Even though Hazel insisted that her affair with Howell was well and truly over and she was in a new relationship, the dentist, it seemed, held out lingering hopes of a reconciliation with his old flame. Trevor McAuley remembers how Howell did his best to discredit him in Hazel’s eyes: ‘Howell was bad. He said to her at one time: “What would it take to get rid of that boy from Windy Hall? That boy is only from Windy Hall.” It’s a wee estate, but I’m proud to be from Windy Hall and proud to be associated with anybody who comes from it … I could see what Howell was doing … He was trying to manipulate her brain and make her wonder if she would stay with this boy, McAuley. To make her feel that, if he wasn’t on the scene, she was finished financially. And finance was her big thing …’ Howell was applying heavy emotional pressure to Hazel too. ‘I remember her telling me how much it was upsetting him – her going out with me. He wasn’t able to eat and he was stopping the car and being sick. All he had eaten the whole day was a banana … She hadn’t the brains to see that he was working her head.’
Perhaps Howell was not the only one not quite ready to let go. Unknown to Trevor, Hazel twice met the dentist behind his back – once when she invited him to have sex at her house after jumping up and down on his knee, stripping to her underwear and throwing herself on to a bed. Howell later claimed he made his excuses and left. He said: ‘I stood at the end of the bed and just said: “I don’t want any more.” She got dressed and I left.’ He added: ‘I knew Hazel was still very needy of the relationship. She knew it. She wanted it to end, but she couldn’t let it end.’
There was also the time Hazel contacted her ex to see if she could borrow some equipment which her son Andrew needed to go on a camping expedition. Trevor McAuley was not best pleased, especially after she told him she wanted Howell to continue treating her two children at the Ballymoney clinic, and even though Howell had told her: ‘Well, if we’re split up, we’re split up. Everything you had from me is now gone.’
The first signs of a rift and uncertainty between the new couple began to emerge. Hazel wasn’t quite the woman Trevor McAuley had hoped. Not only was she emotionally demanding, but financially too: ‘I couldn’t earn enough money to keep her. I said that to her many times: “I nearly feel I can’t afford you. I shouldn’t have you because I can’t afford you.” She would have used Howell and his wealth, his money, to make me feel I should be taking over that [side of things]. [As if] she was [saying]: “He’s not there any more, I’ve got rid of him. You need to take over here now. I can’t cope without it.” ’
Money quickly became a major issue, as Trevor recounts with some anger: ‘It was clothes and the house. The house bugged me so much. I put thousands into that house and that doesn’t include the time. How do you put a price on the time? I did all the work: redecorating, putting in a new kitchen, tiling, bathrooms. There isn’t a room in the house which I didn’t re-do. I put Amtico floors in it. Then those two [Hazel and David Stewart] sold that house when they got married.
‘Most times, you [I] would have bought her clothes. But … sometimes, she would have bought them on her credit card. But whenever the credit card bill came in, half the time she didn’t have the money to pay for it. I ended up paying the credit card. She never paid anything towards the holidays. She didn’t even take spending money on a holiday. We went with her children. We went to the south of France, Majorca, Benalmadena in Spain. Good hotels were expected … Whenever you were in that coach being transferred – from the airport – I was always worried the hotel would not meet her standards … It would have been bad if it failed to match her expectations … The first holiday we had was in Benalmadena and I remember sitting shocked on a little wall, because all she wanted was to buy presents for friends. But she hadn’t brought any money. And I had to buy them. That was the first time I looked at Buchanan and began to think to myself: “I’m in a different league here. Financially I’m not sure I’m going to be able to cope with this relationship.” ’
McAuley, with three children of his own from his first marriage, soon found his modest financial resources stretched to the limit in his efforts to meet Hazel’s demands: ‘There were times I had nothing. There were times when I hadn’t a penny, when it all had to go to her. The first time I had to give her money, I came round to the house and I just knew there was something not right. I remember her patronizing me. I said: “There is definitely something wrong. You’re not yourself at all.” She replied: “You are a very sensitive man. You can pick up on that … Financially, I am not making it at the minute.” … Being the big man, I said: “What do you need?” … If anybody had ever needed a few pounds, I thought they’d be talking about £30 or £40. She was talking £300 to £400. I wasn’t with her that long and for me to hand that over was a big thing. It left me with nothing. I was looking after three of my own children. I was paying the Child Support Agency as well. I was keeping her, and her children. I pretended I didn’t ever need anything. I never got very much, but she would have pressurized me into buying myself a shirt. I couldn’t afford it. It sounds pathetic, but that’s the way it was.’
Hazel expected the best of everything, no matter the cost. Trevor recalls: ‘Everything had to be the best. If we went to look at a new kitchen and it cost £10,000 in one place, but £20,000 for the exact same somewhere else, she would have bought the one at £20,000. I couldn’t pay for it, but I know her mother gave her money towards it … There was nothing which needed to be done that could lie undone. It had to be done. She had very expensive tastes in life. She could have gone to a clothes rail and picked out the most expensive item straight away. It seemed to be something she could do. She was like a professional shopper. She used to get really, really cross and frustrated when she couldn’t find things … She’d be running here and there, and I was a bundle of nerves.’
He found Hazel’s style of communicating her feelings and needs very difficult to handle, too: ‘She wouldn’t be angry, but you’d know, even though she might not say anything … There used to be serious mood swings. It got so bad at the end, I would pretend I was playing football matches, so I didn’t have to go to her house. She was a very depressive person. When I left at night, until I came back the next day, I never knew what … to expect. If the mouth dropped, the reason was always money. It was lack of money … The only way I could lift her out of depression was by spending money … Trevor’s death played on her mind. She used to talk about how she felt. She used to say: “I’m useless. I’m for nothing. I am no better than a worm, crawling below the ground.” Because of what had happened and because of the abortion, she likened herself to a worm many times. It wasn’t just once, when she was down. I would have tried to lift her up out of it …’
There were some lighter moments in the relationship, according to Trevor. Hazel did display a sense of humour from time to time: ‘She could be funny in her own way, though it wasn’t very often. She could be witty and she enjoyed a joke. But … you always had to gauge her mood.’ The only way to cheer Hazel up, it seemed, was to go shopping: ‘I knew that if the mood was really bad, the only therapy [for her] … was to spend money. To shop and buy things. That was the only thing that pulled her out of a bad form.’
Fingering the clothes rails in search of a new outfit worked wonders to lift Hazel’s spirits, apparently. She was a regular in the more up-market fashion stores in and around the North Coast, although some staff, especially in Coleraine, found her aloof, even snobbish at times. Trevor concedes: ‘She was so good at finding what she wanted. She could find a needle in a haystack. She would have made a good fashion buyer, rather than doing something involving figures. It was another case of going in the wrong direction.’
At the time, Trevor attended the Church of Christ in Coleraine. Hazel was going regularly to Limavady Baptist Church, sometimes three times on a Sunday. But, as McAuley confirms, she yearned for the day when the ban would end, and she could return to Coleraine Baptist: ‘That was a goal she had.’
She eventua
lly got her way in 2002, when Pastor Jim Smyth from Limavady made an informal approach to Pastor Edwin Ewart, who had taken over from Hansford in 1996. Pastor Ewart called with Hazel to discuss her reintegration and he advised her to do it quietly and then gradually build up her attendance over a period of time. The fact that she had moved on and was now with Trevor McAuley was an important consideration in the ‘amnesty’ being granted: ‘Whenever it was established that we were in a relationship, she got it [the ban] lifted.’ In relation to Hazel’s approach to life in general, he recalls: ‘There had to be a goal at the end of everything she did, an advantage …’
Trevor got on famously with the Buchanan children, and many a Sunday night was spent driving them back to Belfast, where they were students at Queen’s University and the College of Art. He thought the world of them: ‘Lisa and Andrew were fantastic. They never cast up anything to that girl about their father, which always amazed me. Their loyalty was incredible. They thought their father had committed suicide because of an affair she had with Colin Howell. It didn’t matter to them. She was their mother and they loved her to bits. They were totally committed. I used to take them to Belfast on a Sunday night at my expense, but Buchanan would have stayed on in the house and many times on my way home, I used to think: “Why didn’t she come with me for the company?” There didn’t seem to be a heart there. Maybe because of the deaths all her feelings died. They died along with Trevor Buchanan.’
When it came to her new boyfriend’s three children though, Hazel just did not want to know or to have anything to do with them: ‘She made that clear from the start, when she said: “I’ll never be anything to your children.” … It put me under terrible pressure. I recall having them for a week [they lived with their mother] and she didn’t even know they were there. I remember one night being caught out. We were in a Chinese restaurant. I popped in for a carry out and she rang the mobile. My boy answered. I was supposed to be working and she was asking: “What’s he doing there?” ’
The couple kissed and cuddled. But Trevor felt there was something else in the way Hazel deliberately kept him at a distance during the years that they were together: ‘The sexual side of it was driving me mad. There were times when things would have happened, but it wasn’t a sleeping together thing. Even on holidays, there was nothing. In eight years, I could count on one hand [the number of times] when we got close. She didn’t want me to. It was a powerful strain.’
Trevor would try to bring up the subject of marriage and buying a home together. He harboured exciting thoughts of a future together. Hazel clearly had serious reservations, although she rarely confided her doubts. They once talked about buying a plot of land. Another time, Hazel asked him to check with estate agents in the area and find out what houses were available for sale. They went to see some for themselves. But Hazel was not happy with any of them. In retrospect, Trevor sees that this was just her way of stalling: ‘If you had Buckingham Palace, it wouldn’t have been good enough. When I look back on it now, it’s only because she didn’t want to marry me. It wasn’t because the house wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t because Buchanan wasn’t ready. It was because I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t fuel her life. And her life needed to be fuelled.’
Hazel had never wanted to marry Trevor McAuley. Years later, in police interviews, she would sum up the eight-year relationship with some considerable detachment: ‘I didn’t feel anything for him. I liked him as a person, but I felt with my life, and what had happened and everything, that I could never marry again …’
The relationship may have lasted eight years, but tensions and tantrums over money put it on hold several times. Sometimes the separation lasted a week, sometimes just a couple of days. Trevor was desperate to secure a new and loving wife, but Hazel’s desire to keep the relationship going was motivated only by self-interest, it seemed. It was the start of another long, slow goodbye on her part.
As time went on, Trevor’s family made their feelings on the relationship felt. Initially, his mother and sisters had been willing to give Hazel a chance, knowing what a difficult time she had been through. But as it became obvious that there was nothing reciprocal about the relationship – that Trevor was doing all the giving and his new girlfriend doing all the taking – they tried to reason with him that it would be better all round for him to disengage. On his deathbed, Trevor’s father left him in no doubt about what he thought of Hazel. He was having chemotherapy for terminal cancer in Antrim Area Hospital when he took his son by the hand, looked at his sad eyes and asked him to make a solemn pledge. Trevor recalls: ‘My father was a plasterer with big hands, and I remember him taking my hand and he said: “You promise me you’ll not go back to that bad woman.” That was a big thing for him to say, because they knew how unhappy I was. This was after we finally split. I would say we were finished maybe two weeks, or a month. When it all finished, I was devastated. There were times I wanted to go back, but I knew I couldn’t go back, because it … was never going to be any different.’
It ended in July 2004, after they returned from an open-air Simon and Garfunkel concert in Dublin. They took the train from Belfast. As they pulled up at Connolly Station, Trevor could sense an impending separation which this time, he feared, would be permanent: ‘I’ll never forget the morning we left. There were times there was a distance between us, but this time it was greater. In the train, I remember going and sitting beside people we had gone with. I could get no conversation out of her. I thought it might have been because we had gone on the train and she didn’t really like that. She might have considered it a bit common … The weekend was really, really strange. She was in total withdrawal. Even at night, she would not come down out of her room. I was quite embarrassed because of the people I was with. I went up to see what was wrong, and there was absolutely nothing. Then that night she finally told me she was concerned about the way she was treating me … I don’t know whether it was genuinely eating her. She just couldn’t convey to me the way she was feeling.’
They did not enjoy the concert. Apart from Hazel’s sullen attitude, Simon and Garfunkel had not lived up to the expectations of either of them. Hazel’s mood darkened even more afterwards, when it started to rain and they couldn’t flag down a taxi. By the time they arrived home in Coleraine the following night, the town was at a standstill as thousands of people gathered on the streets for a parade of teams to mark the start of the annual Milk Cup, an internationally renowned youth soccer tournament. Trevor’s failure to make a speedy getaway because of the crowds just added to the gloom: ‘Everything was irritating the life out of her. We finally got home and it was eating me what was wrong … I went into the house, took her bag in, but before I knew it, she had gone to bed. She never even said “cheerio” … I went to her room and sat on the edge of the bed, asking her what was wrong. I said: “Do you not think after all this time we really need to take a decision to get married?” This is what she said, and this was the final straw: “Trevor, I don’t know if I ever loved you. I don’t know if I love you now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever love you in the future.” ’ He reeled back in stunned silence for a few seconds, as the impact of the harsh words hit him. He then walked out of the Buchanan home, never to return.
The end of the relationship impacted on his health and his state of mind. He walked the roads at all hours, agonizing about what might have been, if only Hazel had been prepared to give him a chance: ‘After that night, I lost it. I must have lost the guts of two stones. People thought I had cancer. I walked the roads. If it wasn’t in the morning, then it was the middle of the night.’
The previous Christmas, Trevor had signed Hazel up for a year’s subscription to a local gymnasium, so that she could work out and relax as she pleased; the monthly fee was debited from his bank account directly by the gym. If she saw him walking the roads when she was in her car, she would sometimes stop for a few brief words. The very last time Hazel stopped to say hello to him, she was wearing all her gym gear, includ
ing the bottoms and top he had bought her on that sad and miserable weekend in Dublin. He remembers their exchange clearly: ‘She says: “It’s terrible. I’m still at Fitness First and you’re paying for it.” I said to her: “No, I’m not. I’ve stopped it.” I was so pleased with myself. It was really brave and she looked shocked. She was stunned.’
Stunned she might have been, but Hazel had moved on. She already had a new man on her arm. David Stewart was a former Chief Superintendent who once served as a staff officer to Sir Hugh Annesley, the Chief Constable of the RUC. Stewart, a divorcee with a family, had retired from the police in 2001, just before the RUC became the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Tall, with greying hair, lean, tanned, well spoken and keen to keep himself fit, he was introduced to Hazel in the Fitness First gym by a policeman friend. The two had shared spiritual interests too: Stewart was taking a fresh look at his Christianity around the time they met. It was love at first sight on the treadmill and at the spinning classes.
After they finished working out, they would meet for coffee. It was early 2004 and Hazel was still in a relationship with Trevor McAuley, but when Stewart left for Latvia for a year on a policing project (he now worked in a consultancy business) he kept in contact with the woman he was already besotted with. When he returned home that summer – just after the time Hazel had been in Dublin with Trevor – the ex-policeman was keen to progress the relationship and he proposed in January 2005, just months after she ditched Trevor. They did not tell their families at the time, but announced their engagement in April. They got married on 18 July at Galgorm Manor near Ballymena. It was a small family reception with just some close friends, maybe fifty to sixty guests, who mingled as a harpist played. The couple attended Coleraine Baptist Church for a brief period before switching to Portstewart. They moved into a new home at Ballystrone Road in Coleraine in late 2006.
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