‘Hi, girls, how do you fancy starting our own detective agency?’
Steph, Helen and Jess look at me as though I’m bonkers but – to give them their due – they go along with it, even if at first I can tell they’re just humouring me. We start throwing ideas back and forth, exploring the concept, and gradually they seem to start believing in it. There was never any question in my mind that they would be part of it.
I know that starting a brand new business venture with no capital isn’t going to be fun. Let’s face facts, though – when you hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere else to go, right?
‘Let me get this straight: we’re literally going to watch people?’ Jess asks me.
‘Well, that’s the idea!’
Back in primary school, I used to spend weeks writing scripts and putting on miniature pantomimes with my friends. We’d have ‘big’ ideas of putting them on the school stage and performing to fellow classmates, but they never actually took off. I know that the detective agency could be really good – no, amazing – work. Making it a reality was another thing. It could go the same way as The Wizard of Oz very quickly!
‘Seems too good to be true, doesn’t it?’ I say to the ladies, tapping my pen on the table.
‘It does a bit, yeah,’ Steph agrees.
‘But we have to give it our best shot. Something tells me it will work. People need the help, and we’re the perfect people to give it. We know where they’re coming from, and we’ve all been there.’ I look at the ladies, and it’s true. We’ve all been cheated on at some point. They’re nodding!
‘I totally agree. If it doesn’t work, then at least we know we tried,’ Jess says with conviction.
‘That’s more like it.’
‘I just think it’s really darn cool. Will people really pay us to watch their other halves? … I’m so excited!’ Steph squeals.
It’s hard work getting it off the ground. I spend several months producing a website and designing lots of marketing flyers. And I have to give Steph, Helen and Jess credit – they are genuinely amazing. They pound the pavements delivering flyers to anywhere and everywhere, identify key areas for us to market and help with the optimisation of the website. We all read anything and everything we can find about methods of detection: surveillance, background checking, DNA testing – you name it. We call experts and pick their brains. We spend hours on the Internet, getting excited about every new discovery. We live and breathe the subject and it’s all we talk about between the four of us.
I have a gut instinct I am going to find this work fascinating. I never felt I entirely fitted in when I was doing property development or working for big companies, but a little business like this sounds like my dream job.
By rights this master plan of ours shouldn’t work. For some strange reason, though, I feel it might just come off. We’ll each work from home to start off with, and mine will be the main number to call, but I’ll bring in the others as and when I need them. And we’ll call it ‘The Lady Detective Agency’. For years ‘Lady’ has been my nickname. Even my car registration plate says ‘Lady’ – something I’ll have to change, actually, because it’s a little too obvious for surveillance missions. The only flaw is that it sounds like we only help women, when really we want to help anyone. Men are just as insecure as women, and women are unfaithful just as much as men – I should know. But my gut instinct tells me the name is right for now anyway!
When we can’t possibly do any more research, or read anything else about investigation, and our lives have become totally engrossed in the new business, we start doing some surveillance work for friends, without charging, and that helps us to hone our methods and work out where the pitfalls might lie. But still we haven’t had a paying job.
I am almost losing the faith, when one day about four weeks after we first start planning the agency …
The phone has finally started to ring! I’m spinning round on my new revolving chair when the Mission Impossible soundtrack – my new ringtone – begins to emit from my mobile. I wonder if this whole ‘private detective’ thing is going to my head? I’m loving the training, and I’m loving everything surrounding it, but have to keep reminding myself that I’m supposed to be a serious businesswoman.
It’s a lovely summer day in 2009, pleasantly warm but not too hot. I’ve spent the morning with Paris, who is now at playschool. One of the huge benefits of having free time is that I’m getting to spend proper mothering time with her.
Anyway, when I hear Mission Impossible, I dive off the chair, realise I’m feeling dizzy from all that spinning, and wobble my way, giggling slightly, to the phone. I don’t know the number off by heart and answer with my usual bright and breezy ‘Hello!’
‘Hello, is this the detective lady?’
Suddenly I sober up out of my dizzy state and am on high alert.
‘It is. How can I help?’ I walk through to the office, taking my place at my desk and becoming a little more serious. Pen is ready in hand!
‘I’m worried about my husband. I don’t think he’s being faithful.’ It’s said in a very matter-of-fact tone.
I take her name – Jane – then put on my best ‘I care’ voice and ask, ‘OK, is there any reason you think that?’
‘There are a few reasons, but mainly it’s because I just have that gut instinct.’
That sounds scientific! Although I am a huge believer in gut instinct, I need something else to go on.
‘He took fourteen minutes to get to work two days ago, and it should only have taken him eight!’
Oh dear! This doesn’t sound like it’s going to be good, I’m thinking to myself, while rolling my eyes. How can she be timing him so precisely? She must be calling him constantly to check where he is. I let it pass, though.
‘And then, I checked out his car mat, and there was mud on the one behind the driver’s seat.’
I wonder if this is the point when I need to tell her she’s crackers? Everyone gets mud in their car, for all kinds of reasons. But this is our first client so I go along with it.
‘Do you have any idea what you would like us to do or shall I talk you through our services?’ I ask, trying to get a little more normality back into this conversation.
‘I thought of surveillance, but I’m not too sure.’
‘We can do surveillance. We charge £40 per hour, but if you’re too far out of Manchester we would have to charge travel expenses.’
‘I’m in Norwich,’ she informs me.
‘That’s too far out of our remit to be included, but we could come to you for a charge of 60p per mile,’ I say, making it up on the spot! ‘It sounds as though surveillance would be a good idea if you’re worried about where he is. Do you think he’s going somewhere apart from work? Or do you think he could be straying at other times of day?’
‘His work does worry me, and there’s one girl in particular I have concerns about. Muriel. She works with him in the same office. There’ve been rumours before. His Christmas party last year was riddled with gossip that they’d been up to no good.’
‘Who said that?’ I ask, thinking to myself that she should have a conversation with the people spreading the rumours.
‘Lots of people. One woman in particular I know well; she’s a friend of mine. Although, that being said, she is also a friend of my husband’s. She says they’re flirty in the office. I know he is a very flirty person, and one of those touchy-feely types. Just not with me.’
‘The thing to do is stay calm, and try not to let anything be blown out of proportion. People say lots of things,