I Own You

by Dawn McConnell

  ‘Get out the fucking way!’ Stuart was in no mood to argue. I could see the red mist was down and he was ready for a real fight. ‘I SAID “MOVE”, YOU FUCKING GOON! IF YOU DON’T LET ME IN THE FUCKING OFFICE I’LL KICK THE FUCKING DOOR DOWN!’

  It had been a while since I’d seen Stuart in full flow. His reputation was such that most people had long since learned to play by his rules and he didn’t have to resort to the violence that came so naturally to him. It was a chilling reminder for me to see how quickly he could flip.

  By now, the second security guard was on his mobile to the boss.

  ‘Adam’s coming down!’ he shouted as he hung up. Then he tried to reason with my husband. ‘Stuart, come on. Come away from the door. Adam’s on his way.’

  Two minutes later, Adam’s silver Jaguar screeched to a stop in the car park and Adam jumped out, all fired up.

  ‘Alright. You want a fucking fight? Let’s fight!’

  Stuart ran to our car and took out the crowbar he kept there. Oh shit! He’s going to kill him, I thought. I knew from experience that nothing stopped Stuart when his mind was set on something. But, just then, a police car pulled up behind Adam’s car, lights flashing and siren blaring. Two coppers ran out and, quickly sizing up the situation, they each faced off against the raging men, who looked like they were about to start taking lumps out of each other.

  ‘Sir – what are you doing with that crowbar?’ one shouted at Stuart.

  ‘Sir, return to your vehicle, please,’ the other instructed Adam. ‘You’ve been caught speeding. Please return to your vehicle.’

  Stuart let the crowbar drop to his feet at the sight of the coppers but he yelled over their heads at his cousin: ‘You fucking betrayed me, you bastard! You’ve stolen from me!’

  Adam shouted back: ‘I’m not going to speak to you while you’re in this mood. We’ll talk another time.’

  Then he turned to the coppers: ‘Officers, was I really speeding? Are you sure about that? I had no idea you were chasing me. I thought you were after the fella in front of me . . .’

  Wasting no time, Stuart got into the passenger seat of my Ferrari.

  ‘Just go. Drive,’ he ordered. ‘To the airport. I’ve got to get to Guernsey, get to Mum’s house before he does.’

  So we drove straight to the airport and Stuart caught the first flight over to Guernsey. The next morning he was back at home with the boxes of files he had taken out of her loft. For the first time in years, he stopped drinking in the middle of the afternoon and set his mind to unravelling the complicated web of deceit his cousin had woven for the past nine years. For weeks, he went through all those documents in the boxes and even hired someone to translate the Panamanian scrolls written in Spanish.

  Finally we found the paperwork Stuart had signed in 1992, transferring all his shares in Mayfair Holdings over to Salisbury Alliance. With all the property now in his own name, Adam had taken the lion’s share of the rents to fund an increasingly extravagant lifestyle, as well as borrowing against the capital to invest in other properties. Judging by the papers, it looked like Adam had built up a vast, global property portfolio behind Stuart’s back and was now worth tens of millions of pounds.

  But we had the smoking gun – we had the proof that Adam had deliberately deceived and stolen from Stuart and after each cousin had instructed lawyers, Adam agreed to repay Stuart the original capital investment.

  ‘Why do you think he agreed to give it back?’ Stuart asked me when we got the news.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I was equally baffled. ‘He didn’t have to. I’m guessing he’s already made so much money from screwing you over for the past decade, he worked out it’s the very least he owes you.’

  So the companies were split and Stuart walked away with a property portfolio under Mayfair Holdings worth £2.5 million with no tax implications. In actual fact, it went into my name, since Stuart had been declared bankrupt for unpaid tax revenue. We created a new company called Hexagon Properties, another Panamanian company, which owned Mayfair Holdings and this contained seventy-four properties and instantly gave us £400,000 a year in annual rents. Now I had what I wanted all along – steady income and property, all of it in the matrimonial pot.

  The one thing I wasn’t comfortable with was keeping up the Panamanian connection. To my mind, it was crooked to the core and I worried that somehow it was all still connected to Adam.

  ‘I just don’t understand how it works,’ I complained to our accountant, Melvin, one day. I’d been kept ignorant of all this for too long now and I wanted some answers. ‘How can my company be owned in Panama if there are no actual owners? Who is in charge of this company?’

  ‘Okay, let’s take this one step at a time,’ Melvin said patiently. ‘All the assets belong to a company registered in the UK, but the UK-based company is in turn owned by a parent company registered in Panama. That company has Panamanian citizens as the directors and shareholders who are issued with something called ‘bearer shares’. The share certificates belong to the ‘bearer only’, which means they have no names on them, but they are numbered as to how many are issued. The person who physically has these in his or her possession is technically the owner of the company. The benefit of this is you pay no tax on assets because no one can prove you own them.’

  ‘But isn’t tax evasion a crime?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘Not in Panama,’ laughed Melvin. ‘Under Panamanian law a corporation can be owned by the physical holder of the bearer share certificates, with no recorded owner in any database or public registry. The corporation records and bearer share certificates can be kept anywhere in the world and the location need not be disclosed to anyone.’

  So this was how Maria had lost the fortune she thought she had worked so hard to help her husband build up over eighteen years of marriage. The rents which she helped to collect were from properties that didn’t technically belong to her or her husband. Maria had been told over the years the reason for the Panamanian connection was to save the family tax. She had signed any papers she had to, relinquishing ownership in the process and unknowingly sealing her own fate. The cousins had her well and truly stitched up, meaning she was only entitled to half what her husband had in his name, or what they had in joint names, which was very little. At the time of her divorce, her solicitors had no idea how to unravel this corporate maze the two cousins had created. They didn’t even know where to start.

  The poor woman, I thought now. She didn’t stand a chance. In the end, she had been offered a pitiful settlement – it’s this or nothing, they said, so she took it.

  Now it was all clear to me, I thought about Maria a lot, and I regretted how unkindly I had treated her. All these years later, I finally realized the terrible position she had been in. A very astute older lady once told me that there was only one way to judge a divorced man and that was to see how he treated his last wife in the divorce. If he had been cruel, then he would be cruel to you too. Finally, I was getting wise.

  As my life shifted into a whole new gear, I resolved never to let myself become another Maria. Nobody was going to pull the rug from under me. I was going to be smarter than that.

  After all, Stuart wasn’t the powerful man he once was. His power had waned, both over me and over the world he had once ruled with an iron fist. Two decades of living off me like a parasite had made him flabby and lazy, his mind not as sharp as twenty years before. And I was determined not to be his victim anymore.

  No, if anyone was going to lose this game, it would be him. I just had to stay one step ahead of him . . .

  PART IV

  ESCAPE

  Chapter 20

  Changing Places

  I lay in bed and grinned to myself. Outside, the early dawn chorus started up and already I could see the bright sun glinting through the curtains. Things were definitely looking up. In the past year there had been a complete shift in my relationship with Stuart. It had taken me nearly twenty years but I had finally managed to ti
p the balance in my favour. In addition – and crucially, given the role Adam had played in Stuart’s divorce with Maria – the Kelly cousins were no longer thick as thieves; though that, of course, was really Adam’s own doing. If he hadn’t betrayed Stuart, it would not have been as easy to separate them. ‘Divide and conquer’, wasn’t that the phrase?

  On paper at least, on that bright summer day in 2003 I definitely looked like a conqueror – and to the victor, the spoils. Thanks to Stuart’s tax avoidance and subsequent bankruptcy, everything was in my name.

  It was a peculiar role reversal. For so long I had put up with my husband’s threats, violence and intimidation because that was the price I thought I had to pay to be in a relationship. But now, now that our son had left home and I had secured the finances in my name, it felt like a new beginning. And something else, too. It felt like my leaving Stuart was only a matter of time. After all, I was a woman in my prime now – I was thirty-four years old – and I was sick of being dragged down by his controlling behaviour. He no longer owned me: I wanted to own my own destiny.

  I hopped out of bed and turned on the rain shower in our wet room, mulling over my meetings for the day. Now that we had a steady and significant income from our property, there was no more backbreaking shift work for me. I chose my own hours for the time I spent running our property business and, apart from meetings with contractors on site, I usually had my work meetings over lunch or dinner.

  Stuart was happy to leave me to it, knowing that I had the skills and acumen to keep the money flowing; when had he ever contributed to our businesses anyway, apart from to demand his petty cash? But really there was no magic involved. It was a fairly straightforward formula – we bought flats cheaply, refurbished them and then either sold them or mortgaged them for 50 per cent at their higher valuation. This gave us enough funds to buy the next project and keep the flats, as well as meaning we were never exposed to the banks, in case the market changed. We had a dedicated team of carpenters, joiners, electricians, plumbers and painters who worked for us on a freelance basis. I handled everything: met with the banks, the planners, the agents, the tradespeople and the other dealmakers. As long as Stuart had cash and wine, he was satisfied.

  I dried myself off and slipped into my red-and-white silk kimono, wandering through to my walk-in wardrobe, still towelling off my newly highlighted hair. Now that we had a very good income and I had the time to take care of myself, I was investing in the new me. I had already lost three stone through my regular trips to the gym and now I was also getting my hair done in the best salon in Glasgow, as well as having my nails done and legs waxed. In fact, as I confided in my old friend Hannah, it was more out of necessity than anything else. Now that I was known in the business world, the banks were falling over themselves for my business and I was invited out to several networking events a month, such as charity balls, black-tie events, galas and large functions. This was where the real business happened – not in an office but over the dinner table – and I had to look my best in order to negotiate the best deals.

  I flicked through my rail of designer dresses – what to wear today? The Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen or Yves Saint Laurent? I picked out a rather simple but elegant black dress by my favourite designer, Roland Mouret, and teamed it with a pair of delicious six-inch Louboutins.

  Three years earlier, I would never have dreamed of spending hundreds of pounds on a dress or a pair of shoes. Slender, toned, well-groomed and immaculately turned out, I felt every inch the successful businesswoman and I couldn’t help but enjoy the compliments I now attracted from the young, well-educated men I met in the course of my work. Architects, engineers, investors, solicitors and surveyors – these were the people I met day in, day out. It was all a far cry from the days when I saw no one but murderers, junkies and thieves. These days, I was a person of influence and being one of only a handful of young women at this level of business, I always stood out a mile.

  And now, for the first time, I felt a yearning for somebody to give me satisfaction – I wanted love, happiness . . . not to mention good sex. After all, I had never, ever had it.

  It was in Hannah I confided all this. Over the years she had settled down and married a lovely man called Bill and together they had had three children of their own. Now I employed her again, but this time to run my office, organize my diary and manage the 130 flats we owned.

  ‘You could have anybody you want!’ she told me whenever I moaned at her about my lack of a fulfilling sex life. ‘Just pick one of those hot young bankers who always have their tongues lolling out of their mouths when they see you!’

  I giggled at the mental image. Hannah always made me laugh and after all this time, the two of us were still extremely close. Like sisters. There was nothing I couldn’t talk to Hannah about. She was close to my son too – after all, she had practically brought him up and she had cried when he had gone to study in the States.

  Thankfully, it had been one of the best decisions we’d ever made. Callum was a handsome, confident young man of eighteen these days and his strictly disciplined athletics school had given him impeccable manners. Sure, he’d come back with an irritating American accent, but he stood up whenever you came into the room and he took his cap off indoors. He tidied up after himself and he always said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. I was so proud of him; he was a true gentleman. So unlike his father!

  It was wonderful to spend time together whenever he came home in the holidays and he always made sure to spend time with his ‘other mother’, Hannah, too.

  In many ways, Hannah was the only person on the planet in whom I could confide about my longing to meet someone who would treat me right. She knew that Stuart had never been a good husband to me. She’d seen and heard his violent, threatening rampages for herself. For so many years she’d been my rock and my confidante: picking up the pieces when Stuart had broken me apart, helping me to face another day. Meanwhile, at work, I relied on her heavily to manage the flats and keep my diary. As a friend and employee, Hannah was invaluable.

  ‘I don’t want just anybody,’ I’d daydream to her about my fantasy man. ‘Firstly, I need someone really discreet. Totally discreet. But, also, I want someone really special.’

  ‘Well, who is that then?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I’d sigh. ‘I haven’t met him yet but, trust me, I’ll know when I do.’

  I shook my head as I finished dressing, slipping on a pair of silk Wolford tights and selecting a pair of simple Marc Jacobs stud earrings. It was the stuff of fantasy, surely.

  It was still only 6 a.m. but I had a breakfast meeting at a boutique hotel at 7.30 a.m. and I was planning on dropping into the office first to catch up on my emails. I walked out onto the landing and down the stairs. From the sound of the TV blaring in his study, I guessed that my husband had once again fallen asleep in his La-Z-Boy reclining chair.

  Gently, I pushed open the door. Yes, as predicted, there he was, dressed still in his grey tracksuit from the day before, eyes closed, head back, snoring loudly, his wine glass still tilted in his hand, unconscious to the world. It was a huge relief to find him sleeping off his drunken stupor, for I was in no mood to face one of our now-constant arguments about what I was wearing.

  ‘What have you put that dress on for?’ he’d sneer whenever he was up early enough to watch me getting dressed. ‘You look like a man in drag.’

  Though his insults no longer touched me, he’d always do his best to try and undermine my confidence.

  ‘Seriously? That outfit makes your legs look enormous. You look like the Honey Monster! Why would you want to embarrass yourself like this? I mean, I’m only telling you because I care and I don’t want you to go out thinking you look good when you don’t. I’m only saying what other people will be thinking.’

  Ha! If only he knew what other people thought of me, he probably would have locked the doors! But he didn’t do that anymore, keeping me prisoner in my own home, because he knew tha
t I was wheeling and dealing big time now, pulling in over £50k a month sometimes. I brought home the bacon and my pig of a husband wanted that to carry on.

  But knowing I was out there in the world, dolled up to the nines, pushed his insecurities way out of control. He’d wait anxiously for me to get home from the office every day, eager for me to return and fill his belly full of good home-cooked food. Stuart couldn’t cook. He didn’t even know where the frying pan was. He relied on me 100 per cent and if I wasn’t home when I said I would be, he’d call my mobile every ten minutes to check up on me. He even joined my gym so that he could keep tabs on me. It was ironic: there he was in the gym, horribly out of shape, but he did nothing except sit in reception, drinking tea and keeping me under surveillance. He never took a class or lifted a weight. It was beyond him.

  And God help me if I didn’t pick up my phone or if a meeting ran over and I was home late. Then there would be hell to pay – bottles of wine would be smashed against the walls, he’d destroy expensive pieces of art on our walls or smash beautiful vases against the floor. It could be terrifying. The same old speech was trotted out, but it was now tired and ineffective from years of overuse: ‘Did I want to be single? Did I know who he was? He could destroy me . . . yadda yadda yadda . . .’ It was all so much rubbish and, these days, it bored the hell out of me. I’d just look at him and think: You’re pathetic.

  But out loud I would just say: ‘Pick it up yourself. I’m not tidying up after you.’

  He ranted and raved, but it no longer meant anything to me. Instead, I’d try to find ways to avoid his constant surveillance. I’d ‘accidentally’ leave my mobile phone at home. But he would bring it into the office. Then I left it in the office. That day, he spent the whole day looking for me, following me from one meeting to the next, to make sure I wasn’t having an affair. Yes, that’s what he feared the most. He feared that I would find another man and leave him.