Real lives: 'My husband gambled away everything we owned'
- Justyn and Emma Larcombe appear to have the perfect life and family
- But Justyn's £10,000 a day gambling addiction has crippled their marriage
- In midst of his compulsion he plundered Emma’s savings as well as his own
- He sold everything, from her jewellery to children’s christening presents
- His autobiography Tails I Lose details how his gambling addiction led to him squandering £750,000 in online betting over just three years
It started with a £5 online bet and ended up costing Justyn Larcombe the family home, thousands in savings and very nearly his marriage. But despite Justyn’s gambling addiction, his wife Emma is standing by him as they rebuild their lives. Here she tells Catherine O’Brien why
Justyn and Emma Larcombe live in a picture-postcard cottage overlooking one of the loveliest village greens in Kent.
On the summer’s evening that I visit, their sons Matthew, seven, and Oscar, four, are in the garden playing with their labrador puppy Bella. Justyn is running around with them while Emma potters in the kitchen.
They appear to be a model – indeed blessed – family. In reality, nothing within the Larcombe household is quite as it seems.
Seven years ago, when Justyn and Emma married, few who knew them could have doubted that they were a golden couple.
Emma and Justyn with their sons Oscar, left, and Matty. Their lives have been turned upside down by Justyn's £10,000 a day gambling addiction
He was a dashing former Army major turned insurance executive who was earning a six-figure salary and owned two cars, one of them a £30,000 Porsche.
She was his elegant, independently successful wife who worked in the country house hotel business.
He proposed at the top of a mountain in Val d’Isère; they honeymooned on Italy’s Amalfi coast, and when she announced she was pregnant just weeks after they returned home their future seemed assured.
Today, their relationship is hanging by a gossamer thread and the reasons why are laid bare in Justyn’s soon-to-be published autobiography.
Tails I Lose documents, in jaw-dropping detail, how a gambling addiction led to him squandering £750,000 in online betting over just three years.
In the midst of his compulsion he plundered Emma’s savings as well as his own and secretly sold everything, from her jewellery to their children’s christening presents.
By the time Emma realised what was happening, he had accrued £100,000 of debts on credits cards and in payday loans and was gambling an astonishing £10,000 a day.
Unsurprisingly, their marriage collapsed. Justyn hit rock bottom and Emma filed for divorce. But at Easter this year, after 18 months apart, they started living together again.
Justyn’s reasons for wanting a second chance are simply explained. Emma is, he says, ‘the only person to truly know me’. Her motivation for the reconciliation is more complex.
To enable us to talk freely, Emma and I head off, at Justyn’s suggestion, to the village pub.
She is strikingly beautiful, despite the tiredness in her eyes.
Justyn’s book is the centrepiece of a highly vocal crusade – he is now a regular attendee of Gamblers Anonymous and, with a zeal found only in those who have reached redemption, often speaks publicly about the destructive impact gambling can have on people’s lives.
By contrast, Emma has discussed the devastating fallout of Justyn’s addiction with nobody outside her close circle of family and friends – until now.
‘There are two sides to every story, and from my side it has felt like being in the middle of a storm, but I’ve tried not to become hysterical. Luckily, I’m a rational person,’ she says.
Now 40, Emma, the youngest of four children, grew up in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, where her parents owned Callow Hall, a luxury 16-bedroomed hotel and restaurant on the edge of the Peak District.
Although privileged – she was educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College – she also grew up understanding, through witnessing her parents build up a business, the meaning of hard work.
Emma Larcombe has vowed to stand by her husband, despie his fall from grace. 'He's a different man from the one I married, and a better man, because he has fallen so badly,' she said
After university, she returned to Callow Hall to help her parents as a front-of-house manager and it was there, in 2004, that she and Justyn met.
He had checked into the hotel to attend a management course and the moment he spotted her, it was love at first sight.
She was not so immediately smitten, partly because she was going out with someone else.
But Justyn proved persistent and eight months later she ended her other relationship and they got together.
A month after that, on her 31st birthday, Justyn proposed. ‘He was charming, spontaneous,’ she says. ‘We were very happy.’
She loved his Tiggerish ebullience; he was soothed by her calm, capable demeanour.
But Justyn was more complicated than he looked – the son of a schoolteacher father and counsellor mother, he is the second of six children and had served almost nine years in the Army, completing tours of Northern Ireland and Bosnia before becoming the successful businessman that Emma fell in love with.
He had also been previously married and had a son, Harry, now 13, whom Emma readily embraced. ‘I love Harry – he’s a great boy,’ she says.
Shortly before their wedding in May 2007, Justyn, who had previously worked in London, started a new job which enabled him to be based in Derbyshire. Harry lived with his mother just outside Birmingham and it became much easier for them all to spend time together at weekends.
It felt like everything had slotted into place, and the birth of Matthew – known as Matty – in May 2008 was another joyful cause of celebration.
Matty was around five months old when Emma and Justyn realised things weren’t quite right. Although an otherwise contented baby, he didn’t use his right hand.
When, at ten months, he wasn’t crawling, they took him to a private specialist. Matty was diagnosed with hemiplegia –a form of cerebral palsy which had caused paralysis to the right side of his body – and a brain scan showed scarring, which meant it was likely that he was also going to suffer from epilepsy.
‘It is difficult for any man to accept that his son has a disability,’ Emma says. ‘I don’t want to blame everything on Matty’s condition, but that diagnosis had a massive impact on Justyn.’
Although equally upset, Emma and Justyn’s responses differed significantly. Emma immersed herself in the pragmatics – seeking expert advice through a surgeon friend and research online.
‘I felt I had to be prepared but Justyn didn’t want to read a single thing – it was like he was in complete denial,’ she recalls. ‘That’s probably why he sought a secret coping mechanism.’
Shortly after his first birthday, Matty had his first seizure.
And there were other setbacks – Emma suffered an early miscarriage and Justyn’s job wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. Then Harry’s mother decided to move to Jersey with her new partner – bringing to an end their regular weekend outings.
One Saturday in September 2009, Emma had taken Matty to visit her parents and Justyn was alone and feeling despondent.
As he sat down to watch a rugby match, his gaze was drawn to a Betfair advertisement on the pitch-side hoarding. Impulsively, he opened his laptop, set up an account and placed a £5 bet. An hour later, he had doubled his money.
Emma and Justyn on their wedding day in May 2007. Justyn now attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings weekly and is working again
Justyn’s version of events is that he had never before placed an online bet. Emma’s recollection is that she had occasionally seen him grazing on gambling websites and he had told her, ‘I’m just playing – everyone in the City does it.’
Whatever the reality, he pinpoints the rugby match as his turning point; before long, he was betting modest amounts most weekends.
He liked watching sport and ‘the slogan I kept hearing all the time was, “It matters more when there’s money on it,”’ he recalls.
He didn’t tell Emma, and she was oblivious. With other addictions – drinking or drug-taking, for example – there are, she points out, likely to be more signs. ‘Gambling is much easier to conceal.’
By late autumn, Justyn had started to up his stakes – despite being more strapped for cash than they had ever been.
Emma’s parents had sold the hotel and retired, and with Matty to look after, Emma was no longer working. Home renovations had depleted their savings. And although Justyn was too proud to admit it, his work bonuses had dried up. But it was easy to arrange an overdraft. In an attempt to chase his losses, he placed a £1,000 bet and his gambling rapidly spiralled out of control.
He discovered horse racing, darts and tennis and although he had winning streaks, he frequently lost spectacularly. During the Cheltenham Gold Cup, he put £3,000 on one of the favourites to win – but the horse fell at the last fence.
On another occasion, he bet £5,000 that his football team Tottenham Hotspur would draw against Arsenal. But Arsenal scored in the second half and won the match.
One of his biggest losses came during a tennis tournament when he backed Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, then world number one, to win against an unknown.
The odds were weak and to make up his shortfall on the day, he needed to wager £17,000 to give him a return of just a few hundred pounds. Azarenka had seemed like a dead cert – until she was injured and conceded the match.
Had she been hyper-vigilant, maybe Emma could have spotted some of the signals – Justyn traded in his Porsche for a more modest estate car, telling Emma it was silly to be driving a gas-guzzler. He spent long hours in his study glued to the computer – Emma thought he was busy on international conference calls; in fact he was betting round the clock. And he started to quibble about extraneous expenditure.
‘I belonged to a lunch club – about ten of us would get together every week and take it in turns to cook,’ she recalls. ‘He began to resent me doing that.’
But although Emma was increasingly baffled by Justyn’s behaviour, she was also hugely preoccupied. Oscar’s arrival in May 2010 meant that she was juggling a new baby with the continuing needs of Matty, who was diagnosed with autism shortly before his third birthday.
Although it was another blow, it also meant that they could get some of the specialist help they needed (he has gone on to make great progress).
Just before Oscar was born, they had sold their house and moved into rented accommodation while they looked for somewhere bigger.
The equity of £75,000 went into a savings account and Justyn secretly began to work his way through it. Shortly afterwards, Emma received a £100,000 lump sum owed to her as a former director of her parents’ hotel. She did not hesitate to ask Justyn to invest it along with the cash from the sale of their house – after all, he worked in the financial sector. ‘I trusted him,’ she says. ‘What was mine was his.’
She has a snapshot memory of thinking during Christmas 2010 that she was happier than she had ever been. ‘I had lots of close friends. My family was nearby. We were comfortably off, or so I thought.’ By the time of Oscar’s first birthday, five months later, however, an intangible unease had set in.
Justyn was moody, but she put it down to him working hard. ‘I told myself this was what marriage was all about – it couldn’t always be perfect but we were strong and we would keep going.’
'With other addictions there are signs. Gambling is easy to conceal'
In fact, Justyn’s world was imploding. He had spent the deposit set aside for a new house, along with Emma’s investment, and had started taking out high-interest loans. He lied endlessly about why he was too busy to take the family on holiday, why none of the houses Emma was viewing to buy were suitable, and why he wasn’t wearing the watch she had bought him – he had sold it but told her he had sent it off for repairs. Other items began to disappear – the wedding band she had had inscribed for him, his military memorabilia. With his back to the wall, he began using his company credit card, which was meant to be just for business expenses.
When he was rumbled in the summer of 2012, his company told him that he was out of a job.
The showdown with Emma came a month later, during the London Olympics.
Some of her friends came to stay for the weekend but Justyn could barely engage with them. ‘He kept disappearing to watch rugby league and tennis – he didn’t even like tennis.’
On the Monday morning, while Justyn was out, Emma’s friend persuaded her to look through his office. ‘And that is how I found out he was spending £10,000 a day on Betfair,’ she says.
‘It was on an unopened bank statement.’ She called Justyn immediately. ‘I told him I had seen everything and asked him if he had anything to say.’ It was a short conversation.
The ensuing months were a maelstrom. Despite the anger and recognition of the scale of his betrayal, Emma attempted to support Justyn and took him to counselling.
He stopped gambling briefly, before starting again and also drinking heavily. In despair, she walked out, leaving behind her wedding and engagement rings.
Within hours he’d sold them and gambled away the proceeds. The same fate awaited the last of their possessions – including irreplaceable christening silver and antiques that had been in their families for generations.
In October 2012, following calls from Emma, Justyn’s parents and his younger brother Duncan arrived at his front door. They took him to their home in Kent and arranged for him to see debt advisers and start attending Gamblers Anonymous.
Emma moved to another cottage in Derbyshire and initially refused to give Justyn the address. Eventually, for the sake of the boys, she allowed him to visit, but told him she wanted a divorce.
So what has now made her – against the advice of many – change her mind? She breathes in deeply. ‘It’s the boys.
They missed him terribly, particularly Matty. He needs to be with people who love and understand him. So I am trying to do my best by my children,’ she says. ‘But I also know Justyn is trying his best. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t seen a change in him.
And people ask me how I can be sure that he is not gambling. But I am, partly because I can check the bank account, but mostly because he is present – when he was gambling, he was mentally and emotionally absent.’
Justyn now attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings weekly. He is working again – he’s set up his own business education consultancy – and he has paid off his debts. He is also campaigning for changes to help curb excessive online gambling.
Recently he addressed a committee of peers in the House of Lords about the need for ‘one-stop self-exclusion’, which would enable problem gamblers to bar themselves from the estimated 2,500 betting websites with one click of a button.
‘He’s a different man from the one I married, and a better man, because he has fallen so badly,’ says Emma.
None of this means that she trusts him. ‘I cannot know if and when that trust will come back.’ She remains deeply hurt that he took all she had worked so hard for.
‘But if you are going to move forward, you have to accept that material goods are not what ultimately matter. His children love and need him.’ And does she love him? ‘I think I must do, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’
Tails I Lose: An extract from Justyn's book
Justyn Larcombe
The day my runaway train finally came off the tracks was a Sunday. The golf was on television and I had just persuaded one of the online betting companies to give me a ‘free’ £10 bet when there was a knock at the door. It was my younger brother Duncan and Mum and Dad – they’d driven up to Derbyshire from their home in Kent. Mum was crying.
We went through to the lounge. Dad held up a piece of paper. There was nothing on it. ‘We just want you to know we care about you. We don’t have a plan. But we want to help you. This is what we have, a blank page. You fill it any way you want. We can find you some care. There are courses, residential courses, they cost money, but if that’s what you want…’
Duncan broke the silence. ‘Tomorrow at 10am, a removal van is coming to pack up the house. The lease runs out on Wednesday. The rent has been paid up by your father-in-law. He’s helping to pack up tomorrow and he doesn’t want to see you. We are leaving today and you need to come with us.’
I realised I had two options. I could go home with Mum. Or I could walk the streets. I started to cry uncontrollably. I told Mum and Dad I was sorry, sorry that I had let them down. I called Emma. ‘I’m going back with Mum. Can you bring the boys over?’
‘I think it would just confuse Matty. But I’ll drive over on my own now.’ There was no warmth in her voice. We walked along the lane where we used to push Oscar in his pram. ‘Maybe one day you’ll be able to forgive me,’ I said. ‘Look after the boys, please. I wish you’d let me say goodbye to them.’
‘Matty’s confused enough. He keeps asking where you are. And Oscar can’t work out why you don’t read to him at night any more. Get real!’
I was crushed and teary. I wanted to reach out and touch Emma, but the fear of rejection held me back. She walked with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her eyes were cold, her lips set tight. I had stolen not only her money, but also her dreams and her smile. She drove off and I felt hopeless and broken.
- Tails I Lose: the Compulsive Gambler Who Lost His Shirt for Good by Justyn Rees Larcombe is published by Lion Hudson, £8.99
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2688788/Real-lives-My-husband-gambled-away-owned.html#ixzz37M4IreN6
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