The ideal man, p.1
The Ideal Man, page 1
THE IDEAL MAN
T.J. EMERSON
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part III
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Part IV
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Acknowledgments
More from T.J. Emerson
About the Author
The Murder List
About Boldwood Books
PART I
1
COLETTE
My father is innocent. I want to tell that to the social worker sitting on the long white sofa. Madame Ponsolle. She didn’t offer me a first name, although she called me by mine when I opened the door to her. A black leather satchel sits on the floor next to her feet. A clipboard rests on her knee, official documents attached to it. Boxes she must tick or cross. Larger boxes for her to write comments in.
My father is not a criminal, but she doesn’t believe that. To her he is just another prisoner she has to deal with.
‘Here we are.’ As I hand her an espresso in one of our best china cups, I try to see what is on the forms attached to the clipboard but glimpse only part of today’s date. Tuesday, 3 April.
‘Thank you,’ she says, taking the coffee. I’ve lived here in my father’s apartment in Nice for five years, but Ponsolle still spoke English when she first arrived, obviously assuming my French wouldn’t be up to standard. I’m happy to let her think so. She tucks her greying hair behind her ears before taking a sip of coffee. In her black cords, white shirt and grey cardigan, she looks plain and insignificant, but whatever this small, neat woman writes on her report could help to get my father out of Baumettes prison in Marseilles early. Or keep him there until the end of his sentence.
Dad got six years. By the time they sent him to prison, he’d already served six months on remand and that, along with the automatic sentence reduction they have in France, gave him five years to serve. Soon he will have a hearing to reduce his sentence by a further six months, and Ponsolle’s visit is part of the preparation for that hearing.
I sit in the white armchair next to the sofa. My espresso cup rattles in its saucer as I put it on the coffee table. Last thing I need is caffeine. It’s just after 2 p.m., but I was too nervous to eat lunch. My stomach is still a painful knot of tension, but I’m starting to feel hungry and faint.
Madame Ponsolle watches me fold my hands in my lap. Under her gaze, I feel like a teenager, not a woman of thirty. She’s here to assess where Dad will be living if he gets released, and she’s here to assess me too. I’m wearing navy trousers and a cream jumper, an outfit that hopefully makes me look mature and responsible. This morning I went to the hairdressers and had my blonde bob washed and blow-dried.
My preparation for today reminds me of Dad’s trial. Sitting there day after day in clothes his lawyer recommended I wear. Knowing strangers were judging me and that this could influence the way they judged him.
‘How long have you had this apartment?’ Madame Ponsolle asks.
‘Nearly seven years.’ Dad bought this place not long before Mum was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer. He’d just sold the business and was heading for early retirement. They were planning to live here for a few years before buying a villa further up the coast towards Cassis.
Best laid plans. Five months after diagnosis, Mum was dead, and five months after that, Dad had a one-night stand with the wrong woman and our lives fell apart.
‘And you live here now?’ Ponsolle says. ‘All the time?’
‘Yes. This is home.’
A home that has become its own sort of prison since Dad went into his. One of six apartments in a sleek, modern block in the exclusive Mont Boron area of Nice.
Ponsolle glances around her as she sips her coffee. I can’t imagine she makes many visits to this part of town – it’s a bit posh around here. She takes in the spacious open-plan living area, her gaze settling for a moment on the long, granite-topped kitchen island that separates the sitting room from the kitchen. The place where Dad and I will sit and eat together when he gets out. Her expression is neutral, but I sense unspoken questions lurking beneath it. Why would a man with all this do what he did? Or did his money and privilege enable him to do what he did? I want to snatch the clipboard off her, tear up her stupid forms and tell her that he didn’t do it at all.
I must hold it together for Dad’s sake. Ponsolle works for the SPIP – Les Services Pénitentiaires d’Insertion et de Probation. She is a small part of a large and ugly system Dad should never have been involved with. One I need to get him out of as soon as I can.
‘Colette,’ she says, ‘can you tell me what you do for your living?’
‘I’m a freelance copywriter.’ She already knows this, I’m sure, but I play along with her. ‘Mostly for the travel industry.’
I keep my tone light and enthusiastic. As if my work is what I’ve always dreamt of doing. As if I’m living the life I was always meant to live.
‘Interesting,’ she says without conviction.
‘Keeps me busy.’ The hours are often long, deadlines tight and the money a lot less than I was earning back in London, but the job has allowed me to be here for Dad.
‘You work from home?’ she says.
‘Yes. So, I’ll be around when my dad gets out, to help him settle back in.’
She nods. ‘Can I see the rest of the apartment?’
‘Of course.’
She finishes her coffee and picks up her clipboard. I usher her to the hallway that leads in from the apartment’s front door and show her my bedroom.
‘You have a brother,’ Ponsolle says when I show her the guest room, ‘Patrick. Does he come to visit?’
‘He lives in Sydney with his family, but we hope he’ll come over as soon as Dad’s out.’
I’m not lying to her. Not exactly. Dad and I do hope Patch will come over, but we both know that’s unlikely. An official assessment would describe my older brother as estranged. I haven’t told him about this visit, or the possibility of Dad’s early release. Our infrequent phone calls often end in an argument. I still can’t believe I’ve had to endure all this without him. I still can’t believe he thinks our father is guilty.
‘Dad and I have a really strong support network,’ I say. This is a lie. The truth is nearly everyone we know has abandoned him. I’m all he’s got.
I take her to Dad’s room and follow her inside. Will she note the king-size bed made up for his return? His favourite toiletries in the en suite bathroom?
She wanders around the bedroom in silence. Dad’s Tag Heuer watch sits on the dressing table. He didn’t wear it to his sentencing. All of his valuables have remained with me, waiting for him to return and claim them. If Ponsolle opens the wardrobe door she will see shirts and trousers waiting for him. She will see the Tom Ford navy-blue suit he wore during his trial. When I brought it back from the prison and hung it up, I cried. It felt like he’d shed some outer layer of himself when he went into that place. One he wouldn’t get back for a long time.
Artificial birdsong fills the room. Ponsolle pulls a slim black phone from her trouser pocket and checks the screen.
‘Excuse me,’ she says.
‘Of course.’
After stepping into the hallway and pulling the door closed, I hover nearby. She’s speaking French to a colleague, and I can understand every word. She’s saying she won’t be too long here. She’s confirming she has the address for her next visit. When her voice drops, I lean closer to the door, certain she’s talking about me.
‘C’est une fille à papa,’ she says. ‘Absolument.’
Une fille à papa. A daddy’s girl.
Heat flushes my cheeks. I tell myself I have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all.
Back in the main room, Ponsolle pauses at the kitchen island to jot something on her clipboard.
‘You are visiting him soon?’ She points her pen at the blue-and-white-check laundry bag that sits in front of the washing machine.
‘I go almost ev ery week.’ Each time I visit, I pick up his laundry, bring it back here and wash it, ready to take it back the following week. That’s how they do it over here. The irony isn’t lost on Dad and me. He made his first millions transforming a small industrial laundry business in Manchester into a UK-wide success. Thousands of vans and lorries with the Fresh As logo on the side. Now I’m washing his dirty clothes once a week and driving them from Nice to Marseilles in my Renault Clio or hauling the laundry bag with me on the train if the weather is bad or if I can’t face the traffic. Before Dad went to jail, I never used to be able to drive on the right-hand side of the road. On holidays, Dad always did all the driving and then, when I was married, my husband drove if we went abroad. I’ve had to learn, though. One of many new skills I’ve had to acquire.
‘You have a close relationship with your father?’ Ponsolle asks.
‘Very.’ I smile. ‘My mum used to say I was a real daddy’s girl.’
She shoots me a suspicious look, and I instantly regret the comment.
‘We’re very close, yes,’ I say. ‘Always have been.’
Very close. Two words that fail to express the connection Dad and I have. He was the parent I went to first with any problem, not Mum. He’s always looked out for me and now I’m looking out for him.
Madame Ponsolle walks around the sitting room. She stops to look at the collection of gaudy clown ornaments on the vintage oak sideboard.
‘They belonged to my nan,’ I say. ‘Dad’s mum. She died last year.’
Ponsolle says nothing. Not that I expected sympathy. Nana Gilligan died alone in a nursing home in Manchester. Dad was devastated. In normal circumstances he would have been by her side. I went to the funeral on his behalf, which was the least I could do.
I miss her. She was the only other person who believed in Dad’s innocence. A mother knows her son, she used to say. Dad’s guilty verdict and the prison sentence killed her. No doubt about it.
Ponsolle looks up at the family portrait that hangs over the sideboard. Before the trial, Dad put our family home in my name so I could sell it. He knew if he went to jail, we wouldn’t have access to all his savings and investments, and he wanted a pot of money I could have access to. It hurt me to sell Riverbank Cottage, our large, rambling home in the Surrey village of Ripley. I packed up most of our belongings and put them in storage but had a few things shipped across, including the family portrait. In it, I am sixteen and Patch is eighteen. We have just come back from two weeks in the Caribbean, and we are all tanned and glowing and happy. Mum and Dad have their arms wrapped around one another. Mum, a former Miss Manchester winner, is glamorous as always. Once upon a time, we were a family people envied.
Ponsolle must have seen photographs of Dad before. I wonder if she can see the resemblance between the two of us? I’ve got his wide hazel eyes. Mum used to say I had more of him in me than her.
‘Your father was a boxer?’ Ponsolle says. She has moved on to the small collection of framed photographs at the end of the sideboard. She stares at the one of Dad at sixteen, winning a local lightweight boxing competition. My pulse races. I should have put that picture away.
‘As a kid,’ I say. She will think this is proof of a violent nature. My father isn’t a violent man, no matter what was said at his trial. No matter what lies his accuser told about him.
Ponsolle mutters something as she scribbles on her clipboard. She thinks she knows my father, but she knows only a mixture of facts and lies. She will know he was born Alexander Philippe Gilligan and that he is fifty-three years old. She will know he is a dual national, born in Marseilles to a French mother and a British father. Does she know his father was a soldier from Manchester and his mother a working-class woman from Marseilles? Does she know Dad grew up in Moss Side in Manchester with nothing? Does she know he is self-made? A brilliant businessman? A man who once was the centre of a large network of family and friends?
My father is the most interesting man I know.
She moves away from the sideboard and when she reaches the French doors that open on to the balcony, she stops.
‘C’est beau,’ she says, her professionalism slipping for a moment.
‘Yes.’ Even on a dull day like today, the view is stunning. The villas, apartments and gardens of Mont Boron are spread out before us. Beyond them rises the bulk of Castle Hill and the terracotta rooftops of Nice’s old town. In the distance, the Pre-Alps form a hilly backdrop to the city. To our left the Bay of Angels is steely blue and restless after this morning’s rain. Mont Boron is in the east of the city and looking west I can see the curve of the bay. At night the lights along the Promenade des Anglais follow that curve. Lighting it up like a runway.
‘Right,’ Ponsolle says, her tone clipped and official again. ‘I think I have everything now.’
I want to drop to my knees and beg. Let him out early. He doesn’t deserve to be in there. He should be here, living in his home.
‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘If there’s anything else I can—’
‘There is one more thing.’ She picks up her briefcase and slides the clipboard inside. ‘You are involved with the Families for Justice organisation?’
A statement, not a question. My mouth feels suddenly dry. Why does she want to know about that? How is it relevant to the hearing? ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I first heard of them after Dad’s trial. Their online community has been very supportive.’
When I first accessed the FFJ website and read the stories posted there, it blew me away how many people all over the world are wrongly convicted and imprisoned. The people I’ve met through the chat forums understand my helplessness and frustration. They understand the agony of knowing a loved one is innocent and being powerless to help them. Connecting with the FFJ community has often given me hope when I’ve most needed it.
‘I read the page you set up about your father,’ Ponsolle says.
‘Yes, it’s public.’ I set up the page on the FFJ website to share what happened to Dad. It gave me some satisfaction to tell his side of the story . ‘Is there a problem? Is that going to affect the hearing? Do I need to take it down?’
‘You really believe he is innocent?’ Ponsolle asks. Her tone is curious now.
‘Yes.’ Weariness washes over me. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had to justify my decision to defend Dad. I long to remind her his case was not without doubt. Here in France, the average sentence for rape is seven to nine years, but in cases where there is doubt about consent, the sentence is less than that. Even the judge who handed out his sentence, an unsympathetic woman determined to make an example of him, had to admit doubt existed about whether his accuser had consented or not. Doubts that Odette, Dad’s lawyer, was certain would get him an innocent verdict or at least the minimum sentence.
‘You know the hearing is not about whether he did it or not?’ Ponsolle says.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘He was convicted, and he has served his sentence.’
‘I know.’ Odette made that clear when I spoke to her a few days ago. The hearing is not a chance for Dad to plead his innocence again. To get out early, he will have to show remorse for a crime he didn’t commit. He will have to rely on the good behaviour he’s shown throughout his sentence.
‘Okay,’ Ponsolle says. ‘I am done here.’
