I wasn't sure what to write, but someone suggested I write a personal story, and this immediately came to mind.
(Ashleigh Robinson and Gordon Harding)
“you know Gordon Harding, right?” a friend of mine asked as I was getting onto my bike to leave
“G? yeah, I know him” referring to an ironic nickname Gordon had picked up “why?”
“I think I heard his name of the radio when I went into my Dad” he said, vaguely pointing behind him “I think he’s had an accident of some kind, I wasn’t really listening, I only heard the name” he tilted his head to one side “Sorry”
“oh” I said “I hope he’s alright”
“yeah, sorry” he said, and with that I said goodbye to him, got on my bike and rode home, thinking hard all the way.
It had been a few years since I last saw Gordon with any regularity but I saw him around frequently enough and he always stopped to talk. I’d heard that he was having or perhaps even had a baby with his girlfriend Ashleigh and I wondered if the baby and Ashleigh were OK. Even though I’d never particularly liked Ashleigh much, I knew Gordon thought the world of her and so I’d always been pleasant to her. For reasons I could never quite get clear, Gordon didn’t just get into relationships with women; he took these women and made them the focal point of his own religion, worshiping them and granting their every need. I always found it a little bit unnerving but in all honesty I liked the guy and I knew that my own relationships were far from perfect and often very much in the co-dependent mould. Who was I to judge him? I pulled my bike into the shed, locked it behind me and then pulled out my phone to search his name as I walked into the house. The last time I saw Gordon, he was sitting beneath the stairs in the college we both attended. As usual I made him laugh with a couple of sarcastic comments about what I was doing and then cracked him up by taking pratfalls, pretending to get hit by a door that I couldn’t budge but everyone else was opening easily. Ashleigh smiled politely but instructed Gordon they had to go to get rid of me when she thought I couldn’t hear her. I remember the false smile she put on as they left, and I told Gordon I’d see him around. He was still laughing slightly, an oddly high pitched sound for someone as well built as him but I’d always thought it truly suited him. I watched them leave down the corridor. The slightly shy, high pitched laugh that tipped back and forth between sniggering and giggling while he hid his red face, was how I always remembered him. I’d sat by him for a year in registration and often sat next to him in other classes we shared yet the laughter was the first thing that came to mind, before I thought about his BB Gun/Airsoft Gun collection, his long army jacket, his insistence on reading the comics I drew in class before anyone else… I could only recall one time where he’d ever lost his temper, and even then that had been my fault for pushing him (adding “said Gordon, angrily” to the end of everything he said) and I’d basically done it on purpose.
Walking into the house I was staring at my phone, scrolling through the local news trying to find out what had happened to him. I couldn’t see anything about a car accident or a works accident, the two most likely scenarios in my mind. Undeterred I searched his name specifically, left my phone on the side to load the page and went into the kitchen and poured myself a drink and washed my hands and face, as I always did when I came in out of habit. When I came back to my phone, I dropped it in shock. Gordon Harding, far from being a victim of an accident, had been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Ashleigh Robinson
’s Father. I suddenly felt sick and bending down to pick up my phone, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to stand back up without throwing up. On top of that, I was suddenly far too hot and slightly dizzy, I walked over and sat on the stairs, running my hands through my hair. I felt as though everything had been turned slightly on its side, and that everything was slowly going to tip towards the wall. Could Gordon be a murderer? I mean he’d done some weird things – a few years before he met Ashleigh he asked out a mutual friend and she politely turned him down. Next time she saw him, he rolled up his sleeves and showed her some fresh scars that were cross crossing his wrists and added pointedly “you made me do that”. That didn’t make him a murderer though. It maybe meant he had some issues, but it didn’t make him a murderer. He had collected replica airsoft weaponry but again – that didn’t make him a murderer. The more I thought, the more “warning signs” I found to pull out and highlight in my memory, the more I dismissed them as actually meaningless. When he’d lost his temper with me, he’d picked me up off the ground and told me to stop but he hadn’t actually hurt me. I remembered him standing up to some sport-star high school douchebags who were messing with me, telling them calmly to stop “now” and watching them back down from his rugby player physique. Ultimately, I decided there were no warning signs; yet, I couldn't help think that there was something that I had picked up on within him, something unspoken in Gordon that I just couldn't quite articulate. I sat on the stairs for about an hour, head in my hands, watching as the day became sunset, and eventually evening and night. We weren’t the best of friends, but I’d always liked him. Always had time for him. I felt sick for a long time after that, sitting in the dark.
At the subsequent trial it came out that the murder had bubbled up from an argument about money, with Ashleigh accusing her father of selling some jewellery she felt was hers and using the proceeds to gamble. Gordon and Ashleigh were living with him at the time, and Ashleigh had masterminded the plan. Gordon had stabbed Ashleigh’s father fifteen times, with two knives, attacking the man while he slept in order to get access to a safe that contained just £900. The judge and jury rejected Gordon’s claims of self-defense and sentenced him to life, with a minimum of 22 years to be served. Ashleigh received the same for masterminding the attack while two others, Ashleigh’s younger sister and her boyfriend, received life with a minimum of 18 years. The prosecution successfully argued that while Gordon had committed the actual murder, the others should be prosecuted for their “joint enterprise” in the attack and a subsequent appeal to lower the sentence was rejected by the lord chief justice. A few days after the trial, I saw Ashleigh’s older sisters on a TV show, talking about their father’s murder. They read a text Ashleigh had sent to her mother the night of the murder (“Things happened, he is no more. Sorry mum. xxxx.”) and behaved and spoke throughout as if Ashleigh had wielded the knife, clearly seeing her as the aggressor behind the tragic events. They recounted how their father had been murdered over four pieces of cheap jewellery and mentioned Gordon only once.
In spite of everything, their viewpoint didn’t make me feel any better about things. I didn’t think it was that easy. Gordon may have been co-dependent and lonely, but that doesn’t make you a murderer. I didn’t think it was as easy as “Ashleigh told him to do it”. That simplistic analysis didn’t sit well with me. When I asked myself honestly, if I could imagine Gordon suggesting murder as the possible solution to a problem, the honest answer was “yes”. Maybe Ashleigh pressured him but my uneasy stomach couldn’t swallow the idea that Gordon was simply manipulated into this situation. Maybe that’s why I felt so sick about this – I had to face the realization that I had always known on some level that he was capable of something so terrible, yet never quite allowed myself to process those thoughts until it happened. Maybe I felt sick because it wasn’t as much of a shock as it should have been. That last thought echoed around my head for weeks after.
Even now, a few years later, I find myself wondering if I really knew he was capable of this or if I just amended my memories after he was charged with the murder. I'm not sure I'll ever know. I do know, however, that in spite of everything I still miss the guy who used to laugh at my pratfalls, even though his girlfriend disapproved. I still like that guy, and I'm honestly not sure what that says about me.
This site has got me writing after literally years of avoiding it due to depression and lack of confidence. I'm honestly grateful just for that, and hopefully I'll start improving with regular practice.