—More or less. Moodier though … Angry.
—What had happened to make him that way?
—The thing about kitchens, right – well, not just kitchens, the whole catering industry – it’s incestuous, you see. Chefs shag the waitresses, waitresses shag the chefs. It’s just how it goes. Thing with Sorrel, though, he could never get on board with all that. He was always trying to have a proper relationship, you know? Boyfriend-girlfriend, kids and marriage, that sort of thing. He was only in his early twenties.
—Would Sorrel ever bring girls home too?
—Sort of. We’d bring a load of folk back and have a good drink, play some records. Then one of us might get lucky.
—I understand.
—Sorrel, though, he was always funny about it. He always had this belief that if one of the girls stayed over with him, that they were his afterwards.
—Perhaps he wanted more than a one-night stand.
—Aye. More than just a shag. That was how his mind worked. I think that was how he’d been brought up – to have respect, you know? He never really talked about his family, though. I think his gran brought him up.
—Did Sorrel ever have a stable girlfriend around this time?
—See, the way he was – that was why he ended up going with … I don’t know how to put it … girls that weren’t so good for him…
—What did he tell you, if anything, about these relationships?
—He would say he was sick and tired of dating ‘psychos’. They always seemed to be messing him about, he said. They would always be phoning him, crying and screaming and making a fuss.
—Why? Did you ever know what was going on?
—He seemed to attract the damaged ones – broken girls, girls with problems. And when you try and be nice, you end up getting hurt, that’s what Sorrel used to say. I think he wanted to look after them, be a father figure.
—Can you remember any of these women?
—Yeah. The last one he ever spent any amount of time with – the one before Sonia – Mad Mary, we called her. Oh, dear me! She was one of the chambermaids at the hotel where we were. Just another one passing through.
—Did everyone know her by this name?
—Not at first, no. Only afterwards; only after Sorrel had been with her. That’s when everyone found out. I think it was because of him.
—So she seemed fairly reasonable when they met?
—She was a character, like. She was only our age, but she’d … lived a life. She was one with the drugs and that, you see – she had a habit. Acid I think, LSD. She was bad news, that one. You could tell that just from looking at her.
—But Sorrel fell for her like he did the others – straightaway?
—Oh yeah, big time. You could see it happening. He was all over her – giving her lots of attention, lots of compliments. He was always in and out the kitchen, making sure she was OK – sometimes having a go at people if they were mean to her, that sort of thing.
—So they dated?
—Yes, and she was very … receptive, shall we say, to Sorrel’s old-fashioned charm. She liked him putting his arm around her when they were out. If we were in the pub and anyone looked at her, he was straight over, in their face. Threw it all back in his face though, she did, in the end.
Darren tells me that, much as he did later with Sonia, Sorrel distanced himself a little from his friends while he and Maryanne were together. Darren would see her sometimes in the boarding house where the two were staying, or in the pub after shifts. On her days off, she would come to the house and stay in Sorrel’s room or they would spend the afternoon in the pub.
—When did you notice things beginning to unravel between them?
—Sorrel would tell me little things. He would say she was always on at him about other women. He started to feel like he couldn’t even talk to a waitress without Maryanne finding out.
—Did you see this first-hand?
—You don’t really notice unless you’re looking, do you? Sorrel was always trying to do his best for her, but I think he found it hard. He was everything to her. Her parents weren’t in the picture, and she seemed to be all alone, save for the bad lot she bought drugs off. And he found them hard to manage.
—What was wrong?
—He says they were talking about him behind his back. Whenever he went anywhere with her they were whispering about him, bitching.
With people like them, druggies and losers, it was the drugs, see – made them all paranoid. And he and I reckoned they were jealous. I think that was true. No one else was like him. All the young girls in the restaurants and the bars, they used to flock round him, you know.
—What about when Sorrel and Maryanne were together – how did they seem then?
—Oh they used to have rows. I could hear her screaming at him in the night. He would always look tired the next day – ground down, fed up.
—But the two of you never talked about it?
—Not properly. He would say things occasionally – tell me he thought she was losing it. I think he tried his best with her, you know? But it was when she told him she was pregnant – that’s when it all went out the window.
—Pregnant?
—They’d broken up, see? He ended it, I think, but she wasn’t having it. I wasn’t there, but he told me the whole story. She came to the house on his day off with a pillow under her jumper; she was screaming and told him it was his.
—What happened?
—He told me he pulled the pillow out and threw it at her, told her to get out and never come back. She was hardly ever in work anyway. After that, everyone started talking about her, calling her ‘Mad Mary’.
Darren tells me more about the many other times Sorrel Marsden tried to cultivate a stable relationship with the various waiting staff and occasionally with fellow chefs who passed through the hotel system. All these relationships ended disastrously. Darren puts this down to unstable people trying to take advantage of Sorrel’s good nature.
—Did Sorrel find it difficult to cultivate friendships too?
—You all get along, have a drink and that after work but you don’t really have proper friends in that sort of environment. And if you do, it’s rare.
—You were Sorrel’s only real friend?
—There was someone else, now I come to think of it; another chef. I think she might have been the only woman Sorrel didn’t try and put the moves on. I forget her name – Winnie. Wendy maybe? She never tried to mess him about. I think that’s why they were mates. Like him and me, they were equals. Of course he forgot all about her when Sonia came along. Poor woman, I wonder what became of her.
I wonder what it was inside Sorrel that made him yearn to settle down.
I think of that Christmas Eve back in 1988 – Sorrel desperately clinging to an ideal of a perfect family Christmas for his little boy, despite knowing that Sonia was more or less consumed by her alcohol dependency.
Darren and Sorrel eventually moved away from Shrewsbury in early 1981, this time taking seasonal work at a holiday resort in Prestatyn, North Wales. Both men were now in their early thirties.
—This was when Sorrel met Sonia, is that right?
—It was indeed. It was her home town. Mad Mary joined us there too … unfortunately.
—Sonia was only young when Sorrel got to know her, correct?
—Oh yes. This was – what? – Eighty-one, eighty-two? I remember it well: Dayton’s, the holiday park. It was great there. We got to live in and, I tell you, it was like a holiday for us too. Sonia was working there, and Sorrel and me were in the kitchens.
—What did Sonia do?
—She was working with the kids and that, and doing the entertainment in the evening. They only picked the young, pretty ones for that. I tell you what, though, they liked to party – we all did. That’s why we called our apartment ‘the Party Palace’.
—You two would throw parties there, I take it?
—That was all Sorrel. He was si
ngle again, escaping from another crazy one, no doubt. So the whole Party Palace thing was all for his benefit.
—Was that where Sorrel first got together with Sonia?
—Oh, yeah. He was after her from the first moment he saw her. I could see when he was showing off, laying on the compliments, puffing out his chest.
—There was a bit of an age difference between Sorrel and Sonia, wasn’t there? He was, what? mid-thirties? She was much younger?
—Aye, but, you know, when he met her, I really thought that she was the one for him, despite her age.
Sonia Lewis was nineteen years old in 1981. She came from Prestatyn and worked at the holiday camp full-time. Sonia didn’t live in like the others, so she spent her nights staying on the floors of the friends she made there.
—I always felt a bit sorry for her, you know? She wasn’t like the others – she was younger, she’d never really been anywhere. Staying in our scabby apartment instead of at her parents’ house was an adventure for her…
—So, Sonia wasn’t transient like most of the workers there?
—Pretty much everyone who worked at Dayton’s moved on to somewhere else. Sonia and the older people, they were the only ones who stayed. I kept my eye out for her, I did. She was like a lost little lamb.
—Do you think that appealed to Sorrel?
—I think so, after what he’d been through with Maryanne. He was good to Sonia; he looked out for her. And he was smitten with her from the off. And as soon as he worked his charm, well, she was just besotted with him.
—Did their age gap ever bother him … or anyone else?
—I only remember one time anyone else getting funny about it. It was one of the old ones – a cleaner – been there for a hundred years, thought she owned the place. Sylvia, she was called. Face like an old boot. Sonia had taken our clothes to the laundrette, see? But she came back crying her eyes out. I’m sat in the living room, smoking my first fag of the day, trying to shake off my hangover. Sorrel’s still asleep, I can hear him snoring.
She sits down, and I ask her what’s the matter? Turns out Sonia’s been walking down the path to the laundrette and that little witch Sylvia pops out from nowhere with her mop and bucket and gives Sonia an earful!
—What did she say?
—She had a right go, apparently. Told the poor girl she should be ashamed of herself. Said that Sorrel was old enough to be her father!
—That’s harsh!
—I know. Little Sonia was in pieces. I told her that Sylvia was nothing but a dried-up little ratbag with no friends and she should take no notice of her. That made her laugh.
—How did Sorrel take it?
—You know what? We never told him. Sonia thought that was best. She didn’t want no trouble, she said. I thought he wouldn’t have cared one bit. He said that Sonia was ‘the one’ and he didn’t give a stuff about her age. But I did what she thought was best.
—Did you ever hear any other negative comments from the other staff about the two of them?
—Well, what can I say? She was pretty, and he was like a cat that got the cream, always showing her off. I think he was proud of how young she was compared to him. And I think she couldn’t believe it herself. He wasn’t a big fan of her friends, though, the young ’uns, like. And I think the feeling was mutual.
—Did you notice any signs in those early days that there might have been any problems between Sonia and Sorrel?
—They had their ups and downs, but what couple doesn’t? I think he found her hard to deal with sometimes. He told me she’d get a bee in her bonnet, get in a sulk over little things. She would start an argument then turn on the tears. That drove him nuts. I hoped she wouldn’t be another Mad Mary!
—How often would these arguments happen?
—Like I say, all we did back then was work hard, and when we finished we went on the drink. So there were arguments – it was inevitable. On her days off, Sonia would come and sit in our chalet like a good little girl, waiting for Sorrel to finish his shift. He would come back tired, and she would be on his case.
Then we’d all start drinking. That’s when it got bad, see?
There were always people coming and going at the Party Palace, and he would get attention off a lot of the women. He had the gift of the gab, see, and Sonia was still a girl, more or less. So it upset her when women more Sorrel’s age tried it on.
—How bad did the arguments get?
—I remember one time I went to the toilet in the middle of the night and found poor Sonia curled up under a towel in the bath!
—What?
—I know! I didn’t know what to do. And I was bursting for the loo! I had to wake her up. I remember it quite well actually: she was all sleepy and soft – looked even younger. They’d had a row. Then he’d fallen asleep, and was snoring his head off in his room. I was close to asking her if she wanted my bed and I’d go in the bath.
—Why didn’t you?
—I just thought it wasn’t worth the aggro. It wasn’t like Sorrel was jealous, it was more like … I knew that he’d dwell on it. So she left the bathroom, I did my business, and she came back in. I remember asking her if she was OK. I said it twice: ‘Are you OK? Really, though?’ And she said yes. That was it.
—Did Sorrel mention it? Did you mention it to him?
—Like I say, we never talked about those sorts of things. Everything just moved on, and they seemed happy. Then one day, out of nowhere, he announced that they were moving in together!
—Wow. That was a little premature, don’t you think? Especially with the relationships Sorrel had had before.
—I thought so too at first. He never said anything and suddenly he’s gone and got himself a sous-chef job somewhere else. Him and Sonia were going to buy a house. Crazy. I’d never seen Sorrel settle so easily and with someone so nice. Maybe he’d finally had some luck!
—What about you?
—I had to move on, didn’t I? When the summer season at Dayton’s ended, I was off on my merry way. My Briallen found she was pregnant, and my days at the Party Palace were at an end.
—Did you and Sorrel stay in touch?
—Sort of. I found a job back here in Conwy. Thought I’d make an honest woman of Briallen, lay down some roots. We both moved on. So we only saw each other now and then.
Darren recalls the occasional barbeque and party at the flat in Prestatyn where Sorrel and Sonia lived. Sorrel was now in his early forties, Sonia in her early twenties.
—I couldn’t keep up with the two of them anymore. As far as I could see they were still partying, drinking. I think it was better for him because he could choose who came round to see them – his mates, men his age. Sonia would totter around in her skimpy dresses; Sorrel was cock of the walk.
—Was it a happy home?
—As far as I could see. He was very protective of her still, very attentive. The drinking was a worry sometimes. With her more than him. Always pissed, she was, just legless; you couldn’t get much sense out of her. So it took me right by surprise when they told me they were trying for a baby. I mean, they were still the life and soul of the party, them two. I didn’t know if she would be able to just stop like that. I worried a bit, I suppose. I could see my own life was about to change, you see, with the little one coming. Sleepless nights, nappies, all that.
—I would have thought that was perfect for Sorrel. You said he always wanted to settle down.
—That’s what he always wanted, yes. I think he thought with Sonia, that he could … I dunno, tame her, I suppose. He could make a wife and mother out of her.
—When was the last time you saw the two of them?
—I was up there in Prestatyn for a jolly. Sorrel and Sonia were having one of their parties. He was loving it, strutting round. I was so happy for him, that he’d found happiness at last. Sonia though, she was quiet.
—Why do you think that was?
—I think it was all a bit much for her, poor lass. She was pregnant by
then. Bless Sorrel, he was by her side, just like always, looking after her. That gave me hope.
There was one moment, though, when I wondered if everything was right in paradise.
—Go on.
—Well, I came across Sonia on my way to the toilet. I’d had a few myself, see? I was half-cut, babbling some rubbish about how happy I was for her. And she gave me this look. It was just for a second – just a moment.
—What did you see in that look?
—I remembered the early days, back in Prestatyn, at Dayton’s – how I used to feel sorry for her, you know? I says to her, ‘Everything alright, bach?’ And I saw then, just this sort of sadness in her eyes. I was sure she was about to say something, when Sorrel comes along and takes her in his arms, kissing her, telling her how lucky they were, all that.
—What do you think she was going to tell you?
—You know, looking back now and knowing what happened with them and their kiddie, I think she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Sounds harsh, don’t it? But I reckon she knew it herself. And that was what she wanted to say to me.
—What makes you think Sonia wasn’t cut out for motherhood? You mentioned the drinking, but was there anything else in her personality that made you feel this way?
—Her age had to come into it. Sorrel was having to look after her. He was like a father more than anything. And I think Sonia was ashamed of herself a bit. It was like she was Sorrel’s daughter rather than his lover.
After the birth of Alfie, Darren and Sorrel drifted even further apart. Aside from a few odd phone calls, the two fell out of touch completely. So, unfortunately, Darren cannot shed any light on Sorrel and Sonia’s relationship during the seven years after Alfie was born. However, Darren has helped us build a little bit of history around the couple.
I feel we’re at a point where we have all we can get from Darren, but there are two more threads I want to explore with him.
—Can I ask: what do you think happened to Alfie that night?
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