up a friendship that deepened into romance.
There was only one slight blot on the pages of this fairy tale – Paul was already married. However, he wasn’t going to let a little thing like that get in the way of a blossoming love affair. He set about getting divorced and in 1985 he and Rena tied the knot. For the girl who’d always felt unloved and unwanted; who’d been brought up to think she wasn’t good enough, it was a day she thought she’d never see. At last she had found someone who loved her for who she was and didn’t want to change her. After taking her vows, she silently added a couple of her own: that she would love this man forever and she would never let anything come between them.
Every new bride experiences that thrill of being reborn – of feeling as if she is starting out on a new life with the man she loves. For Rena Salmon, this sensation was even stronger than most. Her old life had been one of hardship and neglect. She wanted to put it far behind her. This new life was the real life where the true Rena would have a chance to come forward, shine and grow. And it was all down to Paul. With him by her side, at last she could find the happiness and security that had always eluded her.
When her son was born in 1989 and followed by a daughter in 1992, Rena’s fairy tale seemed complete. She threw herself into being a perfect mum, showering on her own children the love and affection she herself had been denied. Everything she’d always thought lacking in herself, she now invested in her children. They would have the childhood she’d only ever seen in films – the meals out, the trips to the cinema, the family dinners. Gazing down at their sleeping bodies, she promised herself they would never come to harm and that as long as she lived she’d strive to give them the stability children so desperately need.
While Rena was delighted with the emotional riches married life had given her, it also didn’t hurt that materially she now had everything she could wish for. In civilian life Paul had found a niche as a high earning IT consultant and within a short time he was earning over £80,000 a year. Rena too started working full time two years after her daughter’s birth. For the first time in her life she didn’t want for anything: she had beautiful clothes and expensive cars; she went on shopping sprees to New York and took pleasure in buying herself nice things. Finally she was starting to let herself believe that she was worth it.
In 1998 the Salmons moved to the Great Shefford house. Rena was in her element, buying things for the house, creating the home she’d never had. She started to make friends in the neighbourhood; mostly women she met while dropping off or picking up her kids from school. One of these new friends was Lorna Rodrigues.
Although Lorna was seven years younger, the two just seemed to click. Lorna was energetic and fun to be around, the perfect pick-me-up for the more reserved older woman. Also, being married to a mixed-race Australian meant that Lorna was more multi-culturally aware than most of the people in this predominantly white middle-class town.
Lorna ran a successful beauty salon in Chiswick, west London and her husband Keith was a computer expert but at weekends they liked to spend time with their two daughters and other local families. It wasn’t long before the Salmons and the Rodrigues began socialising outside school, enjoying dinner parties and barbecues at one another’s houses; it was the kind of friendship Rena had always craved. She felt as though she could talk to Lorna about anything, including her worries about her marriage.
You see, Rena had begun to feel as if Paul was slipping away from her. It had started a few years before when she’d developed chronic back pain. Depressed and largely immobile, she started to binge eat and the weight had piled on. Paul, a fitness fanatic who always took pride in keeping in shape, had tried to encourage her to eat properly:‘Come on, you’ll feel better if you just eat a little healthier,’ he’d coax her. But one of the most damaging legacies of Rena’s past was the way emotion always crowded out reason in stressful situations. Lacking any coping skills for dealing with pressure, she’d give in to her emotions. She knew she shouldn’t stuff herself with food –she knew it was driving her husband away – but that very knowledge made the urge to eat even stronger.
Paul became increasingly distant. He stayed out late after work and seemed to have lost interest in her. Their once solid marriage was looking more and more fragile. Rena had hoped that moving to a new area would provide the fresh start they needed but while they both loved being there, it hadn’t brought them closer.
‘Our sex life has really gone down hill,’ Rena confided to Lorna one day. Lorna was immediately sympathetic: ‘What you need is something to spice things up in the bedroom,’ she advised her new friend. But the sexy new underwear Rena splashed out on did nothing to stop the rot in her marriage. Paul simply didn’t seem interested. During the week he was always at work and then at weekends he’d go out drinking with friends. She never knew where he was and though she suspected there were other women, she chose to ignore this rather than face her suspicions head on. The couple became locked into that cycle that most unhappy marriages come to know so well. One partner feels the other is pulling away so they become clingy and emotionally needy which in turn pushes the other partner still further away. The word ‘divorce’ began to loom large in Rena Salmon’s fears.
She couldn’t accept it; wouldn’t accept it. Here was a woman who’d been rejected all her life. Finally she’d found someone who made her feel wanted and accepted. She’d made a life where she had a place and a value. Not only this but she’d invested all her emotional reserves, all the love she kept inside her through the dark years in her family and her man. She couldn’t live without him – he had to stay with her. She’d change, she’d get thinner; she’d start being more outgoing and less clingy. She’d do anything, anything to keep him.
What could be crueller than a once loving relationship where one partner has lost interest? What could hurt more than looking into clear eyes that were once full of love to meet only indifference? Rena knew she’d let herself get overweight and she knew her emotional dependence was driving her husband away. But she didn’t know what to do about it. Thank goodness she had Lorna to turn to in those lonely moments when it all seemed too much to bear.
But by the end of 2001, Lorna Rodrigues had other things occupying her mind apart from her friend’s marital problems: she had a new lover. Even thinking the words sent a thrill through her. She hadn’t been looking for it, hadn’t ever thought about it but then along came this man saying all the right things and wham! She’d fallen into this full-blown love affair. There were only two problems (i) he was married and (ii) he was married to her best friend.
Paul Salmon had taken to Lorna the first time he met her. She was so much fun plus she was a successful businesswoman and as the owner of a beauty salon she was always immaculately turned out – the exact opposite of his own wife, in fact. The more time Paul spent with Lorna, the more he couldn’t help comparing her to Rena. Why couldn’t Rena be more independent? Why did she always have to ask him where he was going and what he was doing? Why did the little things she did irritate him so much?
He started imagining what life would be like if it was Lorna he went home to at night instead of Rena, if it was Lorna he watched undressing before bed and if it was Lorna’s body laying beside him at night. Soon thoughts of the younger woman began to obsess him. She was never far from his mind and he knew he had to tell her how he felt.
In November 2001, after a series of chance meetings, Paul phoned Lorna and said he’d like to see her. They arranged a meeting and, with his heart pounding, he confessed his feelings. This was the moment everything else hinged on, the moment that set in motion the chain of events that came after. Did Lorna hesitate? Torn between her undeniable attraction to Paul and her loyalty to his wife, did she struggle to suppress her feelings for this married man? If the battle between guilt and temptation that waged inside Lorna Rodrigues had gone a different way, so much tragedy might have been avoided. But she was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? She loved the idea that this successful, handsome man found her attractive. Sure, it was a shame they were both married but then no one else needed to find out, did they?
Just a month later, Keith Rodrigues was looking through his wife’s email account when he came across a message that made his heart freeze:
‘It