She called in to Terry’s shop to show him the advert and he encouraged her to arrange a viewing of the property the following afternoon. They agreed that the sprawling stone farm house was almost ideal but needed a new kitchen, new bathrooms, new heating system and some building work. She told Terry about the Spanish property she had already signed for and her financial dilemma. Terry was delighted that he could offer the solution to their problem and immediately phoned an estate agent and arranged to put his apartment on the market, so that between them they could have the perfect home.
Henrietta placed an offer on the farmhouse which was accepted and her solicitor was instructed. Terry offered to pay for a trip to Spain to see the property Henrietta was committed to and he paid for a hotel and a hired car. Oscar would spend four happy days and nights with his grandma whilst the couple headed for Malaga and booked into a hotel in Puerto Banus.
The weather was warm and the sun twinkled seductively but Henrietta was minded to shed unnecessary luxuries and back out of the deal in favour of paying outright for the comparative virtues of a family home at the farm in Derbyshire. Terry on the other hand was clearly overwhelmed by the glitz of Marbella and the comparative subtlety of immense wealth which permeated Sotogrande. During the brief trip he was intent on investigating the social and sporting attributes of the area which he had researched on-line and took Hetty to a number of the exclusive golf clubs for a coffee or glass of wine and also drove her to see the famous Polo fields and into the Port for lunch. Henrietta already knew about the beautifully designed ‘millionaires playground’ but once Terry had seen what he described as ‘sport heaven’ he convinced her that she must not let go of such a fabulous opportunity for their future holidays with the children and muttered something almost inaudible about candy and babies. He was visibly unable to contain his excitement at the prospect of playing golf in the sunshine and improving his handicap. He repeatedly insisted she sign the contract and promised to help her to pay the final balance as soon as business picked up and he had sold his apartment.
Once home again in Derbyshire, Terry arranged a business meeting for Henrietta with Aiden, his trusted financial advisor. They met at Terry’s shop, then strolled down the quiet high street to a local café, whilst chatting about their respective relationships with Terry and spent an hour befriending one another and talking about Hetty’s future with Terry as her prospective husband. Aiden assured her that he was a professional financial advisor and discussed Terry’s desire to commit to the proposed farm purchase and the necessity for the couple to have adequate life insurance. He discretely asked many invasive questions about the proposed property in Spain, her finances and banking arrangements and offered suggestions and advice on how to make her money work better for her. One of his ideas was to get a better rate of exchange on the money she sent to Spain and told her about a money exchange arm of Barclays Bank which monitored the currencies market and then bought the euros when the pound was at its strongest. He encouraged her to use their services and gave her the name and direct line number of the manager, Mr Lewin.
Aiden placed the notes he had made into a folder and paid the bill and Henrietta shook hands with her newly appointed financial advisor and called in to tell Terry about the meeting. Terry knew the prudence of financial planning and having a professional third party to advise her.
July 2005.
Four weeks later no-one had viewed Terry’s apartment yet the exchange date loomed on Mulberry Cottage. There was only one option, so after some thought she broached the topic with her Mother and it was agreed that they should join financial forces and Grandma would take up residence in the large barn. When their proposed plan came to Terry’s attention he made it known that he was disgruntled and felt emasculated and suggested that they ask the vendor of the farmhouse to wait until Terry had also sold and could transfer his mortgage. Although Henrietta was delighted that he wanted to commit to the purchase of the farmhouse, she knew that they would lose out if they couldn’t act quickly.
Terry asked Aiden to arrange a mortgage for his part of the purchase, which had to be in Henrietta’s name as he had not redeemed his own mortgage yet. Terry insisted the deeds would be in her name but the practical commitment of monthly payments would be met by him and he confirmed that he could afford the cost once his current financial commitment to his apartment was cleared. He signed a promissory note and gave it to her. He suggested that once he started to pay the mortgage on the farm, he could then be added to the deeds.
The property was bought and Henrietta’s usual team of trusted workmen began her transformation from tatty rustic farmhouse to country life glamour with stone flagged floors throughout the ground floor, a Chalon style French farmhouse kitchen complete with Aga and large gas fired stoves in the huge stone fireplaces. She effortlessly picked paint and wallpapers and fabrics which seemed to frighten Terry when he surreptitiously checked the labels and costs of each of her choices.
By the end of the month Terry was excited to announce that business was improving and he had received his outstanding commissions. They could celebrate their engagement with a family holiday to Disneyland in Florida and Hetty could finally collect her diamond solitaire ring. The children were extremely excited and Oscar particularly looked forward to his first holiday experience shared with other children who would become his own family. The no expense spared two week holiday in one of the themed on-site hotels cemented the bond between the children and Terry’s son affectionately named Oscar as his ‘Brother from another Mother’.
When they returned from Florida, laden with Disney memorabilia, Henrietta felt a long awaited sense of relief that she had finally found a way to create a family for her and her son and hoped that their future would be a happy one. She took a leap of faith, pretended to collect the ring and could not wait to show her friends that she was finally engaged to be married.
August 2005.
The farmhouse was almost ready for occupation and the betrothed couple began to plan for their wedding but could not agree on any detail of their big day. Henrietta wanted to be married in a church witnessed by friends and family and hold a reception at a local Country House Hotel, whilst Terry insisted on a registrar wedding in a boutique hotel far away from home. He took her to the Lake District to show her the two most beautiful venues in the area which he hoped she would like. He reasoned that he did not want his jealous ex-wife to know where to spoil his wedding day and he reminded Hetty to keep away from her and avoid her vitriol.
Henrietta agreed that the smallest of the hotels overlooking the lake was definitely a magical venue and accepted his wedding ideas, albeit begrudgingly, but when she tentatively asked his oldest daughter about her mother it appeared that Terry had forbidden her to discuss his past. All that the girl felt able to say was that her mother was impartial to the nuptials but that a previous girlfriend might not be. It was a peculiar comment which she tried to broach with Terry without any joy.
Terry was focused on moving on with his life but was also insistent on keeping the wedding party as small as possible to restrain the cost. This too was strange, for if the wedding were near home, the cost would have been much less than accommodating guests at such an expensive hotel for an overnight stay. Henrietta argued that she had gathered many valued friends during her lifetime who would want to see her married and settled, but he convinced her that as it was their second marriage, the friends they invited to the wedding must be people whom they had socialised with as a couple, not friends from Henrietta’s past life. He sanctioned the inclusion of four of the couples whom Henrietta most wanted to share her day but he struggled to choose who to invite aside from the children, as his parents were deceased and since their demise he had become estranged from all but one of his siblings. He would not explain the reason for their estrangement except to allude to a disagreement over the payment of his father’s funeral. The only brother whom he still maintained an emotional bond, had ironically gone to live in Australia and
Terry seemed to have little time for socialising and few people he could call friends. Any free time was spent on a golf course with fellow golfers, so he invited two men from his golf club and chose Aiden as his best man. He ordered a selection of invitations from a contact he knew in the printing world and allowed Hetty to make the final choice.
Terry was also adamant that his beautiful bride deserved an expensive tailor-made honeymoon and brought home glossy brochures to entice her to his dream of staying at a five star De-Lux hotel in the Far East however it soon became apparent that Terry could not afford to pay for any of his glamourous ideas and the bill would have to be borne by his Fiancée. Henrietta felt railroaded and took the view that the wedding and holiday should be postponed until Terry was on his feet and they were on a more equal financial footing, as she knew from experience that being financially much better off than the man in a marriage was doomed to fail. She did not want to wear those trousers again.
When the work on the house subsided Henrietta had chance to check her bank balance and noticed she had considerably more funds than she could account for. She realised that a clerical error had been made and checked with her bank to discover that the deposited mortgage loan was more than double the sum applied for. She queried the mistake with her conveyancing solicitor who suggested she speak to the loaning banks head office who in turn confirmed that they had only sent the sum which was applied for and additionally informed her that there would be an early redemption charge of twelve thousand pounds to pay back any part of the loan even after only two weeks.
That evening she asked Terry how Aiden could have made such a mistake but was strenuously cautioned that Aiden would lose his job if the gaffe was brought to the attention of his employer. She was strongly discouraged from causing such grief over a typo which would not inconvenience her but would wreck Aiden’s professional and family life. Terry also pointed out the ‘positive’ upside of the mistake which was that Hetty’s credit rating had been significantly improved and she could now evidently borrow money, whether she wanted to or not. She spoke again to her solicitor and reluctantly agreed that the early redemption was unnecessary; she could open a savings account to hold the over payment until the redemption charge was no longer a statuary requirement.
November 2005.
One Sunday afternoon Henrietta had an asthma attack which would not abate and as her breathing became increasingly laboured and desperate, Terry panicked and drove her to the A&E department of the nearest hospital. She was immediately laid on a trolley, given an oxygen mask and admitted onto a ward where doctors confirmed that she had developed pneumonia, presumably from the dust as renovations were done on the farm and chimneys were cleaned and lined. Henrietta felt so poorly that she insisted Terry send out wedding cancellation notes to those friends who had received the gilded invites, at least until she was well again. Terry was reluctant to oblige but she was secretly surprised that after yearning for a husband, a wedding and a family for so long that she felt relieved by the plausible excuse for a postponement.
Terry constantly monitored her recovery and when Henrietta was discharged from hospital, he took her to his apartment to convalesce and couple of weeks later their anticipated nuptial date came and went. The living arrangement was not too difficult as the apartment had plenty of space and Terry took Oscar to school each morning en-route to his shop and brought him home after work. All Terry wanted was for Hetty to be well enough to marry him. She felt pressured and suggested they wait at least six months, which was apparently when their chosen hotel venue had the next availability. Terry looked forward to the revised wedding date but had been disappointed that he missed the honeymoon holiday of a lifetime and had tried to convince her to go on the holiday even if they were not wed. Henrietta was told by her doctor that she must not risk travelling without the immunisation she needed but was too poorly to receive and was therefore handed a sick note to give to the travel agents, to ensure that the significant honeymoon deposit could be reimbursed through the travel insurance policy.
A month later they were living comfortably but unmarried in the farm when Henrietta received a bank statement which showed that the holiday money still had not been refunded to her bank account. After an enquiring phone call to the agent, she discovered the money had been credited to Terry. Henrietta was angry with the idiot agent but Terry placated her and promised to pay in entirety for the next booking. He kissed her tenderly on her cheek and encouraged her to relax. Henrietta was made to feel over sensitive, over protective and materialistic and persuaded to let the issue drop.
Meanwhile Terry became clingy, prying and overly protective of her, needing to know her every movement and suggested that her ‘near death experience’ had provoked a need for him to love and protect her and for them both to re-assess their life insurance requirements, think responsibly and make wills. He had both individual documents drawn up with his own solicitor for both of them to sign. Henrietta was to benefit entirely from Terry’s bequest but was not enthralled that Terry would inherit her estate in its entirety if she died before Oscar reached the age of eighteen and although she had no intention of dying in the foreseeable future, it caused her consternation. She had a sense of guilt and responsibility as her assets were primarily from a large inheritance from her father, which she had endeavoured to use wisely for many years; investing in property. She felt bad that she had already lost a substantial sum, a decade earlier in her divorce and considered how her wealthy father would ‘turn in his grave’.
After a couple of sleepless nights she took her copy of the document, which she felt Terry had pressured her into signing, to Ruth’s house and changed the text and had it witnessed by Ruth and her husband and left them with a dated copy for safe keeping. She did not dare tell Terry what she had done.
December 2005.
Christmas approached and Henrietta went to see her friend Gaynar who owned a garden centre and would help her find the perfectly formed tree she wanted for the drawing room. She chose a healthy and fat 10ft Nordic Spruce and once it was delivered, she trimmed the house with love and fairy lights and bought lots of presents for the children. She wanted them all to be happy and feel equally loved during their first Christmas together as a family.
Terry in turn found not insignificant funds to shower his Fiancée with expensive gifts she did not want or need including a heart shaped diamond pendant and a skiing trip to Canada. Hetty was stunned by his extravagance and gently scolded him for lavishing gifts upon her. She was also secretly irritated that he blatantly ignored the debt he owed her in favour of showy presents. She had never been skiing before as she disliked cold weather and consequently tried to excuse herself, even thinking of ways to offer her ticket to his teenage daughter who would have been keen to take her place. Terry would have none of Henrietta’s excuses and took her shopping for her own boots, skiing outfit and thermals.
Hetty was nervous and had a peculiar feeling of trepidation as she began to wonder if it was a coincidence that she had recently signed a new will and whether Terry intended to bump her off a cliff. She became so overwhelmed with unfounded paranoia that she decided to go and speak with Robert, her trusted conveyancing solicitor, to tell him of her fears before she flew to Banff. She took an envelope containing a copy of the recently signed will and a supplemental note requesting Rob as her executor, plus a letter which outlined details of her relationship with Mr Terry Newman and specifically the amounts and dates of money given to him. She told Rob that if she had a fatal accident whilst on holiday, that he must open up the letter and give it to the Police for an enquiry. Robert was troubled by Henrietta’s intimation and by what he considered to be the reckless speed of her engagement. The two had been client and conveyancer for many years and Hetty had always seemed to be an honest, credible and forthright client and he liked and admired her personally and therefore against his gut instinct he agreed to do as she asked. However in so doing, he fell short of his personal responsibility to her as a fri
end by not doing any more, he simply held on to the letter until she returned with a broken arm.
When he saw her potted arm, he felt compelled to investigate the company Mr Newman owned, realised that Henrietta had been made the sole director of the company with all the responsibility which that entailed and he worried that she might not understand her position. He made other enquiries about the man but gleaned nothing more than a bad financial reputation and a poor credit check. Robert invited her in to his office, sat her down, offered her a coffee, enquired about her accident and explained why he had prepared a form for her to resign as director from what appeared on paper to be a worthless company with no assets. He told her that he had investigated Mr Newman and that he appeared to be undischarged from his second bankruptcy. She was embarrassed, as was he. She signed the resignation form and left his office.
The Unsuspecting Housewife Page 5