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The Real Lady Detective Agency: A True Story
Rebecca Jane
Why won’t he ever let you use his phone? Why is he always going on about that girl from work? Is he cheating on you?Why won’t he ever let you use his phone? Why is he always going on about that girl from work? Is he cheating on you?There’s one way to find out – ask him. Then (when he lies) call Rebecca Jane, founder and owner of the Lady Detective Agency.The Agency is one of the UK’s most successful female private detective services. It exists for one purpose: to find the truth.Whether that means trailing a transsexual prostitute through the streets of London, following suspected cheats on stag parties, tracking down someone’s beloved pet ferret or uncovering famous people’s affairs, Rebecca and her elite team will help. Whatever it takes.Their extraordinary dedication stems from first-hand experience of deception. Here Rebecca not only reveals her clients’ fascinating stories, but her own rollercoaster journey too – from early success to crushing failure, scandal, abuse and affairs, and ultimately to finding true love.At times heartbreaking, hilarious and eye-opening, this vibrantly-written compilation of stories introduces us to a sparkling and witty new voice in Rebecca and her crack team of female detectives who are always ready to solve any case, no matter how big or small.For the first time, the Agency is opening its doors and revealing its secrets.Guilty consciences beware.
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CONTENTS
Cover (#u87a64f77-7702-587c-9767-fdb12725a5c6)
Title Page (#ulink_e3e1dd54-5575-52dc-9e34-ec38bd2a3064)
About the Author (#ulink_4cc8e11c-4f82-549a-830a-5ec87dc6b295)
Dedication (#ulink_33281803-70c0-5284-80fc-e05062897e1d)
Prelude (#ulink_a122a839-0707-507a-962b-9d6a7b008843)
1. The Making of Me (#ulink_061cb7ca-867b-5bf6-ba0b-46f84c81204f)
2. Freedom (#ulink_270b112e-249f-5fbf-b9cd-ebd84e506f83)
3. Finding our Feet (#ulink_51097e80-e721-5780-94fc-cb7bf5394ed1)
4. The Ladies Versus the CSA (#ulink_f0da3e97-c853-59f3-a4ad-eb22003da227)
5. The Dating Game (#ulink_ba89b051-8293-54e2-aae0-82734213ee3d)
6. Diamond-dealing Failure (#litres_trial_promo)
7. Morals Fly Out of the Window (#litres_trial_promo)
8. Honey Trap, Honey Trap (#litres_trial_promo)
9. Transsexuals R US … God Help Me! (#litres_trial_promo)
10. Saying Goodbye to the Past (#litres_trial_promo)
11. Stag Party Times (#litres_trial_promo)
12. The One that Breaks Us? (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Mr Perfect (#litres_trial_promo)
14. When Sadness Hits New Lows (#litres_trial_promo)
15. Just When you Think you Know it All … (#litres_trial_promo)
16. The Beaming Smile Family (#litres_trial_promo)
17. When Clients Mess with your Head! (#litres_trial_promo)
18. The Ultimate Choice (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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Rebecca Jane started The Lady Detective Agency in 2009 at the age of twenty-four, after being cheated on by her husband. With her highly trained team of ladies, she now helps hundreds of people solve their problems. She was a finalist for Business Woman of the Year 2011 and was nominated for Inspirational Woman of the Year 2012. She also made the top 100 UK Mumpreneur list.
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For Ben, Paris and Peaches
PRELUDE (#ue57176e2-4fff-50a3-ac8a-371a83c35aa1)
‘Is it eight yet?’ Steph asks me.
‘Not even close!’ I tell her.
‘I feel like I’ve been sitting here a lifetime; my bum is numb. I need a walk.’
All of a sudden I hear the jolly sound of a child-like jingle. It’s an ice-cream van!
‘Here you go, perfect opportunity for you,’ I say to her, handing over some coins and sending her off in search of ice cream.
‘Amazing! Surveillance is always made easier when an ice-cream man turns up …’
Steph isn’t wrong. We’ve been sat outside the same house for eight hours straight, and we’ve another three to go. I’m pretty sure it could be classed as a torture technique.
My life is crazy. There’s no two ways about it. Every day when the phone rings I never know what’s coming next. I think I’ve heard it all, and then someone new enters my life. They have seriously bizarre tales and, more importantly, problems that need solving.
When I say problems, I don’t mean things like: ‘Who’s going to make tea tonight?’ or ‘What shall I wear for my date on Saturday?’ The sorts of problems I hear about, and end up deeply involved with, are: ‘Is my husband having an affair?’ (that’s a very common one); ‘Is the man I met online who tells me he’s a multi-millionaire with boats and bodyguards real?’ (not every day, but that one’s blatantly another fraudster), or ‘Is my girlfriend’s house secretly being used as a brothel during the day?’ (that may sound ludicrous, but you’d be surprised how often it occurs).
My personal life used to be filled with drama, but when the need for drama in me went away, it manifested itself in a different form – a detective agency!
A new client picks up the phone and tells me their tale of woe. I sit and listen. If they go down the emotionally distraught route, I put myself in their position. The same position I once found myself in – and I had nowhere to turn. Am I shocked or surprised? Not at all. These tales they tell sound crazy and dramatic, but they’re all true. This is my life. My real life. Every day I find myself trying to complete the largest jigsaws known to man, putting together all the tiny pieces to help make some sense out of them on my client’s behalf. We create a picture, and it forms the truth. The scariest part for me is that I think this is all perfectly normal.
Sometimes I wonder if morally I’m doing the right thing … You’re either in Camp Yes or Camp No.
Camp Yes: They’re the people I do this for. They believe in every aspect of our work. They appreciate the need for the truth and an agency like ours to turn to. They totally believe my life motto: ‘If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to be scared of.’
Camp No: They pretty much hate me (and our agency), and they make it known. They tell me that we entrap people, that we ruin relationships and look for things that aren’t there. I think they have something to hide!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very firm in my beliefs: that we provide a good service to the general public and are helping anyone who asks for it. There are days, though, when Camp No get into my head. They make me question all my morals and beliefs. I’ll have a little battle with myself about the rights and wrongs, but then I have to let it go. I don’t believe I’m a bad person for doing what I do.
I created this dream and I’m standing by it. To help other people who are in need, to give them somewhere to turn when they have nowhere else, that’s the reason why, right now, today, I find myself sat in a car with a fellow lady and friend who got roped into this crazy plan with me. She’s one of many, and we sit with binoculars in hand ready to catch the cheaters – or the long-lost loves, transsexuals, missing relatives or, occasionally, a household pet or two. Every once in a while you can’t help but ask yourself, how on earth did my life come to this?
THE MAKING OF ME (#ue57176e2-4fff-50a3-ac8a-371a83c35aa1)
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.
