Did living in the shadow of his high achieving head teacher wife lead to unthinkable tragedy?
A family wiped out. A school in mourning. As details emerge of the tensions behind their seemingly perfect life...
in 2012 he set his sights on becoming a wine merchant, going into business with an Australian stockbroker friend.
In a presentation for their business, Castle Street Vintners, a UK distributor of German wines, he described himself as ‘a career accountant desperate to find something better to do with his days’ and an ‘enthusiastic taster’.
In the presentation he wrote: ‘My love affair with wine started on my first trip to Burgundy, where I found a few wines that not only captured the natural characteristics of the grapes but elevated them — this was a life-changing experience for me.’
In 2014, however, accounts for the pair’s company, Rees Charles Capital, showed the firm owed £318 and it was worth only £1,400 before being closed down in 2016.
He and Emma had married in 2011 — the same year George’s mother, Elet, died aged 56. Daughter Lettie was named Elette after the grandmother she never met.
This week, neighbours in Caterham painted a picture of a couple living very different lives in recent years. One recalls that while Emma was out at work each day, George ‘seemed not to work’ and was often at home, where he ‘pottered around with his wine and his newspaper’, behaviour that made him seem much older than his years.
It was George, who appears to have overseen a massive renovation project at their home in 2018 that involved the demolition of an old conservatory and the building of a new architect-designed rear extension with a roof terrace.
The couple, said the neighbour, were very different. Emma, often seen out jogging, was ‘vivacious, motivated and positive’ and, while often out with her daughter, was always keen to say hello. George, meanwhile, was ‘quite quiet’, they said: ‘I got a wave from him but he wasn’t the sort to chat. He just used to sit around watching football and TV, watering the plants.’
While the building work was going on, said the neighbour, the couple brought round a bottle of wine to apologise for the noise and Emma had jokingly remarked that the renovations had cost them ‘a fortune’. ‘He said that they had clearly spent loads of money on it so I did hope they weren’t getting into debt.’
In fact, Land Registry documents show that the couple remortgaged the house in January 2022. By the time they had finished work, the somewhat old-fashioned home they bought for nearly £620,000 had been transformed into a modernist dream.
The ground-floor extension, with two sets of bi-fold doors leading out into the terraced garden, became a stunning sitting room housing a grand piano, which Emma, a talented musician and singer, used to play. The master bedroom, meanwhile, had its own balcony furnished with sun beds.
Emma’s new role as head at Epsom College, however, came with a grand detached house perched on the edge of the school grounds, and last September the Caterham home was put up for sale. According to former neighbours in Caterham, only Emma and Lettie moved into their new grace-and-favour home in Epsom, while George spent most of his time in the old family home until the £1.5million sale went through last month and he handed over the keys to estate agents Hamptons.
In December, Emma gave an insight into all this upheaval when she spoke to sixth-form students for the school podcast Epsom Insight, telling them: ‘It has been a really big change for my family.
‘We’ve obviously moved house, we’ve bought a dog, I’ve got a new job, my husband’s got a new job, which wasn’t meant to happen but did, and my daughter has started a new school.’
She also said she couldn’t wait to experience her first Founder’s Day when pupils, parents, staff and alumni enjoy picnics and games.
It was his move to his wife’s new accommodation on school grounds in Epsom that prompted George to notify Surrey Police of his change of address, in accordance with the terms of the licence he held for his shotgun.
Homes are only inspected when an application for a licence is made or renewed and so, rather than visiting in person, Surrey officers made a routine phone call to George last Thursday, February 2, to check that his shotgun was being stored correctly.
Two days later, police believe he used the same weapon to kill his wife and daughter and then to take his own life.
What might have prompted him to inflict such evil on those closest to him may never be known. But there are other pressing questions that must be answered.
Did police know, for example, that the address to which George Pattison had moved his shotgun was part of school premises? Did school governors know that such a weapon was being kept in a house regularly used for school events attended by pupils?
For the time being, of course, it is those left behind who must try to find a way to come to terms with what happened: Emma’s parents and younger sister but also George’s father, who doted on his eldest granddaughter; and sister, who has two children including a daughter just a few months younger than Lettie.
The seven-year-old cousins were close friends from birth and often played together.
How on earth do you explain to a child the kind of horror that even adults struggle to comprehend?
‘I hoped they weren’t getting into debt’