At first it seemed married life was treating Colin and Lesley Howell well. Later they moved from their rented property in Portballintrae to a house of their own at Culmore Gardens, off the Mountsandel Road in Coleraine. Lesley joined a small Bible study and prayer group made up of young married women, many of them with small children, from various Protestant churches. They took turns to meet in each other’s houses and the newcomer was among the more outgoing. People liked her. She was thoughtful, warm-hearted and always had something to say. She was gentle and caring, and loved children. One night the women discussed who they believed could be modelled on Christ. Lesley looked up at once and said: ‘That would be Colin.’ She clearly thought the world of her new husband.
However, a few years later at the same regular gathering of women, some noticed that Lesley Howell had become quieter. As they discussed the scriptures over tea and sandwiches, she was withdrawn and at times seemed preoccupied with troubles she did not disclose to anyone. She happened to let slip the remark: ‘Colin isn’t all he could have been.’ It seemed that the man she had married wasn’t quite the saint she had once made him out to be. Most of the women in the group were slightly puzzled by her comment. But one or two others knew exactly what had been going on.
When they first moved to the North Coast, Lesley worked with the Marie Curie Foundation and for a time nursed in Coleraine Hospital, but she felt uncomfortable on the wards there and didn’t enjoy it. Some of the nurses told her: ‘Oh, you’re from the Royal. You must have a few airs and graces.’ She would have liked to return to Belfast but Howell was having none of it. His professional interests came first, although he agreed to spend more time with her at weekends and go shopping, which he disliked. When their first child, Matthew, was born in October 1984, it seemed easier all round for Lesley to stop work and stay at home to look after the baby.
Howell’s career, meanwhile, was flourishing. He got on well with his employers, Terry Boyd and Alan Logue, and he would stay with them for five years. They were both Belfast men. Logue was the son of a Presbyterian minister from North Belfast, while Boyd, like Howell, at the time was a Baptist. They owned a number of practices: in Belfast, Londonderry, Maghera and Kilrea, County Derry, Ballycastle, and three in Coleraine. They went into partnership in 1979 and having started with one surgery based on the Lodge Road in Coleraine quickly developed the practice into one of the largest in Northern Ireland. At one stage they had up to 35,000 patients on their books, and nineteen associates. Howell started off dividing his time between one of the Coleraine clinics and the Ballycastle branch, but soon he was based full time at the Coleraine Waterside clinic.
The Howells joined Coleraine Baptist Church, one of the oldest Baptist churches in Ireland. It was first established in 1795 when founding members rented a disused corn store. There were an estimated 8,500 members in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, although up to 20,000 people attended services each week. By 1830 the Coleraine church had thirty regular members, with a further seventy described as ‘not regular, who come to hear’.
There were a number of divisions in the formative years. One minister left to become a grocer over differences on church government and discipline. Membership ebbed and flowed. Most denominations benefited from a period of general religious expansion in 1859, a period which was known as ‘God’s river in spate’. In Coleraine the membership increased from seventy-three to 165 in two years but it fell again because of emigration to Scotland and the United States. Some of those who remained were struck off for a variety of misdemeanours, church records citing offences which included ‘immorality, stealing, falsehood and debt’. The pastor at the time recorded with regret that almost all the new members had gone ‘and what is worse, their evil conduct and spiritual apathy did not fail to leave its mark behind’.
As the years went by, strict rules were enforced. Seven members were expelled for poor attendance, regulations stipulating: ‘Members absenting themselves from the Breaking of Bread for three months without legitimate excuse cease to be members of the church.’
There was a split in the 1890s. The exact cause is uncertain, although official history suggests: ‘It may have been the offer of a glass of wine by a senior member to the teetotal pastor on a social occasion which caused the spark.’ After that two separate churches were maintained for a time. The local newspaper lamented: ‘Surely one strong Baptist Church in a town would serve the Cause better than two weak churches and all the more so as in doctrine and policy there is no difference whatsoever.’
But this fallout was nothing compared to the scandal which was to rock the church to its foundations a century later.
The Howells became actively involved in church affairs and soon much of their social life centred around the activities at Abbey Street. They had a fairly tightly knit circle of friends, many of them couples with young children. The church elders were quickly impressed by Colin Howell’s obvious energy and commitment. He was appointed leader of the Youth Fellowship and helped to run the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme; he would drive the church minibus, sometimes taking the children to the beach at Castlerock. He also worked as an assistant with Campaigners, the church’s uniformed youth section. No longer the reticent, slightly aloof young man he had been as a student, Howell had grown in confidence and was very popular in church circles, as Pastor John Hansford, then minister at Coleraine Baptist, confirms: ‘He was an extremely charming guy, good looking at one time and very, very plausible. Folk liked him.’
But Lesley was finding domesticity isolating and unfulfilling. She missed the challenge and the fun of working in the Royal, and the sense of worth which her nursing duties had given her. As a new mother trying to settle in an area where none of her family or old friends lived close by, she sorely missed the camaraderie of her work and the shared accommodation in Belfast. Her friend Valerie Allen remembers being very much aware of the difficulties of Lesley’s new circumstances: ‘She was a new wife and getting [learning] to be a mother [too] … She didn’t have an outlet. She was [now just] Colin Howell’s wife and had lost the place where she once shone. She had no platform for her talents.’
Always lively and resourceful, Lesley did her best not to lose her sense of humour. In a letter to Valerie just over a year after the wedding, she wrote: ‘I must say, I miss work more as times goes on, although it hasn’t been too bad all summer. But apart from the money and the work itself, it’s amazing how much more interesting your conversation is when you have something other than the rising cost of baked beans to discuss.’ By February 1985 – not long after the birth of Matthew – domestic life had more or less taken over completely, as another letter to Valerie confirmed: ‘I have decided to leave the house in its present chaotic state and write to you instead. I don’t honestly think that I am a born housewife. I cleaned my windows for the first time in over a year yesterday. Well actually, I cleaned two of them. The others will probably get done over the next couple of months. I was due a visit from the Ma- and Pa-in-law, which has been called off, so I can revert to my usual slovenliness.
‘I have been collecting all my issues of Christian Woman magazine for you to browse through, because I thought you might find some interesting articles on homemaking and also there are some very exciting articles [ones] on crocheted underpants, which have great properties of elastication, which can come in handy. Well, I know that this has hardly been a scintillating letter and now that the hubby has arrived home, I’ll have to go and make some bangers and mash.’
In spite of her jesting the young wife and mother found it hard to cope. And it was perhaps typical of her that, even with her best friend, she often tried to hide her difficulties under a mask of humour. Howell himself acknowledged his wife’s ability to put up a cheerful front when she thought it was required: ‘Depending on who she was talking to, Lesley would have smiled and said things are great. She’d give you the great picture, and maybe she’d be more truthful to others. She was good at covering up. If we were hav
ing an argument and she was really upset and someone came to the door, she’d be turning on the charm. She’d switch to being brilliant in seconds.’
Howell liked to control all aspects of his life, but Lesley was not the subservient, compliant ‘little woman at home’ he wanted her to be. She wasn’t the tidiest of housewives and was never afraid to leave the baby with him when she wanted time on her own. Her spending habits quickly became another source of conflict; she was poor at sticking to a budget and not particularly interested in domesticity. She liked splashing out on clothes and holidays. The husband of a good friend of hers recalls: ‘Lesley liked shopping. She liked clothes and style. She aspired to be like some of the other wives of dentists in the town who drove nice cars and had a nice lifestyle.’
Lesley fell pregnant again in 1986. She went through a very stressful time: her mother suffered a series of severe setbacks in her health, before having to go into a nursing home where she would die, ten weeks before the baby’s birth. Lauren, the Howells’ second child, was born on 14 November 1986. In the months which followed it is likely that Lesley suffered from some form of post-natal depression, although this was never formally diagnosed. Tensions in the marriage increased dramatically however.
Meanwhile Howell’s professional career was moving very much in the right direction. After five years working for Logue and Boyd, principally with NHS patients, he was keen to branch out and broaden his remit. He wanted to do things differently and he sounded out his employers with his new ideas – but as Howell told police after his arrest they weren’t as receptive as he had hoped: ‘I discussed changes I wanted to make within the practice, to do things better … They weren’t willing to invest in those changes …’ He decided to go out on his own. He offered to buy the Waterside practice but Logue and Boyd wanted to keep it within their existing structure. He then thought about opening his own practice in neighbouring Portstewart, but his employers objected because they considered this to be part of their patient area. Eventually in 1988 he paid £34,000 for a practice property in Ballymoney which needed major refurbishment before it could be opened to the public.
Howell was determined it would be state-of-the-art with no expense spared in the renovation and kitting out of the premises in Queen’s Street. For a young man who was not yet thirty and who had a very young family to think of – Lesley was already pregnant with their third child – it was an ambitious venture with more than a small element of risk involved. But the impulsive Howell had never been afraid to take a chance. By his own admission, he liked to live on the edge. He once visited Canada and Niagara Falls with some university friends. Howell insisted on climbing over a safety barrier and then getting down on his hands and knees and crawling along a ledge so he could get a better view of the water crashing down, apparently oblivious to the danger he was exposing himself to as well as the obvious anxiety of the rest of the party.
In some ways, it seemed that the young dentist’s approach to business was equally devil-may-care. In hindsight, Howell admitted that his business sense was not always the most grounded or circumspect: ‘I was driven by what I was doing and the quality of what I wanted to do, rather than the mathematics of “can I afford to do it”. I just believed it would work. It was an inspirational way of doing business, rather than a calculated way of doing it.’ It was inevitable perhaps that he quickly ran into financial difficulties in fitting out the new surgery. ‘One of the mistakes I made was that I equipped and maintained it [the surgery] with equipment and stuff that I couldn’t afford. It stretched me further.’ Lesley helped pick some of the furniture and chose the colour scheme.
Once the surgery was opened, he soon had more work than he could handle alone, and he brought in a second dentist. But the profit margins didn’t really improve ‘… because, as you get busier, you need to make more, buy more equipment, make more investments. You’ve got to pay another dentist. So the inspirational way never really worked.’
Given the financial pressures Howell found himself facing, it probably wasn’t the best time to invest in a bigger and more expensive family home. Yet this is what he did anyway in November 1989, buying a large bungalow on the other side of town – Knocklayde Park – for £85,000. Mortgages on the new family home and the Ballymoney practice were arranged through the Northern Bank. Soon the Howells had run out of money and were living on an overdraft. And they now had a third child to think of too – Lesley had given birth to a baby son, Daniel, six months earlier
The Knocklayde Park bungalow was a brand new property still needing fixtures and fittings and basic decoration; but, unable to afford to have anything substantial done at this point in time, the family moved in regardless. The interior work had not been completed, and a fireplace lay unfinished. They were so strapped for cash that they were unable to afford to put a carpet down. With an unfinished and untidy house and now three infants to take care of, it was more difficult than ever for Lesley to manage. A neighbour remembers once seeing one of the children in a babygro standing on the concrete floor of the hallway in a pool of urine left by the family’s pet cocker spaniel.
Howell found himself spending more and more time taking charge of the children to try and take some of the pressure off his wife. He gave up playing sport so that he could spend more time with his young family. But between making the tea, changing nappies and helping to put them to bed at night, he became increasingly disillusioned with the unending tensions and stresses of his relationship with his wife.
Soon the financial pressures were becoming intolerable. Cheques were being returned and Lesley was unable to withdraw money from the cash dispenser. The young dentist blamed delayed NHS payments for the cash-flow problems. His Northern Bank was very concerned about the situation, as Howell would later recount: ‘I remember getting phone calls from the bank manager, but that happens all the time. I remember having meetings and increasing my overdraft limit, but again that would be normal … I wasn’t very good at handling money. I was my own worst enemy.’ His money problems became so critical that he discreetly tried to sell off his new home without having to put up a ‘For Sale’ sign. He also approached Terry Boyd, his former employer, and inquired if he would be interested in taking over the Ballymoney practice where he had overspent on equipment. He urged Lesley to ease up on her spending. She feared her husband was going to become bankrupt.
Tania Donaghy, a nurse and receptionist at Howell’s Ballymoney practice, who had also become a good friend of Lesley, found herself caught up in the deepening domestic crisis. Lesley phoned one day and asked her to remove and keep whatever money was in the surgery’s cash-box. There was £400. In a later police interview Tania recalled that Lesley was very upset: ‘I am nearly sure she told me she wanted the cash because she was leaving Colin there and then. However, before Lesley got up to collect the cash, Colin instructed me to bank [it]. I felt I was piggy-in-the-middle between both of them. But I never heard them argue or fight. They were always pleasant to each other.’
But the marriage was clearly close to breaking point. Just before Christmas 1989 after the move to the new bungalow at Knocklayde Park Lesley discovered she was pregnant again with their fourth child, Jonathan. At the 1992 inquest into Lesley’s death, Howell told the coroner that his wife had struggled to accept that she had fallen pregnant again so quickly. Lesley loved all her children dearly but in the run-up to the festive season that year the prospect of soon having to care for four young children under the age of five, one of them newborn, in chaotic domestic circumstances, and with the added stress of their dire financial straits, must have been very difficult indeed for the young mother.
There was another source of deep unhappiness for Lesley at the time – perhaps the one which she found most difficult of all to accept. Around the time of Daniel’s birth in May 1989 Colin had had a fling with a married woman, an old friend from his university days. Her husband was away a lot on business and she and Howell had started a liaison which had lasted a month or so. Lesley l
ater found out what was going on and challenged him about it. She even telephoned the woman, who assured her that the affair had ended and her own life had moved on.
But the discovery of her husband’s infidelity, and the timing of it – just after she had given birth to a third child – devastated Lesley and her already shaky self-esteem. The tensions inside the house plummeted to new depths. She wanted to move on and try to forget but the affair, however fleeting, left a serious crack in the relationship. Lesley never forgave Howell and it was never the same between them again. He thought about divorce but never seriously considered it as an option, because he was afraid of what he believed would be the stigma attached to such a course of action. And how could a man with such powerful religious convictions and so many close Baptist friends walk away from his wife and children?
By the spring of 1990, however, the relationship became even more strained. Howell was already actively on the lookout for another affair. Even though he was well aware of the impact his first dalliance had had on his wife, it seems he could not stop himself from seeking sexual gratification elsewhere. It was undoubtedly a form of escapism and he didn’t seem to care what the consequences might be for his family.
This time it was a young mother called Hazel Buchanan, an assistant at his daughter Lauren’s nursery school, who caught his eye. She was the wife of a police officer, Trevor Buchanan, a constable and scenes-of-crime officer in the then Royal Ulster Constabulary. The couple, who had two young children, Andrew and Lisa, also lived in Coleraine and were members of the same Baptist church as the Howells, where Hazel sometimes looked after the younger set at the children’s Sunday School. She was shy, impressionable and careful about her appearance. She looked well, but those who knew about the affair at the time often wondered what the attraction was and why the confident, demonstrative and ambitious Howell, a dentist, should have fallen for this particular lady who lived on the opposite side of the town.
Let This Be Our Secret Page 4