Memoirs murder of a victim
It’s a chilling story – the widowed author whose fiance, obsessed by her money, was this week jailed for her savage killing. Here we publish a haunting extract from her book, written early in their relationship, about finding love with the ‘gorgeous’ man
THIS week, Ian Stewart, 56, was jailed for the murder of his fiancee, author Helen Bailey, 51. A widow, she wrote about the loss of her husband, JS, in a blog that inspired so many bereaved readers she turned it into a book. It ends with her moving in with the man who killed her and her dog for her millions. This chilling extract records Helen’s forebodings about life with her ‘Gorgeous Grey-Haired Widower’ . . .
AFeW weeks ago, Gorgeous Grey- haired Widower ( GGhW) and I were walking back home late one night, after having dinner with friends.
It had been a lovely evening, but as I walked, I realised that four years ago I’d never met any of these people, didn’t know GGhW or his family and had never even heard of the place I now call home.
Suddenly, I felt soul-crushingly lonely and homesick, right back in that alien landscape of Planet Grief where my husband JS was dead and nothing felt or looked familiar.
I looked up at the sky, inky-black and studded with stars over Royston heath [in hertfordshire, where she had moved from london to live with Stewart] and thought: ‘JS, come back, please! The big experiment is over. You can come home now.’
The feeling didn’t last long, but for the few moments I called out to my husband, my despair was raw.
And then I walked through the gate and up our drive, and into the house which — thanks to GGhW’s two sons — smells like a curryeating male rodent’s nest, and sometimes looks like one, too.
GGhW went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea whilst I let The hound — my dachshund — out for his last wee of the day. We stood chatting, waiting for the kettle to boil and The hound to give a single ‘woof’ to be let back in. It felt so gloriously normal and comforting and right. It felt like home. Our home.
But it’s not always easy living in a home that came together through sudden death . . . On SUndAY, February 27, 2011, a few days into a holiday in Barbados, my husband, John Sinfield, known as JS, went for a swim in the sea. The shimmering, turquoise-blue Caribbean water was deceptively calm; but within minutes, he was swept away from the shoreline by strong currents.
I heard him call for help and saw him waving his arms until he fell forward, face down into the sea. A passing jet-ski rider brought him back to the beach, but despite attempts to resuscitate him, he had drowned. The
rest of the day was a blur: a terrifying bluelight ambulance ride; the hospital; doctors; police; the Foreign Office; the British Consulate; tour reps; hotel staff; heartbreaking phone calls with screams on the other end of the line. At least the people I spoke to in the UK prevented me from doing something stupid, thousands of miles away in paradise.
And then everyone left and there was just me, in a hotel room overlooking the sea that killed JS, and the beach on which I learned life would never be the same again.
Several months later, for the sake of my sanity, I decided to start writing a blog. I called it Planet Grief — because I was living on an entirely different planet, where nothing was recognisable to me, not even the sight of my own hands on the computer’s keyboard.
One day, I found myself typing my late husband’s name into Google, and up came the obituaries. And there was the picture I can’t look at: the photograph displayed on the lid of my husband’s coffin at his funeral.
It captured the essence of the man I love: smiling, a twinkle in his eye, kind, fun, decent, caring. My soulmate for almost half my life. The pain felt as if someone was pouring boiling water over my already scarred body. TAlKInG to a friend about the searing loneliness of coming in through the front door [of the north london house where helen and her husband lived] after an evening out, he suggested I used the garage door to get in instead, as part of trying to establish a ‘new normal’.
One night I decide to give it a go. I press the ‘dibber’ on my key ring, and in the deserted street, wait for the garage door to chug open. I feel bolshy, ballsy: I’ve been out! I’m coming in! I can do this! The garage door opens, and the security light flicks on, illuminating the interior with harsh cold light. I’m transfixed in horror by the scene spread out before me.
Right by the door are my husband’s golf clubs with their furry animal covers. next to them, his bike jostles for space with his golf trolley. I spot the bit of carpet he stuck on the wall to stop me scraping my car door on the concrete; I must have seen it hundreds of times, but only now do I appreciate his kindness.
hanging across the roof is a black plastic package. It looks like a small wrapped body, but it’s the fake Christmas tree we always put up in the kitchen. no, I won’t come in through the garage again. But it doesn’t matter any more because I’ve solved the problem of coming in at night. I’ll no longer go out. SIx months. Unbelievable! It seems like yesterday and yet a lifetime ago. here are some of the things I’ve discovered:
That I can be blotchy-faced, red- eyed, gaunt, yet people will still proclaim: ‘ You’re looking really well!’
That I have just enough selfrestraint not to punch someone straight in the mouth when they trill: ‘You’ll find someone else and build a new life.’
That people who know where and how JS died will still say: ‘Perhaps going on holiday would do you good?’ That playing Kamikaze Pedestrian, walking out into the traffic without looking, doesn’t kill you — it just p****s off cyclists who have to swerve to avoid you.
That drinking alone isn’t sad, it’s vital. That I still can’t bear to unpack either of our suitcases. TOdAY I caught sight of myself in the mirror.
I wondered if JS would recognise the new me. he fell in love with me (he said) because (amongst other things) I was bright, funny, kind and wore a dress and heels with panache. Oh, and I could cook.
What would he say about the wreck in the mirror, swigging cheap white plonk out of a whisky glass, wondering what the hell she’s going to do?
I feel that the universe is unimaginably vast, and I’m tiny, insignificant, alone and very, very scared. I know now that we only think we have control over our lives, that control is something we manufacture. I’ve been in a frenzy at the thought of going back to our holiday cottage in Broadstairs on the east Kent coast. I knew my knees would buckle in the hallway and I’d
collapse on to the mountain of post and pizza leaflets. But nine months on, I faced up to the fact that I had to go down and see the place. My friend, Mac, drove me though I nearly rang him and cancelled.
And this is how the visit went: we were so busy chatting and laughing on the journey, I barely noticed that we’d arrived. As Mac parked the car, I saw the sea, but instead of hyperventilating with shock, I remembered why I loved this stretch of coast.
I was surprised at how glad I was to be in the cottage. Until I went into the tiny shower room that we renovated late last year, and saw a bar of white soap by the side of the sink. Then I just crumpled and the tears wouldn’t stop. In THE early days after Js died, another widow told me that while loss is forever, grief is finite; that grief can be expunged and life can be good again. I didn’t believe her.
At that point, I was still playing Kamikaze Pedestrian, hoping for a direct hit from one of the enormous gas guzzlers that populate north London, in the hope this was a one-way ticket to see Js.
But now, at 11 months, I sometimes wake up without the crushing weight of grief pressing on my skinny frame.
I don’t want to be the woman whose husband drowned. I want to be the slightly silly, occasionally shallow person I was before. I FEEL like a butterfly slowly emerging from a rather ugly chrysalis: there’s been quite a lot of thrashing around and tentative antenna-waving, but parts of my wings are yet to unfurl.
There’s still a chance that just as I take flight, some passing toad sticks its tongue out and has me as a tasty little snack. nOW that I’m officially in year two, I can reveal that ‘Mac’, who came to Broadstairs with me, was Ian [stewart] — or gorgeous greyHaired Widower (ggHW) — a man I met online through a Facebook bereavement group. Why didn’t I come clean sooner? Mostly, my silence was a desire to protect the innocent: ggHW and his family, especially his two sons whose mother died suddenly in the garden of their home when they’d just turned 15 and 18. [Police are now investigating stewart over the death of his first wife.]
Another reason was that, for months, I had no idea whether ggHW was going to simply have a walk-on part in my life, or become a permanent cast member. I’vE just spent two nights and three days in Brighton with gorgeous grey-Haired Widower and it was so lovely. At one point, sitting on Brighton Pier, ggHW announced he was going to ‘ check in’ on Facebook on his phone. ‘shall I put who I’m with?’ he teased.
It’s well known that women can go mad when they’re on holiday, particularly middle-aged ones, witness shirley valentine. They sleep with waiters or have a scorpion tattooed on their butt, and there are sometimes nasty consequences.
My shirley valentine moment was a little less dramatic, but still had a consequence. Throwing caution to the wind and in holiday mood, I urged ggHW to tag me on Facebook.
The button got pressed. We giggled like teenagers at our recklessness. I then posted a picture on my Facebook page.
A few hours after the Facebook post, the first of a succession of disapproving (and angry) messages started coming through on my phone. My Facebook ‘friend’ count dwindled.
Widows who’d identified with me through my blog, who’d charted their pain and grief alongside mine, felt betrayed, accused me of being a fraud, of letting them down. TOWARDS the end of last year, I was walking through the women’s underwear department of M&s when out of the blue, I had a seriously X-rated thought about ggHW — then just one of several widowers I corresponded with.
I was rocked to my core. There’d been absolutely no hint of anything remotely racy in our emails. Our conversations on Facebook Messenger went like this:
Me: got to go as going to have a bacon sarnie for lunch. Him: red or brown sauce? Me: Mustard! I rushed out of M&s, got on a bus and wept. I felt sleazy, guilty and ashamed. My heart said I’d been unfaithful.
ggHW and I had talked about meeting up to walk The Hound, but after the M&s incident, I stalled. We’d meet up before the end of the year. Or not. Maybe never.
I encouraged him to start dating while hating myself for hoping he wouldn’t. Our correspondence continued, witty messages that I looked forward to receiving.
As it turned out, and due to a genuine misunderstanding between us, I met ggHW when I was least expecting to. Instead of looking carefully thrown together and glossy-haired, I was wearing shrunken tracksuit bottoms, a stripy dressing gown and had wet hair and no make-up.
After months of messages, it was good to meet him. But I laid the law down in no uncertain terms: I did not want a relationship. I was not going to be anyone’s girlfriend. My advice to him was that he should sow some wild oats and then settle down with a lovely woman.
It was quite a speech, worthy of churchill. It was also totally inappropriate, as the poor man had only come to walk The Hound with me.
He told me he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in a relationship either. There was more dog-walking after that, and friendship and deeper talking. And, at some point, we agreed to go out on a date.
But that ended in tearful, angst-ridden disaster, and an acknowledgement that it was all too soon. There were no more funny emails, no witty texts. Life felt even darker than it was already. I missed him. After a gap, we went back to uncomplicated dog-walking.
One day, it was muddy on the Heath and he got stuck. I was laughing so much I doubled-up and could hardly breathe. When I straightened up, I thought, ‘I don’t want to lose that man from my life.’
The first weekend ggHW stayed with me, we had a lovely time, walking The Hound, going to the local farmers’ market, reading the sunday papers. When he drove away that evening I was happy.
Then, suddenly, I became convulsed with hysterical sobs. I stood in the kitchen shouting into space: ‘Js, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, but you’re not here! you’re not bloody here!’
I’m afraid of the future. Whichever way you look at things, there will be upheaval and angst.
If things don’t work out, it will be heartbreaking. If they do work out,
the cruel reality is that one of us will be widowed again. And then there’s the most distressing part of the entire dating-a-widower process, something I still find incredibly difficult to cope with.
GGHW has two gorgeous sons who’ve been nothing less than welcoming to me. I adore them, but I know it should be Gorgeous Son No 2’s mum sitting at the kitchen table as he recounts his day. It should be Gorgeous Son No 1’ s mum visiting him at university.
Sometimes it all becomes so overwhelming, I feel as I did in the early days of grief when I used to sink to my knees and cover my head, waiting for the tidal wave of despair to wash over me.
I remember sobbing one night at GGHW’s house and saying that if I had my car with me I’d leave, even though it was the early hours of the morning, such was the overwhelming grief I felt for everyone. GGHW put his arms around me and said that if I really wanted to go home he’d drive me.
The truth is that new love doesn’t erase old loss and neutralise grief. It brings with it new issues and painful reminders.
We’re going on holiday to Portugal. But right now, as I write this, I’m filled with fear.
Everyone tells me that I’ll have a good time, that everything will be fine. That the hurried will I made won’t be needed.
On one level, I believe them. But on another? I know how quickly paradise can turn into hell. I’ve done everything I can to reduce my anxiety, but, infuriatingly, my mind has other ideas.
There were a few initial wobbles in Portugal. At one point, my anxiety shot so high I nearly broke into the emergency Valium tablet someone gave me when JS died. The days were filled with sunshine, a little sightseeing and lots of laughter. But the nights? They were dreadful.
At times, truly dreadful. In my dreams, I was on my knees, inching along a steel girder hundreds of feet above the ground, only to slip, clutching at the metal with my fingertips until I couldn’t hold on any longer and down I went.
OrTryING to dodge a reversing articulated lorry which eventually pinned me to a wall, crushing me as I felt my breath ebbing away.
When I wasn’t dying, I was in my house, but it was no longer mine. I’d walk through the door and find someone else living there. Confused, I’d plead with them that there had to be some mistake, that this was my home, that they’d got it wrong, not me.
And then I’d wake up, in a state.
I remember my husband once telling someone: ‘My wife worries about everything.’ And now I worry even more about the fleetingness of our life here on earth.
We all know, in theory, just how quickly and unexpectedly life can end, but until you’ve witnessed it, you cannot really understand it.
GGHW and I had some lovely meals in Portugal, but more than once I caught myself thinking, ‘What if this is the last evening we have together?’ NExT month it will be two years since JS died and his suitcase is still unopened. It stands in his study. I haven’t even taken the luggage tags off. DurING a session, my bereavement counsellor Shelley asked me to imagine where I’d be living five years on.
I’d be living in Central London, I said, in a stylish flat decorated in tasteful neutral tones and filled with fresh flowers and scented candles. I’d spend my days writing, reading, floating round art galleries, possibly doing another degree. In the evening, I’d go the theatre and walk back through the West End to my little nest and play jazz.
It’s now well over four years since JS died, and am I in my tasteful, fragrant, central London flat? Am I heck!
I’m in a large old house in royston, Hertfordshire, living with The Hound, GGHW and his two sons. Instead of jazz in the background, there’s the noise of doors slamming and cars coming and going and phones constantly bleeping. According to the three male inhabitants, there’s no dish that can’t be improved by adding garlic bread and lashings of ketchup. And the entire house smells of a hamster cage sprayed with Lynx.
I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, how the vision I gave to Shelley with such clarity and certainty could have veered so spectacularly off-course.
But GGHW and I both needed a fresh start, and in the end, we decided that the two most important things were for us all to be together, and not to disrupt the boys’ lives.
SOWE bought a house, and I moved out of London, and he moved house and stayed within the same postcode.
The process of selling my house wasn’t as painful as I’d imagined. I was completely sure that I was doing the right thing, and felt excited when we exchanged contracts.
About ten days before moving, I suddenly felt overwhelmed. What was I thinking? What was I doing?
Tearfully, I told GGHW that I wanted to pull out, that it didn’t matter who sued me but I wasn’t moving. When I realised that there was no way out, I considered ‘pretending’ to be too mentally unwell to proceed to completion. It was a desperate time.
But of course I didn’t feign a breakdown, and the nearer it got to moving day, the more detached I became and the less the house felt like mine.
So here I am, in royston. It’s not that I don’t like living here — far from it — it’s just that I’m a London girl. I’m still shell-shocked that my life after JS’s death is so different from my life before it, and it’s taking time to adjust.
My life here is good — not all rainbows and puppies, but then that’s life, widowed or not. There are still times where I feel knocked off my feet by grief. And JS’s suitcase, now in the spare bedroom, remains unopened.
I hope the lads will come to see me as an older sister, someone who’ll always love them, want the best for them and fight their corner, however much we drive each other nuts at times.
A moment ago, one of them wandered into my study and asked how this book was going. I told him that I was finding it difficult to know how to end it.
He stood and thought for a moment, and then said: ‘Why don’t you just write: And they all lived happily ever after.’
AdApted by Corinna Honan from When Bad things Happen In Good Bikinis by Helen Bailey, published by Blink, £8.99. to order a copy for £6.74 (25 % discount), visitmailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. p&p is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until March 4, 2017.
As I write this I’m filled with fear. I know how quickly paradise can turn into hell