Gangsters' Wives (15 page)

People who’ve seen the film sometimes do ask me if I ever worry that there might be a side to Carlton I haven’t seen yet and the answer is ‘yes’. Do you ever know someone 100 per cent? Isn’t there always a bit that you don’t know? Obviously I know he can be moody and he can have a temper, but there may be another part of him hidden away, and to be honest, that’s the bit I wouldn’t want to know.

He has got a temper. He’s got a very bad temper. It’s ugly. Sometimes Carlton’s temper seems to come out of nowhere. If we’re driving along and someone cuts in front of us, it’s awful. Carlton’s someone with a long memory. He’ll say, ‘Right, if I see that car again …’ and he would actually remember. I’m always the one trying to calm things down, but there have been instances before where there have been altercations. I hate that. I’d rather he shouted at me than get into something with someone else.

Some days he’s got more tolerance than others. If something’s bothered him previously or something’s playing on his mind that’s happened, and someone cut in front of him on the road and got him on a bad day, that’s when the ugly side will come out. Whereas if he’s happy, then there’s more chance that it’ll just go over his head.

I don’t like that side of him, the angry side. I tend to try to ignore it. If he’s like that with me, I think the best thing is to try to ignore him. Then the only person he’s arguing with is himself. I tell him to go out. If he’s really angry, he leaves the house and he’ll drive round the block or something and that’s the way he’ll deal with it. I’ve got quite a temper as well. I say to him, ‘Either you go out or I’ll go out and we’ll calm down and then we’ll talk about it.’ Better that than have a big heated argument. Or I’ll tell him to go into the other room, so that the situation becomes defused. That’s the way I deal with it.

I’ve never been scared of him though. If I was ever scared of him I wouldn’t be with him any more. He does actually understand that if he ever lost it completely with me, then I wouldn’t be his wife any more. That’s why he’d rather just go out. More than half the time I’ll point out he’s not actually angry with me, he’s angry with someone else and taking it out on me.

There are always people who want to make a name for themselves by trying to start something with Carlton. It’s some kind of kudos. They think they can go off and say, ‘I got into a fight with that so-called hard man’. They’re trying to get themselves a reputation. They’re idiots. I have seen him lose his temper really badly before when we’ve been out. That upsets me far more than anything else. I can’t explain it; he goes from one thing to something completely different – it’s so extreme. It’s upsetting and horrible. I think he doesn’t want me to see that. He doesn’t want me to see him lose control.

People won’t do something directly to him, they’ll do it to someone he’s with to get his back up. It’s really underhand. Like one time when we were out, some bloke came up and started making racist comments to a friend of Carlton’s we were with who was Indian. Well, Carlton just completely lost it.

I was telling him to let it go but when he’s in that state, he’s like an animal, you can’t grab him back. He goes crazy – not so much at the other person but just on his own – punching his hands through glass, headbutting something, blood everywhere. It’s horrible really. It’s frightening. I think: if he can do that to himself, what else is he capable of? But in a weird way, he’s trying to calm himself down by doing it, trying to stop himself hitting out at anybody else.

After that time with that bloke I said to him, ‘If you’re going to carry on like that, we haven’t got a future.’ People were ringing up the next day and thinking what happened was cool and it wasn’t at all. There’s all this ego stroking, ‘oh, you were this and you were that’, and they’re all talking about it amongst themselves, but I don’t think that’s any way to behave. It upsets me. I’ve said to him: ‘Don’t do that again.’

Since then I’ve developed an antenna so I can tell if something is going to happen, or someone is going to cause trouble, and I’ll say, ‘Let’s go home’. I won’t give a reason, I’ll just say I want to move on. If he’s with someone I trust as a friend, I’ll say, ‘Why don’t we say this to him, to try to get him away and defuse the situation because it’s going to build up otherwise.’ I have to do it in a way so he’s not aware that’s what I’m doing. I have to do it subtly. Otherwise he’d think I was making him look like an idiot, telling him what to do. He doesn’t like the idea that anyone might think he was under the thumb. In some ways he likes to have a little bit of a rebellion. I can’t tell him what to do. He’s old enough. But there’s a way to persuade him – usually by making him think something is his own idea!

I try not to get into any situations where anyone might try to chat me up. I remember we went to football once and this young bloke sitting next to me started chatting away, and Carlton came late so he didn’t know we were together. But he was really harmless and Carlton could see that so he didn’t say anything. Afterwards he said he was quite flattered because this guy was so young. It would be different if someone was grabbing me. But if someone makes a beeline for me now, I just walk away. It might seem rude but I think: I’m actually helping you here, mate.

As time’s gone on, I can read him better and I know how to deal with things better. Sometimes I know just to leave something and come back to it in a couple of days. I know how to play it more. Most of the time though, he’s happy. He’s a good husband. He cooks every day. I’m very lucky. He’ll always help with things. Moneywise he looks after everything. If I was ill, he’d look after me. He’s caring. He’d make sure I was OK. I know he’ll be there when the baby’s born and he’ll help me. That’s his kind, caring side. In some ways he’s over-kind to people and then they end up taking advantage of him.

Really we just want to have a quiet life. That’s why Carlton is selective about where we go if we go out. He still gets nervous about security. That’ll always be part of him. When you’ve been in the situations Carlton has been in I don’t think you ever stop looking over your shoulder, or casing a place before you go in.

But I’d hope that anxiety might ease a bit in time. Things do change don’t they, as you get older? Of course Carlton doesn’t want to get older. He wants to be Peter Pan. He still keeps himself healthy and fit, although he doesn’t go to the gym so obsessively any more. I try to tell him to start focusing on different things, now, like his family. I say, ‘Look how lucky you are.’

It’s funny, doing things like this book, because I don’t see our life as something extraordinary, or Carlton as this big-shot villain. I’m not interested in the myth of him. I’m only interested in the person. The person inside. Not this exaggerated person who’s on the telly. As far as I’m concerned Carlton is the man who comes to the supermarket with me or cooks me a Sunday roast. He’s not the man on the film. That’s not real. This is real – us at home with the dog and the telly and soon with our baby.

You can keep the myth. I’ll take the reality any day.

Donna is forty-seven, with carefully highlighted blonde hair, and a downright dirty laugh. Originally from California, she now lives quietly in Brighton with her fourteen-year-old daughter Mae. During the 1990s, Mae’s father, Mark, was one of the big players supplying Ecstasy on the London rave scene. The fact he’d already served a two-year prison sentence for shooting someone had helped garner him a fearsome reputation in underworld circles. Despite her sheltered upbringing, Donna not only accepted her husband’s activities, but enthusiastically participated in them, regularly couriering large quantities of drugs up and down to Scotland. Since her marriage broke down three years ago amid bitter recriminations from both sides, Donna has been struggling for money for the first time in her life and is even considering getting a ‘proper’ job. She originally agreed to be identified for this book, wanting to act as a cautionary example to any ‘naive idiots’ like her younger self, but
changed her mind at her daughter’s insistence. ‘I have to accept her wishes. She’s been through enough,’ she said
.

I was a typical Californian all-American girl – blonde, sporty, with a permanent smile on my face. So quite how I ended up living in the East End of London, married to a big-time drug dealer and running thousands of pounds worth of drugs up and down to Scotland is anyone’s guess.

I didn’t come from a rich background, but I would say I came from a decent background. I did well at school, went to college and came out with a Bachelor of Science degree.

When my mother passed away and left me a decent sum of money, I decided to go travelling for a few months. I had an enquiring mind and wanted to see more of life than just the place I’d grown up in.

I met Mark in London. I was in a club called City of Angels, which I thought was quite ironic seeing as I come from Los Angeles. I thought he was the most striking man I’d ever seen in my life. Even after everything we’ve been through I have to admit he’s a handsome bastard. He’s very unusual-looking, mixed-race and at that time had a head of dreadlocks. To me at twenty-three, he was really exotic. Of course I had no idea he’d just come out of a two-year stretch in prison for shooting someone.

I just walked straight up to him and said, ‘Hi. You look like you’re having some fun.’ Pretty cool line, huh? Not. He turned round to me and asked, ‘Do you want something to drink?’ I replied, ‘Yes, please’, and then promptly ran to the bar and bought it myself. He must have thought he had it made!

We didn’t chat that much. He wasn’t really a conversationalist. He asked me if I wanted a smoke. I’m not really a puffer, but I said yes because I wanted to be with him. We went outside and sat down on a staircase and he rolled a spliff, then turned around and offered it to me (which I learned later was very unusual for him – he’d roll a second joint for other people but he
never
shared). He was really taken aback when I said, ‘Oh no, I don’t smoke.’ I don’t think he could make me out at all.

To me, he was exciting. He was so different from anyone else I’d met, but I didn’t think he was really interested in me, I thought he was just being friendly because of my accent. I was really naive.

I ended up staying at his house because I was too drunk to get back to where I was staying. He tried it on but when I said ‘no’ he backed straight off. I was surprised he even tried as I really didn’t think he fancied me.

As it turned out, he was babysitting for a friend who was having a termination. Her man had been in prison and was coming out for a little break so she needed to get rid of the baby double-quick. So he was looking after this other child, whom I didn’t meet until the next morning.

What I didn’t realise then was that the house I was staying in was a halfway house for prisoners who’d just been released. I spent most of the day with Mark and the child. I was hung-over and seeing double, and we were just hanging out. Then he just turned round and said something very casually and randomly like, ‘Well, you know I just got out of the nick after two years.’ I thought: whoa – but by the time I’d collected my thoughts, he’d walked out of the room. I was sitting there thinking: Oh well, he’s probably just shoplifted something. But when I pressed him, I found out he’d shot somebody. He’d been in the papers and everything.

It turned out this pimp thought Mark was messing around with one of his girls. I think the main attraction to this girl was that she had a mixed-race son that Mark had become quite close to. But this guy thought that Mark was moving in on his territory. The guy basically pistol-whipped him and broke his jaw. Mark shot him in the leg, but then immediately put a tourniquet on him and called the ambulance.

The newspapers actually gave him a fairly good press because he’d acted in self-defence and had tried to help, but he ended up doing two years for it.

I didn’t know what to think. At the time I thought he was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met. Of course I now wouldn’t say that, but back then I’d never met anyone like him. Anyone who’d served a prison term in the United States had always seemed really rough, but he seemed gentle and kind.

I went off travelling to Italy for a bit after that, before returning to London en route back to the States. I called Mark up and ended up staying with him in the halfway house. I had all these men around me, and just a communal bathroom, but they were so nice and respectful. They’d say, ‘Oh, Donna, do you want some tea?’

I remember telling my girlfriend where I was and she said, ‘Have you lost all sense of reality? Have you gone mad?’, and I said, ‘No, no, they’re the nicest people you’d ever want to meet.’

By that stage something had happened between Mark and me, but I was still determined to go home. As far as I was concerned it was a holiday fling.

I returned to the States and set up a business organising visas and passports for people who were travelling. It was pretty time-consuming, but Mark was still in the back of my mind, and I kept talking to him on the phone. When I got my phone bill I was aghast to find it was $500. I said, ‘You know what? I might as well send you a ticket to come over here, the amount of money I’m spending on calls.’

So he came over to the States. He didn’t really know what he was going to do or how long he was going to stay, and it was quite a difficult time because he couldn’t work legitimately, so I was the complete breadwinner. It was OK, but a little bit of a strain.

Between what my mother had left me and the business, I was doing all right financially, but in any relationship where one partner relies on the other in a way that isn’t balanced, there’s going to be friction. After about three months of this, I’d had enough. ‘Maybe we should get married,’ I suggested, wearily. That way, he could get his green card and legitimately work and everything would be better. Or so I thought. I wasn’t madly in love with him. It was a convenience thing. It was to buy us more time so that we could see how we got along living a ‘normal’ life.

So we did the Las Vegas thing. The wedding day was wild. I had an antique Victorian silk black dress – black, that should have told me something, don’t you think? We were married by this Seventh-Day Baptist woman preacher who overcharged us. We argued about money for about half an hour before and after the service.