Читать книгу The Real Lady Detective Agency: A True Story - Rebecca Jane - Страница 7

Back in 2009 I was faced with a choice that would change my life forever. I’d been unhappy for years, pretty much since I married my husband. Life had always been on the edge and drama found me no matter where I hid. I was twenty-four and the mother of a little angel, Paris, who was about to be three. Did I really want to become a divorce statistic at such a young age? Certainly not – it was my worst nightmare. I’d been fighting for three years to keep my marriage together, even though I knew the week before the wedding that I should have called it off.

Don’t get me wrong; in the beginning James, my husband, was fantastic. But after we got engaged and I became pregnant, he changed. I’d met him in a nightclub and always knew that he liked to have a good time but I warned him that he needed to keep it under control if he was to hang onto me. So for a while he did. He stopped seeing his best friend Martin, who had the same party ethic, and didn’t even take his calls for a while.

Life was great for about a year but after I got pregnant the best friend was back on the scene. When James decided I was being ‘too boring’, he’d simply pick up the phone and call Martin. Then came the disappearing acts. He would go to work and not return home for three days. These weren’t just any random trips; he would go to Italy, Spain and often Ireland. I’d come home from work and check if his passport was still there, just to get some indication whether he would be returning any time soon. He ignored my calls and texts while he was away, then on his return he acted as if nothing had happened. As if this crazy life we were living was normal. Eventually he mentally broke me, and I became convinced every man did the same thing and every woman put up with it. I thought it was just the way things were.

Next came other women. Rumours would circulate around my home town, the small Lancashire village of Barrowford. It’s the type of place where everyone knows each other, and houses look like cottages from postcards. All the things I loved about it – the close-knit community and the pubs that were so gorgeous on a sunny summer afternoon – I began to hate. The pubs became places where everyone whispered behind your back, and the people I’d hung out with for years were feeding me information about my so-called ‘wonderful’ marriage. I’d hear that James had been seen with his arms around the local trollop, or texting random girls. It was horrible. The place I’d held so close to my heart was now filled with doom and gloom.

One day James announced he was moving out of our home. I was seven months pregnant with our daughter, and we’d been married for two months. It made no sense.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked.

‘I don’t like the house any more.’ That was his sole explanation.

What did he expect me to do?

‘You stay here, and I’ll move back in with you when you find somewhere else to live. In the meantime, I’m moving in with Martin.’

So I found myself living alone in a three-bedroom detached farmhouse, totally isolated. I was miles from the village, and the nights were cold, dark and very lonely. It felt as if I had nothing but silence for company. I could have moved back home to my parents’, but did I really want to do that? I was married, had a child on the way, I had bills and a house of my own. Why would I just up sticks and move back in with them?

The rumours around the village got worse. Now that my husband had moved out, I questioned everything. Was he really at his friend Martin’s? Had he moved out because of me? Did he want someone else? No one moves out simply because they don’t like their house; there must be another reason. My paranoia became so great I couldn’t function. I went to sleep every night with questions swirling around my head, like a song on repeat.

James and I were still talking, and had no intention of splitting up, but I was hitting rock bottom without even realising it. I’d ring his phone on a Friday after work to see what we were doing that weekend, and it would be off. First time I’d let it slide; second, I’d start to worry; and after an hour I knew what the score was. He’d done it again – vanished. Where he had gone was anyone’s guess. I’d crash to the floor, sobbing my heart out.

I was seven months pregnant. I couldn’t cope any more. I needed to do something about my paranoia and find out what he was up to. I dived into the Yellow Pages. Scared and nervous, I picked up the phone and rang some private investigators. I’d tell them the situation, explain why I had suspicions and say that I wanted my husband followed for a period of time.

I telephoned three altogether, and felt far worse than I had before I’d spoken to them. They were the classic investigators, cold and hard. They didn’t care whether my suspicions were valid. They didn’t care how traumatised I was, or give any thought to my feelings. They all had the same attitude: they wanted to sting me for a ridiculous fee and get me off the phone as soon as possible. Some would only work for me if I hired them for a minimum of a day, some the minimum of a week. Either way, when they were charging close to £100 per hour, it was looking like a costly exercise. There were no guarantees I would get any information. I might even decide to have him watched on one of the days he came straight home. I felt more paranoid than ever, but I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t going to throw nearly £1,000 down the drain with no guarantee of a result.

In desperation I called one of my best friends, Jess. We’d known each other for six years at that time, and had been through a lot together. When we met, I was working in my first job out of college as a marketing coordinator for the local nightclub, and I saw Jess there almost every night because she loved to party. Then one Sunday when I walked in to work, Jess was sitting on a sofa. As always, I was happy to see her friendly face, but the light in her eyes had gone. I said hello in my best cheery voice and asked how she was, but Jess shook her head. I sat down next to her.

‘My mum’s dying,’ she said.

I honestly thought it was a weird joke. ‘Yeah, right!’ I replied.

‘No, seriously. She went in for a little operation two days ago, and there’ve been complications. Me and Adrian [her brother] have just been at the hospital. They’ve said we need to turn off her life support.’

Jess’s mum was a wonderful woman. She made me laugh and her house was always open to any of Jess’s friends. Her father wasn’t around and the whole time I’d known her, it was just Jess and her mum. They were inseparable and best friends. She was only in her forties and Jess was only eighteen, so her sudden illness was very shocking.

The next day Jess and Adrian went to the hospital to say goodbye to their mother and turn off the machine. A week before she’d been fighting fit and well, zooming around the house with the vacuum. Now, she was gone.

Next came the funeral, and every part of the aftermath. There was no one left to take care of Jess. She was on her own except for her brother, who was married. One thing was certain: a bond formed between us during that period that won’t ever be broken.

Anyway, back to my call to Jess.

‘I need your help. Where are you?’ I asked. She’d been roughly kept in the picture about my marriage for the past few months, but she didn’t know the full extent of it.

‘I’m at a football match. It’s brilliant! We’re winning 2–0!’ She was clearly inebriated, but I couldn’t have cared less.

‘I’m coming to get you – now,’ I said.

Jess was confused but after a short debate, she was told I wasn’t taking no for an answer, and one way or the other she was leaving the match early.

Fifteen minutes later I was parked up outside the football ground in my black Range Rover, which was my pride and joy. In my wing mirror I could see her running as fast as she could down the pavement. She threw herself into the car, asked what was wrong, and the whole sorry tale came bursting out. What I wanted to do was go to the pub where I suspected James was, and find out what he was up to.

‘Let’s go catch the bastard then,’ she agreed.

Jess was always there for me, and there would be plenty more times like this to come. In the following weeks we often sat outside pubs, peering through the windows to see if James was there. Our first attempts were totally unsuccessful, though. It was time to raise our game.

Jess wasn’t the only person roped in to help with the DIY detection plan. Stephanie and long-time friend Helen were also thrown in at the deep end. Stephanie and I met when I was a student, aged seventeen. We both worked a part-time job together at a call centre. The girl’s beauty makes me sick! I’ve seen her at her worst and still she looks perfect: a total natural beauty with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Very small, and slim too! Lots of girls know they’re good-looking, and use it. Steph doesn’t. There’s no part of her appearance that’s fake. She even refuses to wear fake tan on her face (which I simply don’t understand!). Men swoon over her. There aren’t many natural beauties around any more and they lap it up.

Helen is a couple of years younger than me. She’s a cross between a sassy type of cool-looking girl and a traditional lass. When we met some seven years ago she was working in a call centre. If you had to sum up Helen in one word, it would be ‘complex’. Although definitely young at heart, she loves to entertain and behind closed doors she morphs into something else. In a former life, she was Delia Smith – I kid you not! The woman is a total home-maker, which is not what you would expect from her appearance. Helen lives on her own and has done since she was eighteen. There’s no real reason for it; she’s just highly independent.

Over the next few weeks we girls got up to lots of things we shouldn’t. Nights were spent outside pubs in Barrowford with the car’s DVD replaying episodes of Friends, bags of Doritos on hand, and the obligatory pair of binoculars. Six times out of ten we found James. We would watch him snuggling up to girls at the bar, putting his arms around them, whispering in their ears – and when he kissed one in front of us I flipped.

‘That’s it, I’m going in,’ I said pulling on my stilettos when I was already halfway out of the car. By this point I was eight months pregnant and, if I’m being honest, it probably wasn’t a pretty sight. I didn’t care. I’d just had enough. How much more proof did I need? I’d heard the rumours and now I’d seen it. What he was getting up to behind closed doors, I didn’t need to guess.

I pushed through the doors of the pub with a very frantic and disturbed bunch of friends in tow. James greeted me like I was something stuck on his shoe. He always gave me a look in those days that I read as one of disgust. Was it just my paranoia? I’ll never know now.

I asked him what he thought he was doing, and he simply told me he was having a drink with his friend. The girl next to him was shooting me daggers, as if I was the one in the wrong.

‘Are you going to go now?’ he asked coldly.

It was as if I was living in the twilight zone. Didn’t he realise I’d seen him kissing her? Did he care if I had? I don’t think he did.

‘Are you coming with me?’ I asked, still getting daggers from the girl. How could she do that when she could see my huge bump? So much for sisterhood …

‘No, but you’re going,’ he told me, standing up and ushering me towards the door.

‘He’s not worth it,’ Stephanie told me, taking a gentle hold of my arm.

I wasn’t going to embarrass myself any further, so I turned around without a word and walked out, leaving my husband with the girl.

When I was on my own, I questioned everything. If he was so unhappy, why did he not just end it with me? Why keep pretending it wasn’t happening? What was I doing that was so wrong? Should I leave, and admit failure? How could I bring up a child on my own? I wasn’t prepared for it when I found out I was pregnant, and now I was a month away from having the baby I still didn’t feel prepared.

James and I had decided to start trying for a family six months before our wedding. I’d been on the contraceptive pill for years and we both thought it would take a good while to conceive. We were wrong. On holiday I started to feel sick very quickly, and I missed a period.

Coincidentally, the weekend before that had been James’s first-ever vanishing act. He went on the Friday and returned on the Monday as if nothing had happened. It distressed me. He’d been at a concert and purposely ignored every call I made and text I sent. For all I knew he was dead under a bus somewhere. Was this a sign of things to come? I didn’t know, but it caused a blazing row. I am normally a pretty calm and laid-back person but it scared me.

Now I was faced with the prospect of having a baby. Was it the right time, and was this still the right path for me? When I thought there was a chance it could be true, I wasn’t excited or happy the way I should have been. I was scared. I went to Sainsbury’s and bought a pregnancy test. I couldn’t wait for the result so I went into the public toilets and took the test, then as I walked back to the car I nervously looked at the result. It was positive. What did I do? I rang Stephanie. Not my soon-to-be husband. I didn’t do a little dance for joy in the car park. I rang my best friend. The whole process of this life-changing discovery was wrong.

Stephanie knew I wasn’t very happy. If it hadn’t been for the vanishing act the previous weekend, I’m sure it would have been a different story. Alarm bells were screaming in my head, but what do you do in that situation?

Steph said I didn’t have to go through with it. I didn’t have to tell him if I didn’t want to, but if I did she was happy for me.

When I hung up the phone I sat for ten minutes in silence. But there was no question. I wanted this baby and I was having it.

I went to tell James, who was at work at the time. We both sat down, I showed him the test and … nothing.

‘Great news,’ he said after a while. He hugged me, and went back to work. Life-changing moment – over.

Looking back, nothing in our relationship had been right. So many little alarm bells rang. The DIY detective spell came to a very abrupt halt one late night in March. Our daughter was due in three weeks, and I was larger than a house. We were still living in separate houses, and life was getting no better.

Stephanie and I had been outside a pub watching James for a couple of hours. A taxi turned up at the door and he got in, with his best friend Martin. We set off in pursuit. After ten minutes we got the feeling something was wrong. The taxi had led us in a big circle through the village. It went down some back streets for no apparent reason. When it started to gain rapid speed, we knew we had been caught. Did I stop following, as I should have done? What was I going to achieve now? I didn’t know, but equally I didn’t stop. We were driving at 50mph down tiny streets with a 30mph speed limit, and it was crazy. Stephanie was scared. She was pleading with me to stop, but something had taken over me.

The taxi drove onto my parents’ estate, where they were waiting outside their house in their dressing gowns. James must have phoned ahead to warn them what was happening. The taxi pulled up and I came to a halt behind it. I told Stephanie to get out and stay with my parents. A very heated argument then took place between my parents and James, while I refused to get out of the car. I knew he would leave again, and I was ready to follow.

James and friend got back in the taxi and sped off again. So did I. The pursuit continued, but not for long. The taxi lost control and slammed on the brakes so hard I couldn’t avoid crashing into the back of it.

James sat in the taxi but the taxi driver got out and yelled, ‘What have you done to my taxi?’ Neither car would start up again.

James rang Mum and Dad and told them what had happened. They came straight away, still in their dressing gowns. As I stood by the roadside watching my car being towed away, I vowed that was the last time I would follow him. From then on, he could do whatever he wanted. This whole situation had gone way beyond my control and I’d had enough. I wondered if the constant need to know where he was had turned me psychotic. Did I need psychiatric help? Was his behaviour normal while mine was irrational? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. My marriage was doomed. It should never have gone ahead.

James and Mum didn’t talk to each other again until I was in the delivery room, having our daughter. Compared to pregnancy the labour was easy, and Paris was born in spring 2006. I’d found a new house by that time, and James moved back in.

For a couple of weeks, life was OK. Not brilliant, but OK. I didn’t understand Paris. To me she was just a little ball of energy that had turned up in my life and I simply had to care for her. She didn’t feel like she’d come from me, or even that she belonged to me. It all made no sense. Mentally I was struggling. Now I look back and think all the drama while I was pregnant contributed to my feelings. I’d been emotionally battered and instead of recovering, I was getting worse. I didn’t even realise it.

When Paris was eight weeks old James vanished again, and this time it seemed to be for good. I didn’t actually care. A handwritten note from him was posted through my parents’ front door telling me that he loved me and Paris but couldn’t live with us any more.

At first I was devastated, but that only lasted a day. Next I decided to apply for a divorce, but the solicitor told me you can only do that once you’ve been married for a year. I changed my phone number, and told my parents not to take any calls on my behalf.

Then James’s mum began to pester me constantly, and after three weeks I caved in and met her. She told me James wanted to talk to me. It turned out he was in Spain. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt – mainly to find out why he’d done this – and I rang him.

I remember that day so clearly. It was at my parents’ house. Jess and Mum were in the lounge. I was in the hallway on the stairs. We talked and I interrogated James. His master plan was that Paris and I should go out to Spain and live with him. I won’t disclose the expletives that followed. I’ve always been a big believer that swearing doesn’t get your point across any better, but that day the words all flooded out. My short answer to his solution was ‘no’.

The next I knew, Dad was upstairs in the office on the phone to easyJet and he’d booked me on the first flight leaving in the morning.

‘You’re going out there, and you’re going to get him back home and sort this mess out. I’ve already paid for the flight, so you’ve got no choice.’

I tried in vain to put up a fight, but in the morning I was on my way. Paris stayed with Mum and Dad.

It took me three weeks to convince James to come back, and when he did he refused to live in our home town. He wanted a fresh start, and to be honest I thought it would be a good way to help us move forward with our marriage. We didn’t know where we would live exactly, but we packed up the car and set off. First it was Scotland, next was the Lake District. I went into estate agents and told them we were in holiday accommodation, and wouldn’t be leaving until we found somewhere permanent.

At the time I was well into a property development career, so moving wasn’t too difficult for me. I found a barn in the middle of a field and began transforming it bit by bit into a dream house. On the surface, it looked as though I had it all: a reformed husband, an excellent career, the best cars money could buy, a beautiful daughter and everything in between.

But inside I was empty. The thought of death grew more appealing to me with each day that passed. When they visited my family saw straight through the façade and realised I had severe postnatal depression.

I couldn’t cope any more. I knew I needed help, and fast. If I hadn’t got it, it wouldn’t have been long before I did something drastic. I wrote lots of letters to Paris telling her how sorry I was for being her mother. That I’d brought her into such a messed-up life was getting beyond any kind of joke.

I did two things to help myself. First I saw my doctor, who prescribed antidepressants. But when I told James, he threw them out of the window. He didn’t want me taking them, because he believed they would make me worse than I already was. I spoke to the doctor again and told her what happened. She re-prescribed and I started taking the medication.

The second thing I did was a bit more twisted and irrational. Instead of ending my marriage, because I thought failure wasn’t an option, I turned to a man whom I’d adored since I was seventeen. He was a married man called John. We’d had an affair previously but I’d finished it after I met James, and we’d not spoken since.

Eighteen months later, when Paris was still a tiny baby, I picked up my phone and texted him: ‘Fancy meeting up?’

He was surprised to hear from me but said ‘yes’ straight away and the next day I went to meet him. He couldn’t stop smiling, and he soon made me feel desirable again. I’d forgotten what that feeling was like. He wanted to know everything I’d been up to so I told him the basic outline of the story, but I left out my true emotions. I said that James had been cheating on me, and he was sympathetic and understanding. He listened and actually cared about what I was saying. It had been so long since I’d felt listened to by a man that I was instantly, once again, hooked on him.

Not surprisingly, we ended up back in a ‘version’ of a relationship that continued for the next few years. How clever was that? I had a husband who was unreliable and cheated on me, and what solution did I come up with? Yes, clever clogs started cheating on him. When it came to relationships, I still had a lot to learn.