Gypsy Jane - I've Been Shot Four Times and Served Three Prison Terms?This is the Incredible Story of (16 page)

Bob’s dad couldn’t believe what he saw, as I wasn’t Jane any longer. I was in full combat gear with two samurai swords and I was ready for a war. People had been lying to me and I was not happy. I explained to Bob’s dad that I knew what had been going on and why Bob wasn’t turning up at work. He sat and listened, not only with great interest but also with fear. He asked me what I was going to do about it all and I told him. I was going to our money back.

He agreed and left. He had never seen me like this before and I could see by his face that it worried him. He must have thought I had lost it because he got back to his house and sent all the women in his family away for a week’s holiday at Weymouth with his mother-in-law. Meanwhile, I continued to prepare for war. It was Friday and I took my swords to everyone I thought might know what Bob had been doing and put the fear of God into them. I wanted revenge. It wasn’t just the money. It was the thought that someone had gone against me. Believe me, I only had one thought in my mind – they were going to pay!

I had gone out searching for the evil that was the root cause of the problem. After my rampage I got home and lay down on the settee. I was shattered. Bob’s family didn’t even phone me to see if I was OK. Not that they
needed to but it would have been nice to think they cared. I mean, I was out at war with drug dealers for this family, putting my life on the line while all the women were off on holiday being protected from it all. I just took off my war gear, had a bath and waited until the morning before going back to the garage to confront them all. As I walked in, his brother said, ‘Hello,’ and I replied, ‘Get in the office now. We’re having a meeting.’

Bob, his brother, his dad and I moved into the office and I confronted them. Bob just had his head bowed. I still thought he had just got back on his feet and I really believed he was a good man with a good soul. I was heartbroken but, once again, I blamed someone else for what my man had done and I took Bob back. More fool me. Not only that but I was confiding in Toni. She was my best friend and I told her everything. Something else I would live to regret.

So Bob and I were together and he went back to work again and I was just praying that everything would be OK. All my money had gone into the house but I had a feeling that it was all slipping away. And yet I tried so hard to get our relationship back on track. I was trying to be happy again. Having blamed his brother for Bob’s slide, after a few weeks I even decided to go and make amends. I asked Toni if she wanted to come to Bob’s firm with me for the ride. She got all done up and off we went.

I knew it wasn’t fair to keep blaming everyone else for what Bob had done but I didn’t dream that this was the
day Toni had planned to shatter my world in two. I had begun to realise she would try something. But I swear, as God is my witness, I truly didn’t dream that Bob would play along. At this point I was just trying so hard to put our lives back on track.

We started doing the things we loved. I took Bob to the fair and to a Harrods’ sale in London. I’d never been to Harrods before and it had been one of my dreams.

On Valentine’s Day we went to see the queens of lovers’ rock, Caroll Thompson and Janet Kay, live at the Indigo in London. We were finally living our dreams and I got a membership to the Ministry of Sound as well. I was not a clubber but Bob liked to go out. I was more of a home person but I thought the Ministry of Sound would be perfect. It is a nightclub with the most amazing disco. Bob was still doing really well. He was off the coke but he was never home because he was working hard, sometimes until midnight. As much as I tried to get him to get in earlier, he said his dad just kept loading him up with work.

One day I invited Bob’s mum and dad to dinner. I cooked a lovely roast and made a trifle for dessert. It was a lovely day and, as we sat down, Bob’s dad said he wanted to retire and leave Bob and his brother the firm. Now, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I said, ‘Are you joking? You want to give them your firm? Are you mad?’ I was being straight. I said he had built his firm from nothing and, if they left it to Bob and his brother, I’d give it six months before they didn’t have a firm 
anymore. I told him Bob wasn’t ready for that. I cared about his mum and dad and I knew this was a bad idea so I told them the truth. Bob didn’t like what I was saying but I didn’t care. His mum just wanted to get rid of the firm but I warned them not to. My biggest mistake came afterwards, telling Toni all about the dinner conversation and the family plans for the firm.

I carried on trying to be happy and one day I booked me and Bob a day and night out at a boat party on the Thames. From 5pm to 11pm we would have a meal on the boat as it went up the river and then we would move onto the Ministry of Sound for an all-nighter, finishing at 7am. I was so excited to be letting my hair down for the first time in ages and so was Bob. It was on a Saturday and Bob had to work until 1pm so I told him to be home by about 3pm so it would give us a couple of hours to get to the boat in London.

Well, when 3pm came and Bob wasn’t home, I phoned him but got no answer. So I called the firm and still got no reply. Time ticked on… 4pm, 5pm… and I was still sitting waiting, my best gear on. Now we’d missed the boat party. I was gutted. I kept trying his phone but there was still no answer. Six… seven… eight… nine o’clock came and went. I couldn’t believe what Bob was doing to me. I felt so unhappy. This day had been planned for a couple of weeks and it had cost me a few hundred quid. Bob had ruined it. I was at the end of my tether. What should have been a great day was turning out to be a truly awful day. I phoned Toni
but there was no answer from her either so I texted her and told her Bob hadn’t turned up. Now, she knew I had planned this day and that it was special for me. She even said she would love a day out like that herself. I asked her in the text if she wanted to come to the Ministry of Sound with me to save what was left of the day. I told her Bob didn’t deserve it and he didn’t even look like showing up anyway. She texted me back but she said she couldn’t come because she was at her mum’s.

I was gutted. It was 1am when Bob came in. I told him he had ruined the day and, before he could start making excuses for where he had been, I told him I was still going to the Ministry of Sound. I told him he could come if he wanted to and he agreed. I was so angry but didn’t want the day to be a complete disaster so we set off. I had bought him an Armani suit for the occasion and had even paid for us to be VIPs.

We didn’t get there until 4.30am because Bob couldn’t find the place. I was fuming. This day should have been one of our best but it was turning out to be the worst. Even so, when we got inside, my mood improved. The atmosphere was good and we both started to smile for the first time that day. We went into one of the VIP rooms and it was packed out and pumping.

Some bloke then started eyeing Bob up. ‘Look at him, Bob,’ I said, pointing to the bloke. ‘He fancies you.’ We both laughed and moved away and stood in between two dance stands by the fire exit, as I liked to have my back to the wall so I could see everything that was
happening. I told Bob to go and get us a drink while I danced to the music and started to have a lovely time at last. The heat in the club was overwhelming and I felt like I was going to faint. A couple of blokes asked me to dance but I told them, ‘No, thank you.’ I wasn’t like that. Bob was my fella, for better or worse.

It had been nearly an hour and Bob was still not back. It was packed and I knew the bar was busy but, even so, I was thinking, Where is he? There was a group of Bosnians beside me and one of the girls in the group offered me a drink. I think she could see I was struggling with the heat. But I refused, not knowing who they were. I mean, I didn’t want to accept a spiked drink. You couldn’t be too careful. She was in a group of about five girls and five blokes. I started to go giddy and feel faint again but they started clapping and it helped snap me out of it. Finally – after an hour and a half – Bob came back with vodka and it cooled me down. We had started to dance together when a man jumped down from a platform suspended above us and started dancing along with us. At least, I thought he was dancing with us but then I realised he was dancing with Bob and the way he was doing it was very sexual.

‘Here’s another bloke who fancies you, Bob,’ I shouted above the music. Bob just laughed but I wasn’t finding it funny by then. I was getting embarrassed so I told Bob to tell the bloke he was straight and was with me. But, again, Bob just laughed. So I told the bloke myself. ‘I hope you’re not trying to pull my man. He’s
with me,’ I said politely. Well, he just moved closer to Bob, gave it a bit more dirty dancing and I exploded. I grabbed the man around the throat and ran him back to the dance platform, where he crumpled to the floor.

‘Fuck off, you little poof,’ I said and left him there in a heap on the floor. I have nothing against gays – I believe in live and let live – but I didn’t want anyone trampling on my territory. When I got back to Bob, he was laughing.

‘I gave you the hump there, didn’t I?’ he said

I told him that fighting off other women would make me proud but fighting a man off didn’t amuse me. Then I saw them all coming. This man I had just flattened was with the group that had offered me the drink and now they were signalling to another man on the opposite stage and he was signalling another group. I knew it was going to kick off. I told Bob to shut his mouth as I had bigger problems now. It looked like half the club was with this guy but I could tell that the man on the other dance platform was the main man. By now everyone was looking at me and pointing. So I went to the main man. I’d got a knife down the back of my jeans and I screamed, ‘If today’s the day I die, it’s a good day to die,’ and I waited for his reaction. I knew that, if it went off, I was going to lose this one. There were too many of them but I’d take a few of them with me. The man signalled something to the three blokes who were homing in on me and they turned around and grabbed the bloke who had been trying to pull Bob and brought
him to me. The man said he didn’t know Bob was with me and I accepted his apology. I had no choice really.

It was now 6am and everyone went back to dancing. I was making out I was having the time of my life but I wasn’t really. I didn’t want to be there but I couldn’t lose face so we stayed for the last hour. But I was gutted that Bob had put me in that position. All he’d had to do was say he was straight and with his missus but he hadn’t. He had ruined everything again. What kind of man would do that to his woman? I just didn’t understand.

When we left that morning, the men and women in the group I’d had the encounters with hugged and kissed me as we said our goodbyes. I danced out of there, lying, because I said I had had the time of my life but that was so far from the truth.

When we reached the car, I went mad at Bob. I asked him if he was gay. He said he wasn’t but I had seen in films that gays attract gays and, believe me, they were all Bob had attracted in the two and a half hours we were there. I couldn’t believe what Bob was doing to my head and, when we got home, I made him sleep on the settee.

When I told Toni about our big night out, she couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Do you think my Bob is gay?’ I asked.

‘No way, Jane,’ she said. ‘It was just one of those things. Don’t worry about it.’

After a few days Bob and I were back on speaking terms. But I was starting to wonder about our relationship and all the stuff that had happened. Debts, coke and gays. None of it was right. Then one night I
was waiting for Bob when Toni turned up. She’d got on a mini-skirt, no knickers and she was laughing about it. I didn’t find it funny.

‘What are you coming round here like that for,’ I asked her. ‘If my Bob was home and he had looked at you like that I would have gone mad.’

She knew he wasn’t in and I wondered how? He was a couple of hours late so, if anything, she should have expected him to be in. I told her to go and never to come back dressed like that again. She promised she would never do me wrong but then she had previously told me she went with other men to get money. I said, ‘You do your own family wrong, girl.’ I knew now I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. And yet I still had to trust that Bob wouldn’t cheat on me with Toni, although I was growing more and more suspicious.

But it came to a head when she was over some time later, crying her eyes out after a row with her fella. At first, she said she wanted him to move out because she couldn’t stand being with him. But it was Bob who stood up for her and said that all this rowing was not fair on Toni. He suggested that her bloke Steve should move in with us, in the spare room, for a few days so that she could get some peace and quiet. ‘Are you mad, Bob?’ I shouted. ‘Why would I let her man come and stay here? She wouldn’t be able to come round here herself and I would never see her.’

There was something not right going on here but for some days I just couldn’t see what it was. Then the
penny dropped and I became convinced he was seeing Toni behind my back and that they had both been playing me for a mug. How could I have been such a fool? I confronted Bob, but he denied it. ‘I have spent every penny I had on you and this house!’ I screamed, knowing I had made the biggest mistake of my life. After my endless wars, I thought I’d at last found peace with this man. What a fucking joke that was now. A sad, sad joke. ‘I’m fucked now, Bob, because I have put everything into our relationship,’ I said. I made him write out a receipt for £30,000 so that he couldn’t sell the house without paying me back what I had put in. I just didn’t know what else to do.

I found out that Bob still hadn’t paid any of the bills. I lost it, big style, got a sledgehammer from the garden shed and I smashed his truck to pieces. I smashed every window, every door, every light, everything. He was just lucky I didn’t take the hammer to him because I had never felt like doing anyone more in my life. When I had destroyed his truck, I went back in the house, gasping for breath, a cold fury in my eyes and an aching in my heart.

‘Leave now, Bob.’ I held the heavy hammer tight. ‘Leave now,’ I repeated, ‘before I do something we will both regret.’ And, for the first time in a long time, Bob did the right thing. He even closed the door behind him as he left. I slumped onto the settee. It was the worst moment of my life. I looked up to the heavens with tears in my eyes and thought about my Matt – a real man –
and wondered what I was going to do now. I was so unhappy and alone. My dreams had become nightmares, my happiness had turned to sadness and my love had become shame. I couldn’t cope. I was losing this battle for happiness with every beat of my heart.