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Authors: Lynda Page
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told her that I was extremely worried something had happened to either her or Lucy. He said she seemed really shocked that I was so worried as, after I’d signed the papers and given them back to her, I’d told her that I was handing over everything I owned to her as my way of apologising for the humiliation I’d brought on her by what I’d done. I’d also said that I couldn’t expect her to wait ten years for me, so she was to divorce me and feel free to meet someone else. My only stipulation had been that she should raise Lucy on my behalf, with the child believing that her father was dead so that she didn’t grow up with the stigma of being related to a convicted criminal. I’d left her in no doubt that I meant what I said as I was going to make sure that she didn’t receive any more visiting orders.
‘She told Charles Gray that she had done her best to talk me out of it but I wouldn’t budge. Therefore she’d had no choice but to build a future for herself and Lucy without me in it. She asked him to give me her best wishes when next he saw me.
‘I was struck dumb by these revelations and started to question if indeed her version of events was the truth and I was losing my mind. Then Charles asked me why, when I’d checked over the document and seen what it stated wasn’t actually according to my instructions, I’d still gone ahead and signed. That was when the truth dawned on me. Nerys hadn’t wanted me to examine the document before I’d authorised it. She had obviously brought Lucy along with her that visiting time, against my wishes, in order to distract me from the document until the very last minute, so that I wouldn’t have time to check through it. Then a terrible thought hit me like a sledgehammer. It could only have been Nerys herself behind my being put away in the first place.
‘I could see by the look on his face that Charles was thinking the same as I was, and said as much to him. He asked me just what exactly I knew about Nerys when I’d married her. It struck me it was hardly anything, and what I did know I had taken her word for. I had no choice but to accept that all her words of endearment to me were lies. To her I had been nothing more than a meal ticket. She was obviously on the lookout for a suitable victim to fleece and had found it in me that night I went into the hotel. But all the whys and wherefores . . . whether she’d had an accomplice who carried out the attack and theft for which I was framed, or whether she’d paid someone to do it . . . were irrelevant now as the document I had unwittingly signed was watertight and there was nothing even a clever lawyer like Charles could do about it. Nerys was now the legal owner of all my possessions.
‘No words can describe how devastated and guilty I felt for losing the family home I’d been born in and all the happy memories of life there, along with the business my father had worked so hard to build. But far worse than that was the loss of my precious child. I didn’t have anyone else to blame but myself, though, for falling for Nerys’s scheme. The only consolation I had was that she must love my daughter as if she was her own or she would have put her in an orphanage.
‘I was released on parole after ten years but they seemed like a lifetime to me. I’d had no visitors and no idea how my daughter was faring with Nerys. Release brought me little joy as I’d nothing to come out to. I knew I had no chance of getting back any of my possessions but I badly wanted to see my little girl, even from a distance, just to satisfy myself that she was well and happy. After settling in at a hostel, I paid a visit to my old home. To my shock I found that Nerys no longer lived there and hadn’t for ten years. She must have sold up and moved as soon as the house became hers. The present owners had no forwarding address for her. I would have asked Charles Gray’s help in tracing Nerys but found he had died years before, and there
‘She told Charles Gray that she had done her best to talk me out of it but I wouldn’t budge. Therefore she’d had no choice but to build a future for herself and Lucy without me in it. She asked him to give me her best wishes when next he saw me.
‘I was struck dumb by these revelations and started to question if indeed her version of events was the truth and I was losing my mind. Then Charles asked me why, when I’d checked over the document and seen what it stated wasn’t actually according to my instructions, I’d still gone ahead and signed. That was when the truth dawned on me. Nerys hadn’t wanted me to examine the document before I’d authorised it. She had obviously brought Lucy along with her that visiting time, against my wishes, in order to distract me from the document until the very last minute, so that I wouldn’t have time to check through it. Then a terrible thought hit me like a sledgehammer. It could only have been Nerys herself behind my being put away in the first place.
‘I could see by the look on his face that Charles was thinking the same as I was, and said as much to him. He asked me just what exactly I knew about Nerys when I’d married her. It struck me it was hardly anything, and what I did know I had taken her word for. I had no choice but to accept that all her words of endearment to me were lies. To her I had been nothing more than a meal ticket. She was obviously on the lookout for a suitable victim to fleece and had found it in me that night I went into the hotel. But all the whys and wherefores . . . whether she’d had an accomplice who carried out the attack and theft for which I was framed, or whether she’d paid someone to do it . . . were irrelevant now as the document I had unwittingly signed was watertight and there was nothing even a clever lawyer like Charles could do about it. Nerys was now the legal owner of all my possessions.
‘No words can describe how devastated and guilty I felt for losing the family home I’d been born in and all the happy memories of life there, along with the business my father had worked so hard to build. But far worse than that was the loss of my precious child. I didn’t have anyone else to blame but myself, though, for falling for Nerys’s scheme. The only consolation I had was that she must love my daughter as if she was her own or she would have put her in an orphanage.
‘I was released on parole after ten years but they seemed like a lifetime to me. I’d had no visitors and no idea how my daughter was faring with Nerys. Release brought me little joy as I’d nothing to come out to. I knew I had no chance of getting back any of my possessions but I badly wanted to see my little girl, even from a distance, just to satisfy myself that she was well and happy. After settling in at a hostel, I paid a visit to my old home. To my shock I found that Nerys no longer lived there and hadn’t for ten years. She must have sold up and moved as soon as the house became hers. The present owners had no forwarding address for her. I would have asked Charles Gray’s help in tracing Nerys but found he had died years before, and there
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