‘That was the day Jemma saw him in the garden at Devey House?’ Simon cut in.
‘Yes,’ said Mayo. ‘It’s the only time in my entire life that he ever went into protective father mode. He stormed round there, ordered Marianne to leave me alone and let me get on with the rest of my life. She just smiled sweetly at him and kept her cool, knowing I’d side with her over him any day. That was partly what made me want to train to be a psychotherapist: Marianne saying one day, “The ability to remain calm when others are losing their minds is one of the biggest psychological advantages a person can have.”’
‘Probably true,’ said Simon.
‘It was Marianne, not Dad, who cared enough to spend actual time with me on a regular basis,’ Mayo said. ‘She asked me more questions about myself and what mattered to me in the first two weeks of our … new, secret relationship than Dad has in my entire life. She really seemed to care for me in … I suppose I thought of it as a properly motherly way, even though I didn’t have any experience of that. She gave me firm instructions, right from the start: I was to think of her as my mother-in-law, because one day she would be, officially.’ Mayo smiled sadly. ‘She was such a strange mixture of … attributes. As much as she was comforting, which I needed, there was also a hard, warrior side to her.’
‘Understatement,’ Jemma muttered. ‘She could have defeated an army of thousands.’
‘I was convinced that if she said we could win, if she really believed it …’ Mayo shrugged to indicate that he’d finished for now.
‘When what?’ Simon asked him.
Mayo and Jemma exchanged a puzzled look. Then he said, ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Before, you were saying: you and she met regularly, in secret,’ said Simon. ‘In her study at Devey House between 2006 and November 2012when …You didn’t finish the sentence.When what?’
There was a short silence. Jemma looked down at her cup of tea. Then Mayo said, ‘When I slashed her throat with a knife. And left her for dead on her kitchen floor. Although … No. I’m not going to make excuses. I did it. I’m … I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you about that straight away.’
He exhaled several times, staring at the air in front of him as if expecting to see something appear there. Jemma clutched his hand more tightly.
‘Understandable,’ Simon told him. ‘I’m the police. No one’s honest with me. But you’re going to be now, aren’t you?’
‘I just have been,’ said Mayo.
‘Mainly. But you described yourself as Marianne’s confidante, and that’s not all you were. More of a collaborator, surely?’
‘Yes.’ Mayo squeezed Jemma’s hand. ‘That’s true. I wanted Jemma back – whenever, however that could happen. It all came from Marianne, not me – certainly all the ingenious aspects – but I was an active part of it. That’s how I know you’re wrong about her waiting it out for years. That’s not how she saw it, not at all.’
‘Enlighten me,’ said Simon.
Mayo took a sip of his pint of lime cordial and soda. ‘She’d orchestrated her response – every stage of it – within a few days of the argument Jemma’s described. Marianne wouldn’t have liked that one bit, losing it and weeping hysterically in front of another person – especially Jemma, given the tensions between them. She was driven by a strong need for control andpower, always. Which is why it took her less than a week to come up with something to make herself feel properly superior and all-powerful again. She’d have been in a hurry to …’ He seemed to be searching for the right phrase.
‘Regain ascendancy?’ Simon suggested.
‘Precisely.’ Mayo nodded his approval. ‘And the waiting for years, while on the surface doing all she could to seem supportive of Jemma’s marriage and pregnancy and the “happy family” charade – that was all part of the … not fun exactly, I don’t think she saw it as fun, but part of the drama for sure. From Marianne’s point of view, she didn’t wait years. She got started straight away, calculating that the more supportive she seemed, the more Jemma would feel trapped and unhappy in the marriage. Plus there was a new baby to contend with – always challenging and exhausting, always a bit of a marriage-tester.’
‘I did all the things she hoped I’d do, right on cue.’ Jemma sighed. ‘Grew more and more unhappy, saw every day how enthusiastic Marianne apparently was about me and Paddy and Lotts as a trio – what she called our “perfect little family” – and I just kept thinking, “Why can’t I feel as good about it as she does?” Because I was in love with Ollie, obviously, and that wasn’t going away. And Paddy … it was probably horrible of me, but I started to notice every insensitive thing he did or said, each time he sat on his arse and watched me, yet again, haul myself upright to go and deal with whatever Lottie wanted this time. I was constantly on the lookout for evidence to justify my quickly deteriorating opinion of him. I started to feel really, really desperate – and that’s exactly when that bitch suggested the Posh Hotel Rescue Plan. All me and Paddy needed was regular quality time alone together and proper rest, she said – that would sort us out, and she was happy to make it happen for us.’
‘It must have seemed like an unbelievably kind and generous offer,’ said Simon.
Jemma looked unsure. ‘Yes and no. There was such a strong vibe of “I want this, so it must happen.” There usually was, from Marianne. I wasn’t going to say no – I wasn’t an idiot, and it did sound blissful and too good to be true in many ways – but the message I was receiving in no uncertain terms was, “You will put all thoughts of Ollie out of your mind right now and throw yourself into this attempt to make your ‘perfect little family’ work – the one you’ve been ungratefully trying to wreck for so long.”’
‘Marianne told me she’d put money on it,’ said Mayo. ‘Jemma and Paddy would break up within a year of the Thursday nights in London starting. And once that had happened, I’d be able to slot neatly into Marianne’srealperfect family. Lottie would already be helpfully familiar with me, from all the Thursday nights of me playing Daddy, and—’
‘Playing Daddy how exactly?’ Simon asked. ‘Or do you just mean being there, and Lottie seeing you there?’
‘No.’ A look of guilt, or perhaps shame, passed across Mayo’s face. ‘She was only little then – too young to understand – but Marianne would say to her, “This is Daddy, Lottie – your real Daddy.” And … she’d expect me to do the same – play the role of Lottie’s father.’
‘And you agreed to pretend? To lie to the kid?’ Simon probably hadn’t done a great job of concealing his disapproval. He didn’t care.
Mayo was shaking his head. ‘I didn’t think it was a lie. You have to bear in mind … Marianne had become my only family, effectively. Week after week, she filled my head with …’
‘Propaganda,’ Jemma said, supplying the missing word.
‘Kept saying it was down to the two of us to keep the faith,keep the fire burning, that she loved me and always would – I’d always be her perfect son-in-law, she was so proud of me.’ Mayo sighed. ‘She never ran out of powerful, inspiring metaphors to describe what we were doing. And no one had ever … spoken to me like that, believed so hard on my behalf that I could get what I wanted, that I could be a winner and not a reject. She also managed to persuade me that Paddy would lose interest in Lottie and fatherhood the second Jemma dumped him. That’s not true.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Jemma confirmed.
