Rebecca Jane - The Real Lady Detective Agency - A True Story

‘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.