Helen Bailey murder: How predatory partner driven by greed shattered vulnerable author’s ‘happy ending'

Helen Bailey had described Ian Stewart as her “happy ending”.

After her husband, John Sinfield, had drowned while the couple were on holiday in Barbados in February 2011, the widow had met Stewart, who was this afternoon convicted of her murder, through a Facebook bereavement group.

From an “innocent” friendship blossomed romance and the pair soon became an item.

Successful children’s author Bailey even wrote about her romance with Stewart in her blog, Planet Grief, which became a book, When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis.

In that, she nicknamed Stewart the Gorgeous Grey-Haired Widower (GGHW) and among the dedications was a message to him which read: “I love you. You are my happy ending.”

She could not have been more wrong.

Bailey said had not been looking for new love after her husband’s death.

She also wrote that she was shocked when she had a “disgustingly inappropriate thought” about Stewart while walking through the underwear department of M&S.

Bailey even told him to date other women as she felt “sleazy, guilty and ashamed” by their continual messages.

But she admitted she would have been “devastated” if Stewart had gone out with someone else.

Their first date was at the National Portrait Gallery and then they went to an afternoon screening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in Leicester Square.

Feeling guilty following the death of her husband, Bailey called it a “tearful, angst-ridden disaster, and an acknowledgement that it was all too soon”, she wrote.

Unable to cope with the relationship, the pair put the relationship on hold but she admitted that she missed Stewart too much.

Their friendship was put on hold. “There were no more funny emails, no witty texts. Life felt even darker than it was already. I missed him,” she wrote.

After a break, they started “uncomplicated” dog walking again.

But during one walk on Hampstead Heath, near Ms Bailey’s London home, Stewart got stuck in mud and the author said she was doubled up with laughter.

He laughed, too, and she recalled thinking: “I don’t want to lose that man from my life.”

She also described him as “wonderful” – helping with the plumbing and electrics and listening as she “wailed” – after he drove her to Broadstairs, Kent, to check on her holiday cottage in late 2011.

It was her first visit since her husband’s death but she wrote that Stewart understood as his wife had also died suddenly.

Miss Bailey even braved her fear of taking another beach holiday when they went to Portugal and had a “wonderful” time.

She wrote that she admired Stewart who was “a man who can see an upside in the most dire of situations” and who reassured her they would have “wonderful memories” if the worst happened.

They were both “vulnerable, emotional wrecks” when they met and, unsure if the relationship would survive, she added.

Reluctantly she made their relationship public to her readers in March 2012.

The following year Ms Bailey and her miniature dachshund, Boris, made a “fresh start” in a new home in Royston, Herts, with Stewart and his two sons.

The large old house “felt like home”, she wrote, although it was not always easy “living in a home that came together through sudden death”.

Ms Bailey said one of Stewart’s sons had suggested she end the book by writing “And they all lived happily ever after”.

Instead she signed off by reassuring grieving readers “It will all be OK in the end”.

Three years after she moved to Royston, Ms Bailey was found dead.

:: When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis by Helen Bailey is published by Blink Publishing.