left and centre to all their friends, who had immediately taken her side and stabbed him in the back, practically cutting him off. Even the ones he had known since they were all teenagers, long before Grace was on the scene: Frieda and James, Neil and Gwen…treacherous bastards, all of them. No loyalty at all.

  She had somehow managed to pull the wool over the judge’s eyes as well and shaft him in the divorce, although that had obviously backfired on the stupid bitch in the end. To cap it all, he now had the Trustee in Bankruptcy and her Rottweiler lawyer trying to take everything off him, including his bloody house. That had most definitely not been part of the plan.

  It was so fucking unfair. Why couldn’t everyone see that he was the real victim in all this? The victim of a bunch of vindictive, stupid, manipulative whores.

  It had started all those years ago with Julia. Another one who refused to do as she was told and could never just let things go. Look how that all ended.

  Daniel’s increasingly dark thoughts were interrupted by the rattle of the letterbox and he quickly rose to his feet, smoothing his slip down under his jeans and zipping up his flies. The envelope had clearly been delivered in person, as there was no stamp on it. It had his name on the front, written by hand in capital letters. He opened the door and looked suspiciously up and down the street, but there was no sign of anyone. Back inside the house he tore open the envelope and found a single sheet of paper with a short typed message:

  You know what you are and I will make sure everyone else does as well. I know everything and I mean ‘everything’. You’re a con artist, a liar and a thief. You are pure evil and your soul is beyond redemption, if you even have a soul that is. You can’t be saved and you can’t be reformed. You truly believe what happened to you is all someone else’s fault and you are determined to make them pay.

  I’m telling you, you will die trying.

  And you will die alone.

  Daniel laughed out loud as he screwed up the piece of paper and promptly deposited it in the bin. Grace. Had to be. His wife (ex-wife, he reminded himself), with her cryptic messages and overdramatic threats, was turning out to be the worst of the lot.

  A change of tack was needed where she was concerned.

  Letting go

  If you want to fly and be free you must first find a way to let go of all the things that are weighing you down.

  Grace

  I sat in resigned silence and stared at my brother across his kitchen table. Phoebe was making coffee behind us. She brought the three mugs over and sat down beside him as he read the tediously long email, setting out the position of the Trustee in Bankruptcy with regard to the estate of my ex-husband.

  ‘I honestly don’t think I can take much more of this,’ I began, tearfully. ‘That email arrived just before 5 pm on Friday. It seems to be standard practice to send a shitty, threatening email at the end of the day on a Friday, giving you no time to respond before Monday and ruining your weekend sweating about it. I’ve had enough of lawyers and courts to last me a lifetime and I’m telling you our legal system is a complete joke. I’ve shouted it from the rooftops until I’m blue in the face that he’s lying about Jupiter Holdings and the ‘directors’, but nobody seems to be prepared to force him to tell the truth. I’ve even given them proof, so I honestly don’t know what else I can do. Even my own bloody solicitor now refers to me as ‘the point of least resistance’. In other words, it’s easier for the Trustee to get stuff off me than Daniel, so he just gets away with it all, like he has done for years, while they put the screws on me.’

  ‘I still can’t believe there were no repercussions for him after all that business with your poor mum,’ interrupted Phoebe, angrily.

  ‘Oh God, don’t get me started about that,’ I said, smarting as I remembered the look of fear on Mum’s face as she read the email from Bernard Tolstenn, director of Jupiter Holdings, aka Daniel.

  When I first found out about the bankruptcy, I had done as Adam suggested and acted quickly, taking a leaf out of Daniel’s book and ‘selling’ Mum one of the more valuable cars, a 1977 E-type Jaguar, listed at £50k on the insurance certificate. Within a matter of days, it was tucked up safely in her garage, possession being nine-tenths of the law and, of course, I had made sure that all the necessary paperwork pre-dated the bankruptcy petition. Two could play at that game. I had to admit though, even I was surprised at the depths Daniel was prepared to sink to, when he began sending threatening emails to my eighty-five-year-old mother, knowing she was in poor health, from the fictitious persona of Bernard Tolstenn:

  Mrs King,

  It has come to our intention that you are in possession of one of our assets, namely and E-type Jaguar car. This asset was part of a Court Order that has now been made void and we want our asset returning forthwith.

  If you have any more of our assets in your possession, we will also require these returning.

  If this asset is not returned to us or made available for collection before 4 pm Friday UK time this week we will instruct our attorney to instigate court proceedings, this will be at the High Court in London.

  Yours,

  Bernard Tolstenn

  Senior VP Jupiter Holdings LLC

  When Mum showed me the email on her iPad, hands trembling and face white as a sheet, the first thing I noticed was the errors. ‘Intention’ instead of ‘attention’; ‘and’ instead of ‘a’; the use of a comma instead of a full stop after ‘proceedings’ (particularly offensive to me as a teacher); the scribbled, illegible signature; the unrealistic legal deadline of four days….

  I put my arms around her and gave her a comforting hug.

  ‘Mum, seriously, please don’t worry. This is obviously Daniel. It’s got him written all over it. There is no Bernard Tolstenn, I promise you. Nobody’s arresting you or taking you anywhere. I’ll get that bastard for this. How dare he terrorise you!’

  Mum clearly had visions of the police hammering on the door, cuffing her and carting her off in the back of the paddy waggon to await trial in the High Court of London. I was already fuming, but the ‘friendly’ email from Daniel to me, less than five minutes later, only served to fan the flames:

  Hi Grace,

  The guys from America are getting really heavy with me and chasing some of their assets. I haven’t told them anything, but you need to be aware of them. They are threatening me with all sorts! I want to help you if I can. I don’t want you to loose out.

  Love, Daniel xx

  Words failed me completely. Had he never heard of a spell checker? ‘Loose’ instead of ‘lose’, I noted angrily.

  Employing my new found skills as a PI over the last few months, a quick search on Google confirmed there was no such living person as Bernard Tolstenn. Of course, there wasn’t. A further check of the IP addresses for the emails showed that they were, in fact, sent from the same computer. I imagined Daniel doing several quick costume changes and having board meetings with himself, reaffirming in my mind that he was indeed a psychopath with multiple personalities. The parallel with Norman Bates in the film Psycho, where Norman sits in his mother’s rocking chair at the end, wearing her shawl and mimicking her voice, was not lost on me. I shuddered at the thought that I had actually been married to him for twenty years.

  Not wasting any more time, I copied the emails, together with all the information about Bernard Tolstenn (or the lack of him), screenshotted the IP address details, and promptly sent it all off to my solicitor and the Trustee’s solicitor, Natasha Remington, confident that I was putting the final nail in the coffin so far as Daniel’s lies about Jupiter Holdings were concerned.

  To my consternation Natasha replied, thanking me for my email and informing me that she was currently attempting to verify the details Daniel had supplied for a third director of Jupiter Holdings, a Mr Patrick Salenden. I knew that name. It took me a few minutes, but it finally came to me. Amongst the hu
ndreds of files I had scrutinised on the infamous time capsule, there had been one entitled Scam, which had naturally intrigued me. To my great amusement at the time, it contained documents pertaining to a scam Daniel himself had been the victim of, whereby a certain Patrick Salenden had relieved him of forty thousand dollars in exchange for a car that never materialised. Salenden had provided fake photographic ID and a statement notarised by a bogus solicitor. Daniel actually had the brass neck to be using the scammer’s details and ID for his own self-serving purposes, in a last-ditch attempt to convince the Courts that the directors of Jupiter Holdings really did exist. As I fired an email back to Natasha, giving her chapter and verse on Mr Salenden, I wondered excitedly whether Daniel might have done enough this time to end up behind bars for fraud.

  But, of course, he hadn’t. As usual, nobody listened. Nobody cared.

  I took a sip of coffee and reached for the comforting chocolate biscuits in front of me, looking at Phoebe and shrugging my shoulders, as she sighed and shook her head.

  ‘It’s an absolute disgrace. I honestly just can’t believe he’s not been banged up in jail.’

  ‘Ha, I wish. He’s like Teflon; nothing sticks. The only small satisfaction I get is that he has lost his precious house and I know for certain he didn’t want that to happen. It’s a status symbol for him, playing lord of the manor in the big house in the country.’

  ‘Pompous twat,’ Phoebe interjected, with conviction.

  ‘Not that it’s done me any good in the end though,’ I said, bitterly. ‘The Trustee has control of the sale and she’s already agreed to let it go for far less than its worth, just to get rid of it quickly. I have to be out by next week, they’ve told me. I also have to hand over all the cars and the paperwork, having struggled for months to find them all. In the end, I have just done their job for them. For free, as Daniel was only too happy to point out the last time I saw him. According to him, now that they have all the information I ‘dug up’, he has been left completely broke.’

  My brother looked up from his laptop and interrupted.

  ‘Grace, listen to me. I know it’s shit, but I honestly think you have no choice but to sign the agreement. I don’t want to sound harsh, but you’re going to have to give this up and move on, because if you don’t, it’ll ruin your life and drive you mad.’

  I stared at him sulkily.

  ‘Easy enough for you to say. You’re not the one being left with nothing.’

  ‘As I said, it’s shit, but if you carry on and try to fight this in court, you could end up bankrupting yourself and really losing everything. You can’t afford to risk it; it’s as simple as that. At least by signing this settlement, you get to walk away with your head held high and keep your house.’

  ‘Yeah right. And its mortgage, the one that I doubled to supposedly bail his company out.’

  He sighed again.

  ‘I don’t know what else to say. Mum has said she will lend you the money to pay them off until you can sell that car. Sign this, pay them and then you’re free. Seriously, you have no choice. What goes around comes around and he will get what’s coming to him one way or another. Believe me, I know how much it will hurt to do this, but I also know that you will feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders afterwards.’

  Phoebe pulled a face and muttered under her breath.

  ‘He should have died in that helicopter crash. He would have been doing the whole world a favour. Couldn’t you arrange for him to have an ‘accident’ now? I’m sure some people actually do that sort of thing. I’d certainly chip in to pay for a hit on him; in fact, I think there’d be a queue.’

  I smiled as my brother raised his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise.

  ‘And who do you think you are? The Godfather?’

  The mood was lightened, but my thoughts had been drawn back to the little, black card in my pocket. I carried it around with me all the time these days, like a sort of comfort blanket, or good luck charm. Somehow it made me feel like I had choices, like I was in control. I had eventually plucked up the courage to call Nicholas Barrington and we had had a long, but non-committal chat on the phone. He had a nice voice and I was beginning to wonder what the face behind the name looked like. Maybe I should just do it and arrange to meet the guy. Where was the harm in that? I thought for a moment, then on an impulse, I took out the card, ripped it in half and threw it in the bin. That was not the way forward. I had to stand on my own two feet.

  I grudgingly had to admit that Jeremy was right and I had to sign the damn settlement. It was the only way to get the Trustee in Bankruptcy off my back once and for all.

  Phoebe began again, undeterred.

  ‘There’s still the option of blackmail if you ask me. You’ve got plenty on him, what with all his dirty, little secrets in Stainsford. And you’ve got all the photos you took when you got into the flat. It seems a pity not to put them to good use…. He’s a total pervert,’ she concluded, pulling a face.

  Jeremy as always was the voice of reason.

  ‘Yes, and then who’d end up in jail? Anyway, Daniel in his Stainsford gear is an image I’d rather not have in my head. I mean, he’s not exactly ‘lady boy’ of Bangkok is he? Can you imagine what he must look like, all six foot two of him in his bronze sparkly stilettos, frilly bloomers and false tits?’

  ‘Ewww!’

  I spluttered with laughter in spite of myself, as he stood up and minced around the kitchen on tiptoes, doing an exaggerated impersonation of Daniel, to everyone’s great amusement. At least by ridiculing him, I could tell myself I had the upper hand. Phoebe looked at me and grinned, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘Sod the coffee, let’s have a gin.’

  ‘Good call! Alcohol is just about the only thing that keeps me going these days.’

  My brother sat down again and looked at me with a straight face.

  ‘On a serious note though, just remember you have no idea who Daniel really is. Or what he is really capable of. None of us do. A psychopath essentially fears two things: losing control and being exposed. I don’t need to spell it out, do I? He’s already lost control of the bankruptcy, which he is furious about and blames you for. In addition to that, although he may not be sure, he certainly suspects that you know enough to expose his biggest secret to the whole world. He is a psychopath, don’t doubt it for a second. My advice to you is to get the settlement signed and then cut all connections with him. Make sure he gets the hell out of your life. For good.’

  I heard what he was saying loud and clear, but my thoughts drifted as I focused on the words losing control.

  For a moment I was back in the pretty Norman church of St Agnes in our village, saying my wedding vows to Daniel in front of God, our friends and my family.

  ‘To love, cherish and obey. Till death do us part.’

  Obey.

  I remembered how Daniel had insisted on that part, despite it generally being omitted from modern marriage vows. Even the vicar had said I should think very carefully about it, reminding me sternly that I would be saying my vows in front of God and must ensure I did not make a promise I could not keep. He advised us that the modern clergy took the view that marriage should be a partnership of equals and offered alternative wordings. Daniel was having none of it and in the end, I acquiesced, against my better judgement.

  In hindsight Daniel should have concentrated on modifying his own vows:

  ‘To love, honour and betray….’

  Dangerous Lies

  When you choose to make a deal with the Devil, remember that he always comes to collect.

  Grace

  Two days later, I was back home and packing up the last remnants of my life from the house that had once held so many possibilities and been so full of hope. I had resentfully signed the financially crippling agreement with the Trustee first thing on Monday before I could change my mind. I stood on the stone patio and looked around me at the hundreds of trees we had planted the first year we were married and thought
of how barren and stark it had seemed the first day I went there. I saw the wooden swing seat my parents had given us for our first anniversary, where we had once sat contentedly wrapped in each other's arms, looking out over the valley below. I remembered my dad coming down to stay with us, working tirelessly to fit my new kitchen, sanding the oak beams by hand and loving every minute of it. I thought of all our plans for the house, our dreams for the future. The house that would have been so perfect for a family. I had totally bought into the illusion of the life I had there, but over the last few months, I had been forced to watch it all evaporate into the ether without a trace, powerless to hold onto the tiniest part of it. A crushing and unexpected sadness engulfed me.

  - Why hadn’t I been enough for him? How did everything go so horribly wrong?

  My thoughts were interrupted by my phone vibrating in my pocket. I looked at the display and saw Daniel’s name. I usually ignored him these days, but after a brief hesitation, I decided to answer. There were still one or two loose ends to tie up before I severed all ties completely.

  ‘What do you want?’ I snapped, defensively.

  ‘Don’t be like that. Are you okay?’ he asked, apparently concerned. ‘I was worried about you after I got an email about the house from the Trustee. I tried to stop them selling, but there’s really nothing more I can do.’

  ‘Like you care. You caused all this, remember?’

  ‘Of course I care. I still love you. I will always love you,’ he declared dramatically, in a pained voice.

  He paused and I could almost hear the violins. I wondered whether he realised he was quoting from The Bodyguard.

  ‘I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true, Grace. I can’t just erase you from my life. Nor do I want to.’