A Genuine Mistake by Ted Tayler (miss read books txt) 📗

In early March 2002, Evelyn was returning from a day photographing egrets, ibis, and herons. A motorcyclist came around a hairpin bend on the wrong side of the road, and she swerved to avoid it. Evelyn’s rental car rolled over, somersaulted the safety barrier, and she was dead before the emergency services could arrive from Albion Park. Evelyn was just forty years old.

Gerry Hogan flew out to Sydney and met Evelyn’s parents for the first time since he and his wife got engaged. The couple hadn’t been able to afford to visit the UK for the wedding. Evelyn kept in touch by phone and letter in the intervening years, and Gerry kept promising that one day they would fly out so that Sean and Byron could meet their grandparents.

Gerry knew that his in-laws didn’t want their daughter to lie in a grave in England. He agreed they should scatter Evelyn’s ashes in the Macquarie Pass National Park. When he flew home towards the end of March, he faced up to life looking after Sean and Byron alone.

His sister, Belinda, was always ready to offer a helping hand. When the police talked to her after Gerry’s death, Belinda said he had been a brilliant father. He never complained about the cards life had dealt him. He threw himself wholeheartedly into being the best father possible to those two boys.

Gerry met Rachel Cummins five years later, in 2007. Belinda worried it was too soon. She was concerned that the boys would find it difficult to adjust. Sean was thirteen, and Byron, eleven by that time. They both attended St Laurence School in Bradford-on-Avon. Gerry and Rachel dated for several months before Gerry introduced her to the boys. They went on holiday together to Portugal in the Algarve in the Spring of 2008. Rachel moved into the house on Trowle Common when they returned home.

Gus flicked through the folder to find anything on Rachel Cummins. Who was she? What first attracted her to the wealthy and successful business owner, Gerry Hogan? That might be simple enough to fathom, but although Gerry Hogan was old enough to be her father, two teenage boys were in the mix to consider. Rachel might not be a gold-digger after all. Gus knew all too well that two people from a different generation could fall in love.

The Rachel Cummins file was far slimmer, not unlike the lady herself, based on the photograph at the top of the first page.

Rachel was born in the first week of January 1982 in Haslemere, Surrey. Her parents were Jeffrey and Katherine Cummins, who lived and worked in the small town twelve miles from Guildford. Rachel’s parents separated eighteen months after Rachel was born, and Katherine raised Rachel alone.

After leaving the Woolmer Hill Technology College, Rachel continued her studies to gather a bundle of diplomas in health, exercise, and fitness. Aged twenty, she started a business as a personal trainer. Rachel continued to live with her mother in Haslemere, driving to various sites across the county for group fitness sessions. She also secured one-to-one appointments with clients in their own home to boost her earnings.

In 2005, Katherine Cummins reconnected with an old school friend through Facebook, and Rachel arrived home from a fitness session to learn that her mother was eager for Lawrence Wallace to move in.

Rachel thought Lawrence was a creep, but it was her mother’s life. Perhaps it was time to plough her own furrow? Three months after Lawrence moved in and several rows with her mother, Rachel moved out. She did her best to find other trainers to accommodate her regulars, and after she was satisfied with her efforts, she moved to Bath. Rachel didn’t know the city, except by reputation, but her training and experience were transferable anywhere in the country.

After a rocky few weeks where she wondered whether she had made the right decision, Rachel’s business soon grew. Eighteen months after moving to Bath, Rachel was running one of her regular fitness classes in Bradford-on-Avon when Gerry Hogan arrived.

Gerry was forty-nine, a widower, and although he ran a successful business, he knew that two decades without regular exercise was playing havoc with his waistline. After the first occasion that he attended her class, they spoke briefly about what he wanted from the sessions. Gerry had told her he’d concentrated on caring for his two sons after losing his wife in a car accident. He needed to get fit for their sakes, and the hour at the gym with her would be the only social interaction he’d get without the boys tagging along.

Rachel had found herself thinking of Gerry during the following week and looked forward to seeing him again. She asked if he wanted to go for a drink after the following Thursday evening session. That was something she had never done before with any of her clients.

Rachel had had to fend off the odd amorous bloke who thought an appointment in his home promised something that was not on the published price list, but Gerry was different. She felt an instant attraction, and later that night, after the drink in the pub, Rachel discovered Gerry felt the same way.

It was the first time he’d been with a woman since his wife died. Despite Belinda’s reservations, Gerry and Rachel grew closer, and after that foreign holiday in 2008, Rachel moved in and for four years, everything was fine.

After Gerry’s murder, some issues need sorting out. Gerry and Rachel had never married. Belinda received a sum of money in the will, but the home on Trowle Common and the financial services business passed to Rachel. Gerry had altered his will after Evelyn’s death so that if anything happened to him before the boys reached the age of majority, his sister, Belinda, would act as their guardian.

Gerry altered his will again in 2011.