The Life (2 page)

I can’t believe it has been twenty years since the publication of my first book
Dangerous Lady
. To celebrate,
Dangerous Lady
is going to be performed as a play at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, in East London. This theatre is very close to my heart; if we lose the local theatres
and
the libraries, the whole heart of local communities will be gone. It’s a disgrace, and something that needs to be addressed because we will never get these things back. Without my local library when I was a child, I don’t know what I would have done, and our local theatre also played a big part in my quest for knowledge.

Dangerous Lady
was a big milestone in my life, and I’m very proud of it. I would never have been published had it not been for my agent, Darley Anderson, who is not only my agent but a wonderful friend to boot. I can’t thank him enough for everything, especially his friendship and support. Darley is that rare breed – a man who genuinely understands women! He is also my daughter’s godfather, and a close member of my family, loved by us all. His wisdom is unique, and his friendship means the world to me.

Susan Fletcher, my first editor and a terrific person, who believed in me from her first glance at
Dangerous Lady
; a big thank you once more. Sadly, Sue is retiring from publishing this year, and she will be greatly missed by everyone.

Tim Hely Hutchinson, always so good to me, and who, along with Sue Fletcher and Sian Thomas, built Headline up into the wonderful publishing house it is today. I have been with Headline for over twenty years now, and everyone I have ever dealt with has always been wonderful. Thank you, Tim, for everything.

Clare Foss – my editor for many years – another person I can never thank enough for her support, and her kindness. Go, Clare!

Jane Morpeth – who is now my editor – a really lovely lady, and someone I truly admire and respect. Thank you, Jane; I look forward to the next twenty years! You’ve been a great friend, and a fantastic editor. Thank you again.

Martin Neild, the loveliest man on earth, thank you so much. You have been a great influence, and I appreciate your friendship very much. (Pink Floyd in a Bentley is a memory I will have for ever.) Good luck for the future.

I’d also like to thank Amanda Ridout. She was very good to me when she was at Headline, and I will always be grateful for all that she did for me. Great girl; and I’ll never drink five bottles of Montrachet with anyone else – she knows what I am talking about! (PS, Amanda, we are still welcome at the OXO Tower!)

I want to say a big thank you to Kerr MacRae; he was always so very nice to me when he was at Headline and, even though he has moved on to pastures new, we have stayed good friends. He is possibly one of the nicest people in publishing, and he played a big part in my success. Now I wish
him
every success for the future.

Louise Page – what can I say? She is fantastic – not only a good person and a wonderful friend, but the best PR in the land! Thanks, Lou, you have been a star over the years. Me, you and Peter – otherwise known as The Waberthwaite Three – have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and had some good laughs along the way. Thank you, once more; you always find the best venues, and you can throw one hell of a party!

Now on to Peter Bates. You have driven me for many years now, Pete, and we have both seen our share of ups and downs. One thing never changes though: your friendship and your humour. I love you, Pete, and I can’t thank you enough for being there beside me since time began! We have had some screams along the way, and without you those journeys would not have been half as much fun. I wish you everything that is good for the future. I still don’t know how Rita puts up with you; she is a lovely lady, and a saint!

I would like to thank everyone at Headline, old and new. It’s been a second family to me, and I know how lucky I have been to be a part of it. It’s been a privilege, and it’s been a lot of fun – and hard work! So, thank you all again, especially a certain Irishman! Darragh – driving through Spain listening to good music is a memory I will never forget. Thank you.

I’d also like to thank Peter Newsom, who was another good friend to me. I remember meeting him at a Morrissey concert a few years ago and I don’t know who was more surprised! But thanks, Peter – I had some great times in Oz, New Zealand and South Africa. I wish you well for the future.

A big thank you to Martin Booth, a really good man who was responsible for my first ever pay cheque for writing! He was at the BBC in the early nineties and he took up a script I had sent in. We became good friends and he gave me the confidence I needed to look towards writing as a career. So thank you, Martin, very much.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Lavinia Warner. She made
Dangerous Lady
into a TV series many years ago. Since then we have become close friends and business partners, going on to make three more series together, along with other projects we have in the pipeline. Thanks, Vin, you have been a real star, and you’re a big part of my family, we all love you dearly. In New York earlier this year, we watched her cousin on Broadway in
Venus in Fur
. It was one of the highlights of my life; thank you for making me a part of it. I love you, girl.

Now, to my readers – you know who you are! I’ve met so many of you over the years, especially at Pat Fletcher’s stall on Romford Market. Pat gave me my first book signing, and I will always be very grateful to her for that. We have become good friends, and even have houses near each other in Northern Cyprus! So thank you to Pat and Harry Fletcher, and I will see you soon, mate, at Kybele restaurant in Bellapais.

So thank you, once more, to you all, my loyal readers, who have been there since
Dangerous Lady
, all those years ago. I hope you enjoy
The Life
. I have been living with the Bailey family for a year now, and I plan to finish Tania’s story off in a few years’ time! So I hope you enjoy her ups and downs – and, believe me, there are a lot of those! I hope to meet many of you at my signings, and I look forward to saying hello to you all.

Take care and God bless,

Martina

x

1997

I’d grown up in the Life, but I’d never really been a part of it – my mum had made sure of that. It all changed the day she died.

On the day we buried her, I looked around the church. My whole family was there, and we were a big family, the Baileys, and a well-known family to boot. My nana, Theresa Bailey, the matriarch, was sitting beside me, holding my hand. She was good to me, always. I could depend on her – she would never repeat my secrets. She knew more than any of them, and she kept it to herself. But then, if she had opened her mouth, there would have been another murder – we needed to keep the secret no matter what, and that is exactly what we did. I knew that I could never have coped without her, especially not that day.

My four brothers – all big, handsome, honourable men – sat on her other side and my father, broken by his wife’s death, and completely unaware of his only daughter’s shame, sat by me. It was
how
my mum died that was affecting him even more than just the loss of her. She had been taken in a heartbeat – those were his words, not mine.

I stood beside him, his youngest child and his only daughter, small-boned like my mother and with my parental grandmother’s thick auburn hair. But I had his eyes – the deep blue Irish eyes that showed every emotion and told the whole world what I was thinking, especially him and my brothers. I learned quickly to
never let anyone know my true feelings and that is a sad testament to the life I live now. Knowledge is power and even the smallest slip can be enough to bring you down.

We were the Baileys – the most talked about and revered family in the East End – the foremost family in England, actually, for many a long year. We led charmed lives, we had everything – and I mean
everything
. My father, Daniel Bailey, saw to that.

As I held his hand on that cold bleak day, he slipped it into his coat pocket as he had when I was a small child. Even at nearly eighteen, I still appreciated the warmth and kindness behind the act. I knew my father was dangerous from the time I was a child, but I had not known just how dangerous he really was until recently. He had only ever done what he felt was needed; I understood that and, on that day, unhappy and devastated at the loss of my mother, I depended on him more than ever to bring me comfort.

My world had changed overnight. With my mum gone there was no one to shield me from my family’s real way of life. My mum, God love her, had done her best to make sure I never knew the real deal, but however hard she tried, I overheard more than was good for me. My family were murderers, liars, people for whom violence and intimidation were literally their daily bread.

My brothers were years older than me – I was my mum’s last hurrah, as she would say with a big grin on her face. God had sent me to her as a gift – I was all hers. She talked about God a lot, she set great store by Him and His son, the Christ who had died on the cross to take away the sins of the world. When she died, they just didn’t know what to do with me, this female left in their predominantly male world, but they loved me all the same and would do anything to protect me, I knew that. And
I’ll never stop loving any of them, as bad as they are. They love me, and they care for me. And, at this time in my young life, that is enough.

I suspect my mum knew more than she let on about her husband’s and sons’ activities and it must have been very hard for her to hear so much that was bad about them, and still believe in them. She was a decent woman in her own way – God fearing, and with a strong belief in the afterlife. She put up with the men in her life because she had to. She was a mother after all, and these were her little boys. But deep inside she had to have condoned what they were.

I remember smiling at my eldest brother Danny that day, knowing he would always be there for me. Danny, despite his blond hair, was my dad’s double, like the spit out of his mouth, as the old fucking shawlies – as my nana called them – would say. He and my other brothers Davey, Noel and Jamsie had each received Confession, made a good act of contrition, so they could take Communion at their mother’s funeral without fear or favour – my father had made sure of that. Hypocritical, I know, but it was for her more than for him, and I loved that he had done that for her. He had loved my mother with a vengeance.

Years later, when I remembered seeing him cutting a man’s fingers off, I would also see him as he was on this day. The two sides of Daniel Bailey.

I watched his face contort with emotion as his brother Peter Bailey and his wife Ria entered the church with their remaining children. He gritted his teeth, and I saw in his eyes that it was hard for him to forget his brother’s part in this terrible day.

My Auntie Ria, Peter’s wife, had always been good friends with my mother – they were very close, and she looked unbearably sad.

I smiled at her, and at my cousins as they followed their parents to the front of the church. My cousin Imelda, a beautiful woman with long, dark relaxed hair, who exhibited more Jamaican heritage than her brothers, walked over to me and my father. Smiling sadly, she hugged him first, then me, her eyes wet with unshed tears. I was pleased and so relieved when my father had hugged her back; she had always been a favourite of his. No one really knew then how much the Life had affected her.

I looked at my Uncle Peter, a big, handsome black man, and at my father, so like him in many ways, even though he was what would be called white. They had the same mother, but different fathers, and were so close they were like pages in the same book, united now in their grief. It was a grief that transcended feuds.

The church full of people were wondering who the bastard was that had set the car bomb that had blown my poor mother all over Soho. But, unlike them,
we
knew who was responsible for planting the bomb which had caused this carnage. And we also knew that the bomb hadn’t been meant for my mother. If the intended recipient had died maybe, just maybe, things would never have turned out like they did. Hindsight really is a fucking wonderful thing.

I still had a lot to learn about my family. On that day I knew nothing about guns, and the murder of a baby, an innocent child tragically drawn into this world of violence as easily as my mother had been. I would find out about these things eventually. You name it, my family had done it. But they couldn’t have foreseen how deep they would get into the quagmire of revenge, and how they would lose all semblance of reality, forgetting about the real world outside of
their
world.

The loss of my mum had opened my eyes to the truth of the Life. In the last month I had seen and done things which would
change me for ever. And, despite everything my mum did to protect me, she didn’t prepare me for how seductive the Life could be.

There was an old Irish saying of my nana’s – she always said you get the life you deserve. I hope against hope that there was no truth in that. But only time will tell.

She shakes the blues off then she tries her luck

Makes a little bet, hopes her horse comes up

Pickin’ pockets for some easy money

’Cause she blew the goddamn lot on the National Lottery

Alabama 3, ‘Mansion On The Hill’
Album:
La Peste
, 2000

Flip, baby flip my switch

Blow my head off

If you’re gonna cry, keep your shades on

Alabama 3, ‘Keep Your Shades On’
Album:
Outlaw
, 2005

1979

‘You and whose fucking army? Listen to yourself! You’re threatening
us
with your cunt of an uncle? You’re talking utter shite.’

Daniel Bailey was fuming, and everyone in the factory knew that this was not going to end well.