First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Holden
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Amanda Holden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-47112-575-1
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-47112-573-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47112-572-0
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To my precious girls, Lexi and Hollie.
This book is for you. I want you to be able to read it when you are bigger and make different choices to your Mama.
You know I love you both to the moon and back but here – in black and white – is the life I led before you changed it for the better.
Mama xxx
Contents
Prologue
1 The Lying, the Kitsch and the Wardrobe
2 The Golden Years
3 ‘Les’ is More
4 I Have a Dream
5 Taken for Granted
6 Being Frank
7 I Need Someone, Older and Wiser . . .
8 Our Survey Said . . .
9 Les Misérables
10 Me Behaving Badly
11 Double or Quits
12 Hughes a Lucky Girl
13 Diamonds on the Soles of My Shoes
14 The Lex Files
15 Simon Says
16 To Have and to Holden
17 Boyle in the Bag
18 A Bumpy Year
19 The Lost Boy
20 Neverland
21 It’s Good Being Green
22 Well, Hello Hollie
23 Still Holden On
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Professional Resume
Picture Credits
List of Illustrations
Prologue
‘Dare to be happy,’ I tell myself.
On my knee, baby Hollie gurgles happily, safe in my arms. To an outsider watching us building sandcastles on the beach, I know we must look like the perfect little family – Mama, Dada, Lexi and baby Hollie, enjoying the sunshine. Little do those people know what we had to endure to get here, but one thing the last year has taught me is that every family has its own quiet story, that things aren’t always as they seem.
This is my ‘happy place’ – Shutters hotel in sunny Santa Monica. The rooms here are small and overpriced, but this beach, this vast expanse of sand, is literally what dreams are made of. The one where my miraculous little family – Chris, my darling husband, and my two beautiful girls, Lexi, six, and Hollie, six months – are playing together now and where we are finally a complete family.
In my head, it’s never not sunny here and nothing changes – the dining room with its retro diner booths, the crisp white tablecloths and the hotel’s happy hour frozen margaritas with salt around the rim. (I remember how one of my midwives, Jackie, knew I was craving a margarita all through my pregnancy with Hollie. On the day I went into hospital she sneaked a cocktail mix into the fridge in my room so we could finally celebrate my long-awaited baby. We had no idea that the margarita would have to wait a long time until after my precious daughter was born and we were both safe . . .)
We come to our home here every year. It’s full of memories. I’ve holidayed here for five years and during every pregnancy – I have pictures of me and my best friend Jane, bump to bump, two years previously. Memories that are precious, but also incredibly painful.
I have craved this moment for nearly six months, and now, as the sun starts to set, I pull on my shades, scoop up Hollie Rose Hughes (HRH) and head back to the hotel. My feet are bare and the sand is boiling hot, making me dance like I’m on hot coals like a nutter across the beach. I look like a total wreck and hope there are no paps to ruin this moment, when I am just like every other mother.
I burst into the dining room, as glamorous as Worzel Gummidge with my hair in a windswept blonde Afro. The room is full of perfectly coiffed women with big LA blowdries and the snooty receptionist, as always, looks down her nose at me and only barely lets me in. I sit at my usual table, Hollie on my lap. After three years and three pregnancies I smile into my baby’s blue-green eyes. Behind my shades, tears start to fall freely down my face and I finally allow myself to let go and feel some joy. God, I’m so happy.
Hollie stares at me intently, wondering what the splashes are that fall on to her chubby cheeks. She’s not used to seeing Mama cry. It’s as if she can see right into my heart and beyond.
The yellow light pouring into the dining room gives the afternoon an Instagram glow and I gaze out across the beach. The events and tragedies of the past few years feel like an out-of-body experience and every time I have, apparently, bounced back – smile on my face, one-liner at the ready – to business as usual. I’m finally a mother of two and I have a longed-for sibling for my gorgeous elder daughter Lexi. I never wanted the age difference – it used to break my heart watching her play alone on holidays, or taking my hand and shyly asking if I could introduce her to nearby children. ‘Stay with me, Mama, until I get used to it,’ she’d say. Of course, I needn’t have worried so much. Lexi is so happy. Being an only child for so long has given her an inventive and imaginative mind. She is robust and creative, and old enough now to be my nappy slave! She is the big sister of HRH and my little helper, and it’s amazing to watch them together. Hollie cannot take her eyes away from Lexi and laughs at everything she does. They are so connected.
Chrispy – my pet name for him as his mail is always addressed to Chris P. (Paul) Hughes – has stood by my side and shared every atom of the pain and joy we have endured. He hates any public attention – I still can’t believe he married me! – and he has carried us through every storm, giving up so much of his privacy along the way.
Hollie catches hold of a strand of my hair and studies it. I hug her closely – hoping she won’t tug too hard and pull one of my extensions out. I risked everything to have her and she is so worth it.
I felt like I’d been away from myself for so long but our weeks in California have brought me back into my own skin. On this sundrenched shore, every ounce of who I am is beginning to soak back into me. I feel strong again, emotionally, mentally and physically. The laughter is back and the darkness is gone and I feel back to my naughty self, full of bad jokes and mischief. Chris had said I was beginning to be stubborn and argumentative once more. He never thought he’d be grateful for that – but that tenacity is what saved my life, and now for the first time I believe he’s right.
My forty-one years have been filled to the brim – with laughter, hope, despair and, now, with happiness. At heart I am a risk-taker although I confess to being less of one now – life has frightened me a bit. Because the truth is that when you nearly die all you can think about is dying. It’s not easily shaken from your mind. You look around at all the good things – the sun,
the landscapes, the flowers in your garden, the blue sky, your children – and the shadow passes over you as you remember those words. You nearly died, Amanda . . .
It’s a big thing to be asked to write a book. To go back and delve into the corners of your mind and pull out memories you thought lost. Private things you never thought you would share even with close friends may now be read by the world. Watching my family playing freely and happily on that boiling hot beach in Los Angeles that day, I decide it might be a good thing to do. I decide that I will write it for my girls – to them. The thought of very nearly not being here to actually tell them in person is never going to leave me, so I am going to turn it into a positive force and give them my story so far, so they can know. In years to come, when I am old and cracked (Lexi uses this phrase to describe wrinkles), I will pick up this book and read it to my grandchildren.
So I do what I’ve always done when I’m happy. I start to sing:
Hollie Rose has got ten toes, got ten toes, got ten toes;
Hollie Rose has got ten toes and a tiny button nose.
With lyrics like that, I think Adele’s safe!
Chapter 1
The Lying, the Kitsch and the Wardrobe
It always annoys me how everyone goes on about being ‘urban’ – especially people in the media. I mean, what’s that all about? It’s like you’re a better celebrity if you come from a hard impoverished background; that if you throw on a hoody and an accent it will make you more famous, or prove you’re cool and authentic.
Well, I’ve never tried to be anything I’m not. But appearances can be deceptive. Although I have a posh accent, am very camp and don’t wear sportswear (hoodies don’t suit me – but I am quite partial to a bit of Juicy Couture), the house where I grew up in Bishop’s Waltham was a modern housing estate home. Back then it was a really sweet, suburban, well-kept neighbourhood that people took pride in (all the houses were painted different colours, the mums had a babysitting circle and we’d think nothing of popping next door for a cup of sugar), but these days it’s a lot more run down – I even saw a burnt-out car there on my last visit. So I guess if ‘urban’ is where it’s at, that makes me more ‘urban’ than most!
That house was the last place you’d expect to find a ginormous old mahogany wardrobe with dressing table to match. They were right out of the war – I think we’d inherited them from my mum’s Auntie Lotty. But the wardrobe was a brilliant hiding place. I used to creep inside and pretend one side was my mum and one side was my biological father Frank (more of him later; all you need to know now is, after all the drama and soap-style storylines he has created in our family, we call him ‘Fraaaaank’ – after Frank Butcher from EastEnders – and for dramatic effect do the EastEnders drum riff whenever he’s mentioned. Dooff dooff dooff dooff dooff derder doooff!). With the door closed, I’d have ‘chats’ to him and my mum. As I look back, I’m fascinated about why I did this, because the irony is that Mum always had time for us and was around to talk to in person back then.
Mum was always playing when we were small, and she gave me and my sister Debbie a lot of freedom. We were as close as sisters could be. I mean, I had the usual older sister jealousy where I would have rules and the same wouldn’t apply to Debbie at the same age, but we were only fifteen months apart, and growing up we always played together. We looked after our dollies together (all mine were called Claire, for some reason) – Mum used to stand outside our bedroom door and listen to us playing with them and doing all their voices. We played at being grown-ups together, when I’d hang a tablecloth over the dining-room table to make a house and tell everyone who walked past to ‘shhh’ so they didn’t wake the dollies. And we took bubble baths together – Mum would turn the light off and let the streetlight cast the bathroom in orange light. Mum was really relaxed back then and didn’t mind us making a mess – she even let us bury her crockery in the garden. She says now it was to keep us quiet, but I’m not sure I’d go to those lengths with my girls now . . .! We once dug up a forgotten stainless-steel teapot buried who knows when and gave it to my grandad for his birthday (he must have been thrilled). Long days playing out would always end with hearing her call us from the house, ‘Debbie, Amanda! Come in, your tea’s ready!’
Mum never let on how poor we were when I was a little girl and, at the time, I had no idea. Even though we didn’t have a father around much at first, I think of my childhood as blissful and blessed. Mum was very proud and worked hard to keep it all together. She found jobs packing straw and dog food and later became a secretary at an engineering firm – she even rented out the box room for a bit of extra cash. She often went without herself so we didn’t have to, even sometimes not eating. There were very few mod cons in our house – we had one of those old school top-loading washing tubs that you had to turn yourself, and Mum made all our mince by hand, using a mincing machine. She’d put the meat in one end with one hand and turn the handle with the other, and it would come out like a pile of worms!
Mum was a creative and thrifty cook – even now she’ll look into what I would consider an empty fridge and make something out of it! – and could rustle up loads of things with braising steak or mince. We would have a Sunday roast every week (I loved the smell and the way the heat of the oven steamed up the windows because it meant I could draw pictures with my fingers in the condensation) but she wasn’t really into making puddings, other than the odd apple crumble. I remember I used to stand on a chair and ‘help’ her make it – which generally consisted of me eating all the skin off the cooking apples. (Lexi does the same thing now. She’ll eat the skin, though not because she likes it – she just likes the history of it!) Mum used to try and peel them all in one go and I’d make a wish if she managed it without a break. But crumbles were a special treat. Mostly she’d say, ‘If you’re still hungry then you can fill up with bread and jam.’
Every summer we helped bring in some extra money by picking strawberries, apples, blackberries and pretty much anything else that could be picked. I’m not sure how profitable it was for the farmer, though, as we operated on a ‘one for the punnet and one for me’ basis. Those were some of the happiest times of my life: endless summers of red-stained fingers.
Unlike Mum, Frank was hardly ever there. He was a petty officer in the Navy and between visits I couldn’t really remember what he looked like. In fact, Debbie has no memories of him at all. There wasn’t a single photograph of him around the house and when he wasn’t there the only proof that he actually lived there were three scratch marks in the bath Mum said he’d made with his watch while climbing into the tub. I’d sometimes trace the line of them with my fingers when I was having a bubble bath. There was also a large iridescent shell that he’d brought back from a trip to the Far East, which sat in the middle of our glass coffee table and which I’d put to my ear to listen to the sea and imagine faraway lands. But for us, Frank’s long absences were normal and I suppose the novelty was when he was around. For Mum, it must have just been a whole world of pain.
Mum and Frank had met when he was a handsome naval officer (all the nice girls love a sailor!). She had had a loving but repressive upbringing and has since admitted she was looking for a way to escape when she became pregnant with me. They rushed into marriage and with so little time together who knows how well they even knew each other? They were both so young.
Not that Frank’s early life had been a bed of roses. Frank’s mother died when he was a baby. His older sister Joan was expected to look after them all – including him and his twin – but she refused. Instead, she dared to choose to get married and have a life of her own, and so for a while he and his five siblings were put into care and Joan became the black sheep of the family. Mum says now that she was actually the only normal one, and certainly the only one of them who ever gave my mum any support. Frank’s father, who was from Liverpool, worked as a banjo player and later a psychiatric nurse. His female colleague at the hospital had a married sister who offered to foster Frank
and his twin sister. He later married his colleague (another nurse) but never took Frank and his twin sister back to live with him and his new wife. Early in the 1990s, his second wife died. Later he became engaged, but before he could marry committecd suicide. Shortly afterwards, his fiancée committed suicide as well. That wasn’t a happy background to have come from.
It must have been so hard for Mum, coping with two little girls, all the financial pressures of bringing up a family on a paltry income and an absent husband who, when he was home, spent all his available cash on booze and was only focused on where his next drink was coming from. Not only that, but he was impossible to live with in every way. He would leave home for hours at a time, often staying out all night and returning drunk the next day. I was shocked to find out while writing this book just how awful life was for my mother with him as her husband, but she is reluctant to discuss that even now. It’s incredible to me that she managed to keep this hidden from me and my sister so well, and that we weren’t aware or affected in any way by it. It must have been a huge strain on her.
One day, however, after Frank stayed out for a couple of nights, it all got too much even for Mum. She told him she needed a break and went to stay with her parents in Gloucester for the weekend (she must have been desperate, to leave me and my sister behind). I don’t have any recollection of her being away but I do remember how pleased I was when she came home – and her face as I ran down the garden path and into her arms. She looked horrified. We were unwashed and dirty, in the same clothes she’d left us in. Mum told me later that the house – which was normally spotless – was full of my father’s drunken mates, empty bottles and cigarette stubs everywhere. But even after that, I don’t really remember my parents’ marriage breaking down or remember them arguing much. It shows what a strong woman Mum is that she kept so much from us.
One of my strongest memories of Frank is the way he always smelled of alcohol. And the day I think he left. In my memory, I am bouncing happily on my bed. My bedspread was brown with large white daisies with orange centres and I’d invented a game where I had to avoid the flowers. (I used to kneel on that bedspread in the late summer light when I was supposed to be in bed and watch my mum walking up and down in the front garden, mowing the lawn with our old hand mower. She took care to avoid the orange African marigolds, the only plants other than grass – they were cheap and they grew fast!) But that day, somewhere downstairs, ‘Save All Your Kisses for Me’ by the Brotherhood of Man was playing so I was bouncing in time to the music when Mum came into the bedroom with Frank. I bounced into his arms for a cuddle and smelt the alcohol on his breath. Then he set me down without a word, turned around and walked out of the room.
No Holding Back Page 1