Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies
Page 28
A few days later, it’s a Saturday night, about half-past twelve, and I awake with a start from my wonderful dream of being an actor. I’m wearing a tight red polo shirt and I have a mop in my hand. I may or may not be wearing a corporate baseball cap. A single tear falls into my grubby mop bucket as I clean a floor covered in puddles of spilt cocktail and pieces of fractured bottle. I’ve just done my first return shift on the bar of Old Orleans, Finchley Road. (A taste of the Deep South.) I was right back where I started.
Can I tell you that things picked up for me? Professionally yes, of course they did. I got to write my autobiography – they just let anyone write autobiographies, you know. Shame, some real smart waiters and bartenders are out there with amazing lives. Not just bartenders, people, normal people with amazing stories to tell. Stories that’ll be forgotten once they’re gone. What a shame.
My professional success (relatively speaking) comes at a price though. I want to tell you that things got better for me emotionally but I can’t, they didn’t. Seemingly every time I did a film another member of my family died. Was this the price I had to pay for success? (Relatively speaking.)
Back then when I was in the midst of all that shit with friends and family, drink and other unmentionables, I never thought I’d be here. There were times, long, horrible, black times, when I just didn’t want to exist. I would never kill myself but the thought of just, bing, disappearing was really attractive to me. What changed? I think one thing was I learnt to forgive. I forgave my mum. I was too angry. What is the point of being angry with an amazing woman who loved me more than anything but had a terrible disease she had no control over. Why be angry at that? It’s too destructive.
One day about six years ago on a whim and with the crazy notion that by doing this I may free myself of something bleak, I took my car and drove the four hours to the small windy cemetery overlooking Withybush hospital where my mum’s buried. I wasn’t sure what I hoped to achieve but I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell Mum that I had forgiven her. And that’s what I did. I stood and sat and screamed and cried for ages. Me and Mum really hashed it out. An hour later, amazingly, I felt a million times lighter.
By and by shit goes down to fuck all this up again, but I’m not one to sit down and give up. Not any more. I think one could be forgiven for reading this book and shouting, ‘You can’t blame your mum, you hypocrite! You’re just as bad!’ I’d understand that. I’m not one for spoilers but I will say this, there have been lots of times since then when I feared I may tread the same path as Mum and Ian and Debbie, to trudge blindly into a genetic imperative, bound for a destruction I have no control over. I was afraid for a long time until something happened that changed me overnight, and I hope for ever. I say ‘hope’. With the best will in the world none of us can tell the future.
After doing IVF a couple of times and being told potentially it’d be really difficult to conceive, me and Chris silently decide not to have kids. We justify this to ourselves by saying we can have eight holidays a year.
Then four years ago while I was shooting the BBC drama Money, Dad is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Nine months later my beautiful, soft, fragile, hero of a father is dead in my arms.
Everything I’d endured up to this point pales into insignificance compared to right then. An orphan at thirty-nine. It’s not that young compared to some but very young compared to many. For months and months I grieve and drink and try to choose a suitable tree in Richmond Park that I can drive my powerful car into and obliterate this silent anger. What drama, poor Chris. Thankfully I never find my perfect Death Oak.
Some weeks after Dad dies, me and Chris are in her brother’s house on a gorgeous island in the Baltic Sea. I have literally had a complete meltdown. This is it. If there’s a god he will now intervene and take me away, if not for me then certainly for Chris. Enough is enough. I cry myself to sleep that night.
The next day I watch Chris come out of the toilet with a pregnancy test I had no idea she’d bought. Her hands tremble so much. My eyes widen. She is crying. I jump off the bed and leave my black duvet behind. I look at the test. Pregnant. Chris was pregnant. Instead of taking something away I was given something. I was going to be a daddy. My switch got flicked. This was now about someone and something much bigger than me. I promised that day that I’d do everything in my power to make sure Little Boy had a better time of it than me.
A lot goes on between the end of this book and my son popping out. Things change for me, to me, for the best and for the worst, but him popping out that day in June changed me for ever. I wrote this for him. So maybe he can one day read it – when he’s much older, says Mum – and have the answers I’ve now sadly lost.
My family, my lovely, complicated, fun-packed, fucked-up, laughter-filled, tear-drenched, utterly devoted family, were now gone, replaced by one little boy, that gift. The past now had passed over, totally forgiven but never to be forgotten.
You have been watching . . .
The 70s! Me, Mum and Dad after my First Holy Communion at St Peter and St Paul’s.
The Frost clan! From left to right. Back Row; Uncle Simon (Rosemarie’s husband), Dad, Grandad Frost and Danny from Holland (Auntie Hazel’s ex). Middle; Auntie Rosemarie, Mum, Auntie Francis, Helen (Grandad’s wife), Cousin Simon. Front row; Auntie Hazel, Cousin Caroline, me, Cousin Paul and Uncle Brian.
Me and Mum outside at 214 Raylodge Road. This was when I came back from Israel for the first time.
My brother Ian. What a little bruiser.
Me, Dad and my sister Debbie outside a pub called Corner Piece. This was Uncle Emmy and Grampie’s favourite pub.
Uncle Emmy with Auntie Betty, Auntie Marion and Auntie Melanie.
Me, Mum and Dad circa 1972. Look at Dad’s lovely dimple. His lifelong beard meant it was never seen that much. Shame.
A goodnight kiss from Papa Bear as Teddy Edward looks on.
Auntie Sandra and my Cousin Matthew, (Fergs).
Me and Marc on the beach at Broadhaven.
First day of school 1976. Cute.
Marc, Ian and Debbie.
Grampie, Mum, me and Gran outside Millbrook.
Mum with a massive shotgun.
Me and Cousin Paul at his 4th birthday tea. Grandad offers some sage words of wartime advice.
Mum and her boys AKA Peggy and the Mitchell Triplets.
My beautiful sisters Deborah and Sarah.
Me and Mum.
Mum and Grandad Frost. Wanstead, 1970s.
Grampie on the beach. Kickin’ it 1940s style.
Me strangling Mum. Christmas in Highgate. Circa 1999.
My lovely Uncle Emmy.
Me and Pops. Why’s my hair blonde. I look demented.
Acknowledgements
Mum and Dad. I miss and love you more than you could ever know.
My boy and his fantastic mother Christina. Mark and Emma Lesbirel. Big Vern, a giant of a man in every way. Trudy, one of my surrogate mums, thank you.
Gill Pegg, my other surrogate mum, thank you!
Sarah and Gary and the boys.
Sweet Sheba.
Simon, Mo, Smiley, Bunny, Tony, Jax, Dion, Edgar, Danny Brown, Vicki, Fergie, James, Nira, Jeremy, Beevs, Hayley Stubbs, Kevin Eldon – I love you all. Bad Boys for life.
Hannah Black and the Hodder crew. Thank you.
Big Talk Productions.
Working Title.
Public Eye communications, Nate, Libby and the gorgeous Ciara Parkes.
Tom Drumm. Josh Katz. Christian Hodell and Mikey.
Conor and Sam and the Troika crew. Dr. Christina Romete.
People I knew well but now don’t. Waiters and food service professionals all over the world.
Rugby. (The sport not the town)
Israel/Palestine.
Wales.
British Waterways.
Stella Artois. PG Tips.
Ciggies.
Coffee.
Sweet sweet Mary Jane, gone now but definitely not forgott
en.
Hard House I love you.
Ravers I love you.
Jimi Hendrix. Hunter S Thompson. Jim Jarmusch. Woody Allen. Mulder and Scully. Steven Spielberg. John Williams.
The Simpsons. George Lucas. Roy Neary. Indiana Jones. The Young Ones. Bill Nighy. Martin Amis. The Smiths. The Bluetones. Shit pubs. Sunny Side Up! Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Alexander Shulgin. Timothy Leary. Milan Kundera. West Ham Utd.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Falafel. McDonalds. Meat Fruit. Good curries. Global knives. Non-stick pans and decent ovens. Onions. TV.
AHL forever!
Table of Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Imprint Page
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
You have been watching . . .
Acknowledgements