Gangsters' Wives (7 page)

When he first got to the States, Howard said he was going to defend himself but I persuaded him he really needed a lawyer. He was in America now. Then he kept insisting he wasn’t going to plea-bargain, he would go to trial. I’m convinced that if he had gone to trial he would have been found guilty and he would never have got out. They would have buried him alive. They’d have put him somewhere like Marion where prisoners are kept underground.

Finally Howard accepted that with Patrick, Ernie and all the other defendants except me testifying against him there was no way he could risk going to trial, so he ended up plea-bargaining. He could have received a sentence up to forty years, but the judge ended up giving him twenty-five. It sounded horrendous, but I knew he would be eligible for parole, so for me it was a bit of a relief because I could see it wasn’t going to be for ever, for ever, for ever. It was a fixed sentence and then there were appeals and in fact, as it turned out, the judge lowered his sentence at the appeal and Howard ended up getting parole after seven years. I always felt it wouldn’t be as long as it could have been. Sometimes you just know that sort of thing.

The judge in his sentencing said Howard should be sent to a jail with a good psychiatric unit. He obviously thought Howard was mentally unsound. I thought he was mistaken at the time but I agree with him now. To have carried on dealing when you’ve seen how much evidence they’ve got against you is completely bizarre.

The worst thing was that, because of my criminal record, I couldn’t visit Howard during the seven years he was in prison. I missed him terribly. It’s very hard bringing kids up completely on your own. It’s hard enough if you’re separated but at least you have a partner coming round every now and then or sharing the joy of the kids’ achievements. It’s very demoralising when you haven’t got that at all.

Though I spoke on the phone to Howard all the time, I never really had long enough to talk to him properly. The kids were always clamouring to speak to him, and there wasn’t enough time.

In fact I was very forgiving, very supportive. I didn’t feel resentful at all. I worried about Howard greatly and missed him so much. I’d do petitions, all the time working to get him out in one way or another. Meanwhile he found ways to make prison bearable, as Howard did. He used all his charm. Got a good job teaching, playing tennis. I think he did what he needed to get through.

And then, in April 1995, he came home.

You’d think most people who’d put their family through what we had all gone through would come home and put their heads down and try to make amends, but Howard’s attitude was more ‘I’ve suffered seven years in jail. Now I’m going to have fun’. It was as though he was oblivious to what the children and I had gone through.

Money was still a problem so as soon as he came out, I got in touch with the
News of the World
. They flew out to Palma and did an interview with us about him returning home from prison. They paid us £15,000. Immediately there was more money than we’d had in God knows how long. Howard naturally wanted to blow the lot on a holiday. And sulked when I said it wasn’t sensible, as we had to figure out how we were going to make a regular living.

I tried to make Howard promise to go straight and he said: ‘Of course.’ He did take a job teaching as a private tutor for a while in GCSE and A level maths and physics. I continued working at the bar a couple of nights a week and carried on with some guardianship work I had. Then Howard got a £100,000 book deal, to be paid in three instalments and life was a good deal easier.

It was fantastic having him back at first but he soon became very resentful. If Amber or Golly wanted to go out at night, they’d ask my permission because they’d been used to it. I could see he hated that. There were many things he resented. It wasn’t that he said anything, one would just feel it.

His life got busier. Newspapers asked him to do book reviews and he had a regular reviewing position with the
FT
, which is a privileged slot to be given. Even so, if he was busy he would have Amber write them. She’s bright and a good writer and she did it conscientiously but she was just seventeen. I said: ‘You must never let them know that’s what you’re doing.’ But Howard being Howard, with his boundless egotism, thought he could get away with anything. He told them: ‘I didn’t have time to write this one so I got my daughter to do it.’ Naturally the
FT
never commissioned him to do another one. I said, ‘Why can’t you see things like that annoy people?’

When he finished writing the book and it was published in 1996/7 he was off again. The book instantly became a best-seller. And fame had arrived.

We would watch interviews with him on the television, when he would say he had no regrets about his life and would do it all again. It really was as if he had no idea of the awful suffering we had endured, or he just didn’t care. I would see tears welling in Francesca’s eyes as she watched.

He started going off on promotional tours and taking class A drugs. I was so shocked when I first realised Howard had taken cocaine. It went against everything he’d always believed. In pre-prison days he wouldn’t have it in the house or let anyone around him have it. When I confronted him, he said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘It goes against everything you’ve ever said.’ He said, ‘Oh, I was stupid.’ Then he got into the whole E thing. It was all so different from before he went to prison. I hated it.

While he was off being celebrated, I was still at home in Palma looking after the kids as I’d always done. When Francesca finished her O Levels and before starting her A Levels I suggested to Howard that as he was spending so much time in the UK, we should all move back there. He said he couldn’t bear the thought of living back in the UK and as soon as the promotion of the book was finished he wanted to be in Palma to write his next book.
Dope Stories
was written here.

Howard genuinely enjoyed the adulation he was getting and embraced it wholeheartedly. I was happy to see him enjoying his new celebrity life and when I was in the UK with him it amused me to watch him with his fans, although the children and I did on occasions get irritated at how we got shoved out of the way, trampled upon and pushed to the side by people eager to get to him. It annoyed us that he wouldn’t do anything to stop that from happening.

We eventually split up in 2003 because I found out that Howard was having a full-on affair that had apparently been going on for about two years. Of course I’d been bloody suspicious about what was going on before that as he was spending so much time away, but he’d always denied it.

I found out first from Patrick, who was sixteen by this time. He’d seen a text. He said, ‘Mum, I think you’d better know about this.’ It was from someone called Caroline. I said: ‘Howard, who’s Caroline?’ He said: ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’

A few months later I managed to break into his emails, as you do. But it’s not always the best thing for you to do in the long term. It was pretty awful. I found out a lot more than was good for me, like that she had visited him out here and that he’d even driven her around in the family car.

After everything we’d gone through, to have him do this felt like a complete betrayal. I felt like I’d been completely stabbed in the back.

Of course he was devastated that I had found out. How convenient it was for him having me in Palma, while he played the field in the UK. He could still keep up the pretence of been the ‘nice’ family man, that he had portrayed in
Mr Nice
.

And then, in 2004, I got breast cancer. Howard came out and stayed with me in hospital while I had the operation in Palma. He left immediately after the operation and to this day I feel I didn’t get the emotional support I so needed and feel I was due after all the years of standing by him in prison.

The doctors wanted me to have chemotherapy afterwords. I was pretty shattered, with everything I’d found out about Howard, and wanted a second opinion. I returned to London for a consultation. It was while I was waiting to find out if I needed chemo that Howard slapped the divorce on me. What cruel timing! I felt totally broken and suffered from acute panic attacks.

Sadly, as if Patrick hadn’t gone through enough, he was left nursing me through my illness and was heartbroken. I myself was just in pieces. I felt as if I was trapped inside Edvard Munch’s painting
The Scream
. Meanwhile Patrick was desperately hoping his father would come home and be the father he had always longed for.

The divorce came through in May 2005. Patrick was still at school and I still needed financial support but I couldn’t get through to Howard. I had to bite my tongue a lot.

Writing my own book about my life with Howard was therapeutic, but I had to struggle not to let my anger with him come through. I tried very hard to put myself back into the mindset of how I’d felt at the time and remember how good our life together had been, and how much I’d loved him.

The book came out in 2006, and then the rights were bought by a film company. The film is based on Howard’s book with mine as additional source material and is supposed to be coming out in February 2010. The whole family has cameo roles in it.

I haven’t seen the film yet and I think it’s going to be really weird watching my life being played out in the cinema. Some bits are blatantly untrue, like me being Myfanwy’s mother. At least the inaccuracies will help me remind myself it’s fiction, not fact.

It’s very hard to tell from a script what it will be like. I think it’s more the Howard Marks story with me as a supporting actress, than it is about the two of us as equals. But looking back maybe our lives were really like that?

Chloë Sevigny, who plays me, is an amazing actress. And I feel humbled that she is playing me. After the filming finished Chloë remarked to me that she wished she had met me earlier as she would have portrayed me as a lot stronger, which was a nice thing to say but made me slightly worried about how I’ll come out in the film.

I hope the film doesn’t focus solely on the miserable stuff because my abiding memory of being with Howard is feeling happy. We had a good time, we got on terribly well, we had lovely kids, and we were soulmates as Howard put it. Even now we sometimes get on so well – and then something will happen to remind me of how badly he has behaved.

I still think it’s lower than low to do what he did to someone who’s shown you so much support, just when they most need support themselves. There are too many things now that I just cannot excuse or forget.

The last few years have been a nightmare. Howard isn’t speaking to me at the moment because I told him he was morally corrupt, which he is in many ways, except he doesn’t like to be told that. Howard only likes to be told that he’s wonderful, and if you criticise him at all he can’t stand it. He surrounds himself with people who tell him he’s wonderful. It’s the egotistic personality always shining through.

In the days we were together, we had nice friends. We met interesting people. These days, the people he has surrounding him tend to be druggies, drunks, villains and hangers-on. He appears on stage shows in small provincial towns, sometimes with Dave Courtney – a sad testimony to that young boy, with such proud parents, who set off from his small town in Wales to study at Balliol College, Oxford.

Of course I used to think he was wonderful too. Howard had, and continues to have, an amazing ability to make people fall in love with him. When you meet him you get the impression that life with him would never be dull. Howard’s charisma wins everyone over, always has and probably always will.

    Mr Nice & Mrs Marks
is published by Ebury Press

Now twenty-six, Carly [all names in this chapter have been changed] was just eighteen when she became involved with John, a powerful figure fourteen years her senior. John was living on the Costa del Sol after fleeing from his native Ireland where his drug-trafficking activities had earned him the epithet ‘Ireland’s Most Wanted Man’. Carly, young and naive, was blinded by love and seduced by the opulent lifestyle John was offering. She became so embroiled in John’s life and ‘work’, helping out at every level of the business, that when the relationship began to unravel, she feared he would never allow her to leave. Now a cash-strapped student with a new boyfriend, Carly still hasn’t quite left the past behind her. Nervous, but articulate and composed, she checks the door often when giving her interview, and insists all names are changed for fear of reprisals …

When I was in college the other day, I took out a pen to copy down some notes. The girl next to me gasped when she noticed the sparkling crystals inset all the way along. I felt my face burn with embarrassment as I returned it quickly to its box. Because that set of two Swarovski pens would probably cost more than that girl lives on in a month. If there was ever a symbol of pointless excess, those jewel-encrusted pens are surely it. They’re also one of the few reminders I have left of the life I used to live.

To look at me now, in my nondescript jeans, with my hair scraped back, you’d never believe I used to regularly go out shopping with €3000 or €4000 stuffed into my purse. If I liked a thousand-euro handbag, I’d get three in different colours. I had everything money could buy – Prada, Gucci, Jimmy Choo – the higher the price tag, the more of it I had. And when I grew bored with the boutiques of Marbella and Puerto Banus, I’d fly to New York for the weekend to hit the shops there – first class, of course. I owned a car before I’d had my first driving lesson, and once I passed I drove a different car practically every month – Porsche, BMW – the names were all the same to me. I had everything money could buy. If you could have seen my soul, it probably had a designer label on it. But you know what, I might have gained all this shiny, glittering stuff, but I’d lost something I thought I’d never find again. I’d lost all knowledge of who I was.

I certainly wasn’t brought up in that kind of lifestyle. I was born in England and spent my first ten years there in a very normal household. Mum was a nurse, Dad did a variety of different jobs. My brother and I went to school and learned the difference between right and wrong, just like everyone else.