It means the company had a solid property portfolio and doesn’t have to pay rent. Albert Mitten had started the business in 1968 when property was cheap to buy but he’d seen many of his competitors run into problems over the years as rents and overheads had increased.
Francis had the advantage of attending the top private schools and then going on to Cambridge University.
Albert Mitten was a dedicated family man who loved his wife Beatrice and treated his son in a fair but firm way as he had been treated. Francis’s time at university opened his eyes to a lot of things. One of them being beautiful women. There seemed to be an endless supply and many were happy to let him jump into their bed for a night or two.
Upon his return to Trentbridge and the family home at the age of twenty-one, he met and fell in love with Diane Hammond who was a year older than him. He was drawn to her maturity as well as her beauty and within a year he had proposed and they were married.
As a wedding present, Albert Mitten bought Francis and his new wife a beautiful detached house on the edge of Barford. It is still the family home.
Within two months, Diane was pregnant with their son, born on Tuesday the fourteenth January 1992 and the couple decided on the name Gordon after Diane’s father.
By accident, eight years later, Diane found she was pregnant and gave birth to identical twin girls who inherited their mother’s stunning beauty. Everyone thought they were adorable. With their blonde hair and blue eyes, they became the centre of attention for both their parents and their grandparents.
There were days when the nine-year-old Gordon wondered if he belonged to the same family. He looked on as everyone cooed about the newborn twins. It wasn’t their fault of course; they were just babies, but why wasn’t he the centre of attention anymore?
As the children were growing up, Diane, who had been working part-time in the business when Gordon was in school became a stay-at-home mother. She certainly had her hands full with twins.
After Gordon quit and moved out, things changed.
The closeness Francis and Diane had kept over the years faded a little. Their regular lovemaking sessions dwindled and it just seemed to Francis that some of the hot passion his wife had previously displayed towards him was no longer there.
In the summer of 2018, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the business, Francis arranged a party and invited their family and friends as well as many of the business associates and various suppliers they had worked with over the years.
Although the house was big enough to accommodate any occasion for the family and a few friends, it wasn't able to cope with over 120 people so a local company came in and erected a marquee in the garden to the rear of the house to cope with all the guests.
One of the people who joined the celebrations was forty-eight-year-old Harry Richardson, a local property developer who had helped Albert and Francis to develop and build the site in Barford. He brought along his wife Natalie, a slim blonde who looked much younger than her forty-five years, and their two sons, Barney aged twenty and eighteen-year-old Simon.
It didn’t take long before the two boys were drooling over Erica and Leona. However, they had a lot of competition. Barney tried everything he could to win over Erica but when it became clear she was not interested, he started to call her names at which point she pushed him into the outdoor swimming pool in front of some of his friends.
He left the party very wet and feeling humiliated while threatening he would get even with her “if it’s the last thing I do.”
His father Harry hadn’t seen the altercation and was deep in conversation with Albert Mitten, who despite his more mature age, shared Harry’s passion for golf.
Inside the house, Francis was chatting to Harry's wife Natalie and found they shared a love of tennis. She mentioned the Grantchester tennis club, a place Francis had been trying to join for several months, without success.
A week after the party, Francis received a call. One of the regular members who Natalie played a weekly tennis game with had to drop out at short notice due to an ongoing knee injury and she wondered if he was available?
After a successful game, in which he paired up with Natalie and they won their doubles sets Francis was asked if he would like to play again the following week.
Then Natalie’s original partner found out the injury was more serious than at first thought and would be unable to play for at least two months. So Francis stepped in on a weekly basis.
A month later, the couple decided to meet up for a coffee and ended up sharing a room for the afternoon at the Weathervane Hotel. From there it became a regular occurrence whereby the couple would drive off in different directions from the tennis club and park in separate places and meet up in the hotel room Francis had booked.
Natalie was a more experienced lover than his wife and Francis became fascinated with her. The passion that had been missing from his marriage for the past couple of years he found in his liaison with Natalie.
As long as they kept their meetings to once a week and Natalie was home before her husband, she and Francis could continue the affair and no-one would be the wiser. After all, it was only about the sex. It wasn’t love and there was no talk of breaking up their respective marriages. As long as it continued to be fun and exciting, neither wished to stop.
Francis knew whatever the outcome of the kidnapping, he would still be married to Diane. So there was no need to reveal any of this to the police. It couldn’t possibly be relevant.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Eight o’clock on Friday
