A BRIDE GROOM who killed himself 19 days after his wedding attempted suicide with his former lover hours before he ended his life. An inquest on 16 February heard how Stephen Hartwell, 46, had an emotional reunion with his ex-lover Nicola Cordrey, 22, when she discovered he’d remarried. In a bizarre suicide pact, they put a hose from the exhaust into his car. Nicola said she’d never intended them to die and pulled him, semi-conscious, on to the passenger seat. Shortly after, he drove her home. Then Stephen, a divorced father of two with a printing business, drove off, re-attached the hosepipe and killed himself. The inquest, attended by his first and second wives and ex-lover, heard how he’d split up with Nicola last year just a month before meeting Rosemary King, 45, whom he married three months later.

Rosemary, a nurse, has a drawn face, dead eyes and a smoker’s voice. Sometimes she wenches her fingers when she talks, other times her voice cracks and she breaks down crying. She tortures herself with questions. Was Stephen still in love with Nicola? Did he regret his marriage to her? If he wanted to be with Nicola, why did he kill himself?

Rosemary went on a blind date with Stephen last June. They had both divorced after long marriages and she found him attractive. ‘He was clever, liked classical music and wore odd socks.’ Stephen told her then how his brother had shot a man and then killed himself.

Next date, he said his old girlfriend, Nicola, lived with him and his sons. ‘He slept in his son’s room. He said she was living with him because she had nowhere else to go.’ Two months later, he moved into a new flat with just his son.

In September, Stephen proposed. They wanted to marry immediately, but had to wait six weeks for his decree absolute. Why the rush? ‘After his divorce he felt, ‘Do you ever really know anybody?’ We decided to grow together.’ THEY married in a register office, Rosemary wearing a lace wedding dress. ‘I put it in with him in his coffin,’ she says, crying. ‘It didn’t make sense to keep it.’ With chilling prescience, the couple aren’t smiling in their wedding photos.

They made love for the first time that night. ‘He’d kept saying, ‘I don’t want to sleep with you until I marry you.” She laughs. They didn’t have a honeymoon: business, which had been patchy, was now brisk.

Their 19-day marriage was blissful. ‘We looked at Anglo-Saxon architecture, had all-day breakfasts and talked and talked.’ His family had never seen him so happy, says Rosemary, crying, and she didn’t notice in him any sign of anxiety.

On the day of his death, she drove him to work. ‘I phoned, as usual, to say, ‘I love you.’ He wasn’t there.’

His mother, who phoned Stephen twice daily, immediately rang his brothers. ‘Only his family knew he’d been suicidal over the years.’ They opened his office and found a note saying, ‘To all those who love me, thank you.’

‘The bloody bastrd’s left me,’ Rosemary screamed. ‘He’s run off with another woman.’ It didn’t make sense; he’d been desperate to marry her. That night the police searched her house then sat in the kitchen with the wedding cake. ‘We hadn’t yet posted it to people.’ At 9.30am, six police cars arrived… there was a bomb scare. Then two policemen approached her, unsmiling.

‘An emotional bomb exploded inside me. ‘You’ve found Stephen. Has he robbed a bank?’ I joked. I thought, ‘Has he murdered somebody?” They told her, they’d found a man answering Stephen’s description. His children identified him.

‘I went to see him three times before I could believe he was dead.’ Rosemary screws her face in anguish. ‘‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ I asked. Here was this wonderful man I’d just married, lying dead.

‘I wanted to scream but there were no screams inside me. Just this terrible vacuum.’ She lost her voice for days and wept for three weeks until she became dehydrated. She left her job of eight years.

A policeman then told her Stephen had left a note for her. ‘Well love, I haven’t done very well,’ it read. ‘I’m sorry I’m taking the easy way. I’m going for peace (or not, who knows?) I love you, Stephen.’ Then the policeman told her about Nicola. How she’d gone to the police after Stephen died and said they’d spent the day together and had a suicide pact. The police, Rosemary felt, treated her like a murder suspect. They thought Stephen had been deceiving her; but Stephen’s mother said he only saw Nicola, an anorexic who worked at Tesco, because she had nobody else to confide in.

Things became daily more complicated. Stephen’s first wife claimed his watch. ‘I took my marriage certificate to the police station and said, ‘I’m the authentic Mrs Hartwell,” says Rosemary, laughing absurdly. ‘But I didn’t want anything. It was such a mess.’ His relations got everything. Rosemary saw Nicola for the first time at the inquest. ‘This kid recited how they chose the tubes together as if describing making a cake.’ Th emotion in the room was palpable. ‘His mother kept calling out, ‘You bitch,’ to her.’ For Rosemary, the facts didn’t act up. But the police told her they had no proof to charge Nicola with aiding and abetting.

After Stephen’s death, one of his brothers slit his wrists unsuccessfully. Stephen’s first wife told Rosemary how Stephen would sulk for months, had a vile temper and could never be faithful. And his family told her that Nicola threatened suicide each time he attempted to give her up.

Was Rosemary’s life with Stephen a lie? Was Stephen such a good actor? Did she overlook things?

Now Rosemary is picking up the pieces with help from counsellors, friends, her priest and the Samaritans. ‘I just don’t know who the hell I am,” she says. “I have to ask people.’