No Holding Back

by Amanda Holden

  Then finally, Chris wheeled in Hollie, in her little portable cot. He gently handed her to me and at last my beautiful perfect baby was in my arms. My family and I were all meeting her at the same time.

  Hollie stared up at me sleepily and my heart swelled with joy and unconditional love immediately. She was utterly gorgeous. I couldn’t help but notice she had the same features as her brother and the same defined little eyebrows, as well as a thick mop of brown hair. I said a silent ‘thank you’ to the universe and to Theo for this moment. It felt very surreal. The people I love most in the world were all in the same room looking down at this most precious gift. If my life was a movie (and bloody hell, it was beginning to feel like one!), this was the moment when the director would say, ‘And that’s a wrap.’ The end!

  A huge, humbling lesson was learnt by us all that day. Life really is short. Who knows what comes after it but, Oh My Goodness, was I determined to start living again. As I put my arm around Lexi’s waist, her eyes wide with wonder at her baby sister, I studied the faces of my mum, dad, sister and Chris, and I felt such relief and happiness. My children were lucky to be part of this loving, pain-in-the-arse, horribly stubborn but wonderful family! I knew that Hollie’s birth signalled a new beginning for us all.

  Chapter 23

  Still Holden on

  Beyond the hospital, ‘Amanda’s Fight for Life’ was headline news in every paper and on the news programmes. Twitter was all over it, David Walliams made a speech wishing me better at the National Television Awards and people were even praying for me! In our little bubble in the hospital, I had no idea about any of it. There wasn’t even any telephone signal (which was a good thing!) and I was just focused on getting better.

  I’m never one to pity myself. I push myself to get over things, to get on with it. But this time it was Chris who gave me an ultimatum. He was like a sports coach – I think he knew I needed someone else pushing me and he told me, ‘I want you out of this hospital by Monday.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Chris!’ I said. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it!’

  That would be just a week after I had nearly died, but as I thought about it, I realised that being safely home with Hollie was what I needed – what we all needed. It was a deal. ‘I’ll try. I’ll really try,’ I said.

  I’d been moved out of intensive care into a private wing, the Stanley Clayton wing, which Mum always got wrong and called the Stanley Kubrick Wing, but I couldn’t walk without a Zimmer frame, I still had massively swollen legs and feet and some of my stitches hadn’t been taken out yet. Everyone thought I was crazy. Pippa told me, ‘It’s too soon!’ I still hadn’t even had a shower, and was desperate for one, so one of the nurses arrived to help me. Mum was there, too, and I just looked at her and said, ‘Will you wash me, Mum?’

  She hadn’t seen me naked in forever, and we hobbled into the disabled shower together and she said, ‘I’m going to wash your hair.’ I was like a vulnerable little girl again – it felt so lovely to have her take care of me. She washed me and dried my hair, and I have never felt so appreciative of her (or of water!).

  Chris came by every day, on what became known as Mandy Watch, and was so supportive that I put a lot of my speedy recovery down to him. He did, however, keep wanting to talk about what had happened to me – he’d had a hell of a shock, and needed to get it all out of his system, but I couldn’t listen to him. It was too frightening. It sounds mean, but I told him to talk about it to Pippa, because dwelling on it was the worst thing I could do. Instead, I needed to focus on getting better. Otherwise, we made it as fun as possible.

  Hollie was in the room with me most of the time, and Lexi came in with my mum and dad every day between shopping and cinema trips with my sister. The only time I ever felt devastated about the situation I was in was at the end of Mandy Watch. Everyone would stay as long as they could (Chris would always be last to go), after which the nurses would leave Hollie with me in her little crib. The cot bars would be up as I was still too weak to hold her, and one night she was a bit sick after having some milk. I couldn’t even gather the strength to lean over and grab her muzzie to wipe her – instead, I had to press the bell for the nurse. I wept then – I felt utterly shit and useless. I couldn’t even look after my baby – I was in there to be a mother and I couldn’t do it.

  That was when I really started to pull my act together. I stopped taking painkillers, I stopped taking the antibiotics that were making me throw up and I asked every doctor, ‘What do I need to do to get out of here?’ A physiotherapist came in every day to help me walk again. At first, I could barely stand but I practised walking a bit further every day and eventually they took the catheters out. Until that point I hadn’t been sure I’d be able to walk or laugh or sneeze or have sex again!

  One by one, the midwives and the physiotherapist checked and double-checked me. Chris promised them we would have family help with the baby and that my mum would take care of Lexi. Everything else would be done for me – I would just be at home in bed or propped up in a chair instead of in hospital.

  I was very poorly, but I did it. The following Monday, a week after Hollie’s birth, Chris wheeled me out of a back door of the hospital in the middle of the night, away from prying eyes. I was still in pain when I left hospital, I had this stuff on my lungs and every time I coughed I had excruciating pain through my scar – it felt like I was being stabbed with knitting needles. But he was right: the minute I got home I started to feel better and look better.

  Two days later, on 1 February, Theo’s first birthday, I hugged Hollie tight and wept tears of joy at having this tiny precious life to cherish for ever. Chris and I still checked on her all the time to make sure she was breathing and, of course, she was perfectly well. There was nothing to worry about and I had to try to let go of my anxiety.

  Surrounded by such loving care I improved by the day. Now I was desperate to get back to some sort of normality and no longer be an invalid. I took inspiration from my family. Lexi is a hard taskmaster like her mummy – she was thrilled to have me home, but when she came back from school the next afternoon she was really shocked to find me still in my pyjamas. (It’s hardly like I normally hang out at home in full make-up, but I usually at least manage to get dressed!) I swore then that she wouldn’t see me like that again, and she never did.

  Not only that, the Edinburgh auditions for Britain’s Got Talent were coming up in three weeks. Poor Carmen Electra, my stand-in, was getting it in the neck from all sides and I wanted to go back to work. I kept looking at the dates – Edinburgh was just one day and then there was a ten-day break until the auditions at Birmingham, so I told Chris I wanted to try to be there. I just wanted not to think about death, not to feel like death and be able to show Lexi everything was getting back to normal. Most of all, I wanted to have something to aim for.

  I spoke to my surgeon and admitted that I was still a bit swollen and weak but he said, if I was determined, then I should go for it. He added, ‘I have only ever seen one person in my whole career who has rallied as quickly as you after what you went through!’

  Richard Holloway came to see me, to see how I looked (and of course to hold the baby!). He was keen to make me realise there was no pressure to return to the show, but I had made up my mind. My mum and my sister would look after the babies, so there was absolutely no reason not to. I wanted to do it for me, for Chris, for Lexi and for Hollie. So I tried even harder.

  I rested. I started eating well (it was all in the food!). I had reflexology. My lovely Cath, who comes round to my house to do my waxing, massaged the fluid out of my legs, my shoulders and my hands. In the end, as I wasn’t allowed to fly, Chris and I got the train to Edinburgh together, and I really enjoyed the journey itself. It was nice being quiet and feeling like a normal couple, like nothing had happened, and I slept a lot of the way.

  I woke up in Edinburgh to find a bit of a commotion outside. There were a few paps, so I took a deep breath, stood tall and tried to walk n
ormally. Everything was painful but I just ignored it and smiled through my painkiller buzz. (The painkillers made me feel woozy and I said to Simon, ‘Tonight, Simon, I’m going to be Paula Abdul!’) When we reached the hotel there were more cameras and reporters. Chris dashed inside first – even in those circumstances he still leaves me with security! – leaving me to walk in and find that everyone was there waiting. They were all so gorgeous to me! Ant and Dec were there, too, grinning away.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ I cried and hugged them both.

  ‘You back to normal then, pet?’ Ant asked.

  Not everyone was so happy for me, sadly, and almost immediately people on online forums started to criticise me for going back to work so soon and accused me of abandoning my baby, which was bollocks. Women on Mumsnet judged me especially harshly, some saying that I couldn’t have been very ill if I came back to work so soon. How bloody dare they! But for the most part, I felt nothing but support from so many people I didn’t even know.

  The next day, the crowds that had gathered outside for us judges were just beyond amazing. Leaving the hotel, I felt like one of The Beatles (the police even had to stop the traffic!). I felt so buoyant and supported and happy. Everyone wanted to know about Hollie and it was just the best feeling to be able to say. ‘Yes, she’s fine, she’s with my mum.’ (Although sometimes I couldn’t think of Hollie’s name – I think something in me still couldn’t believe I had my baby.)

  I walked into the theatre and Simon was already there, which was unusual in itself. He gave me a massive hug and I said, ‘You know I’m going to milk this!’ He sat me down and started to hand me cards and gifts for the baby from Ant and Dec (a toy dragon), Alesha and David. The presents got bigger and bigger, until from behind his chair he pulled out a teddy bear as big as me ‘with love from Simon’. It now lives in Hollie’s bedroom.

  Later on that day I received an award for best actress for Shrek, which Simon had to present to me in the afternoon via a live video link of me accepting it, and I just kept thinking, ‘Every moment of my life feels like a movie either ending or starting.’ I always say about that time that if I was a character in EastEnders you would think, ‘That is so far-fetched – give this character a break!’

  The big moment for me, though, came when it was time to walk into my first auditions in months. The routine is always that Simon walks in last but the producer said, ‘No, this time Amanda comes in last.’ As I walked into that auditorium, it was, without doubt, one of the most incredible nights of my life. The audience gave me a standing ovation as Ant and Dec announced, ‘She’s back!’

  Afterword

  Yes, I am back. And I am looking forward, not behind me. That year, at the Birmingham show, I took Hollie too. That was the theatre where I last felt Theo kick me, and finally, I felt like I’d come full circle. It was very important to me to take my baby back there with me.

  I took the plunge and sold our little Norfolk hideaway to a friend (on the condition that he sells it back to me if ever he doesn’t want it any more). I had gone through so much in that cottage. I will always have my memories of dinners at the Hoste with Paul and Jeanne, and of family picnics and noisy Sunday lunches. We had cast Theo out to sea in his little pea-green boat on a windswept beach not far from there. But it was time to let go and start anew. Chris and I bought a thatched cottage in the Cotswolds instead and are creating wonderful new memories there.

  That summer, me and Mum took a motorbike taxi to see the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. Then, a week or so later, we went back to LA, to the beach, to my happy place, with my complete perfect little family. Jane says her fondest recent memory of me is there then, carefree and unencumbered for the first time in years – a girl with a boogie board and wetsuit, without a care in the world, on a Malibu beach. Whilst the rest of them sat and relaxed on the beach, I was apparently like a child, returning again and again into the waves and being washed up unceremoniously on to the shore with a massive grin on my face!

  But tragedy inevitably leaves a legacy in its wake. Mine is that I occasionally panic that I’m going to die and not see my children grow up. I have been made painfully aware of my own mortality, and other people’s. Having been fit and well all my life – and rarely in hospital since I had my tonsils out.

  I finally gave in to therapy this year. It was only when I got on to the Britain’s Got Talent set that I realised the extent of the press coverage whilst I’d been in hospital. They run clips from the previous year to entertain the audience and suddenly all the Amanda Holden headlines, and television news coverage including the Ten O’Clock News and Sky News was all over the screen. I was so shocked.

  I never had a problem with therapy but always felt able to deal with things on my own – in fact, I prided myself on it. It was hard to accept that my family and friends were no longer enough to help me. But I am also proud of knowing when to ask for help.

  I found a lovely lady and offloaded my worries. Speaking to someone – a stranger – for a few weeks, to get me back on the pace, left me rejuvenated. We spoke about the immediate stuff and then eventually we talked about my family and the dark days of their animosity towards me. I told her that I felt I had to almost die to get everyone back together, and I truly believe that’s why it happened. It was like I was a human sacrifice! There was no other lesson to learn for any of us, except to put the pettiness and crap behind us and realise family is the most important thing.

  My own little family comes above everything, of course. But now I had MY family back, after a fallout that started with nothing . . . A weird comment from my nan that she emphatically denied which led to trauma and heartache and accusations of lies. A moment from my sister who refused a simple favour. My mum seizing on pieces rather than seeing the whole picture. It was a spark that ignited an entire bush fire, and absolutely the most hideous time. I know families who argue about far more serious issues but all eat around the same table within hours! My family, however, are all stubborn and have shown how these things can quickly escalate out of control. I know my sister has spoken to my mum about the time she lost with Lexi and how ridiculous it has all been, but I told Debbie Hollie meant a new start for all of us – that she had her fresh out the oven, and that getting to know Lexi aged six was just the best age.

  The process of creating this book has reminded me of what I have experienced over the last forty-two years and what is now important to me. I have never lost my curiosity about life and still feel an ever-present sense of discovery. I only hope I can pass that on to my children. Aside from delving deep into your memories (some of which are firmly buried!), I think one of the most notable things about writing a book is looking back on all the photos. You see yourself all those years ago and cannot believe who you are looking at. Who was that girl having such a life? We all groan, of course, at how time ages us. We all have horrid photo albums. What is interesting to me is looking at how my life has been recorded, or ‘captured’, by the media. The last twenty years all played out so publicly, but I look at my eyes in the pictures and they are what tell the truth. (‘The eyes never lie,’ to quote Al Pacino in Scarface.)

  I have absolutely no clue what my name means to you now. A judge on Britain’s Got Talent? Actress, maybe? West End lovey? Ex-wife of TV game show host? Naughty minx? Annoying? Irritating? A name synonymous with baby loss? Regular winner of the annual Git Awards (at a private ceremony held at our house only!). Who knows. And who bloody cares? To be honest, these days I am just glad to still be here. To me, I am Mrs Chris Hughes. Mother to Lexi and Hollie. The two little fairies I was always meant to have. They fill our hearts with so much love and laughter. No one prepares you for the immensity of that. Or how complete it makes you feel.

  I barely recognise myself as the person I was, but only my face and body have changed over the years (and no – not from Botox or surgery!). My integrity and the person my mother brought me up to be are the same. I am still intact. Battered, bruised and tougher than I had hoped fo
r. But essentially, I am still that little girl hiding in the wardrobe . . .

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly I would like to thank my publisher Carly Cook at Simon & Schuster. You have been like a Super hero. Thank you for dealing with all the baddies! This book wouldn’t have happened without all your support and ball busting.

  Mountview Theatre School and all who graduated in 1992. It was bloody hard work. It wasn’t like ‘Fame’, but we learned a lot! In sweat! Years that I will treasure and remember forever! Jason Maddocks. Flatmate. True friend.

  To Jane Lehrer, Patrick Hambleton, my agents when I first left drama school. I owe you so much. Not least your faith in me and starting me on the road to . . .? My dreams! Patrick you once said it would be a path covered in brambles but you both helped clear the way. Along with Amanda Howard Associates and much later the great Sue Latimer. Thank you.

  To so many people who believed in me and gave me a chance: Tony Charles (softest beard in the biz!), Richard Parker, Wendy Toye, Stephen Dexter, David Tomlinson, the late Geoffrey Perkins, Sally Fincher, Nick Symons, John Bishop (not the comedian), Spencer Campbell, Stuart Harcourt, Jed Mercurio, Duncan Weldon, Sam Mendes, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Peter Fincham, Andy Harries, Damien Timner, Michelle Buck, Gareth Neame, Jed Mercurio, Harry Enfield, Charlie Pattinson, George Faber, Debbie Horsfield, Elizabeth Binns, Sally Haynes, Laura Mackie, the late John Stroud, Marcus Mortimer, Jed Leventhall, Michael Mayer, Richard Holloway, Shu Greene, Nigel Hall and Amelia Brown.

  Special thanks to Rob Ashford, Jeanine Tesori, and To Caro Newling for her tireless understanding and support. A massive ‘mwah’ to DreamWorks.