sadie frost
crazy days
my autobiography
Dedication
To Mum and Dad
Tom and Betty
‘Now it all makes sense’
I would like to thank my four beautiful children, Fin, Raff, Iris and Rudy.
My brothers and sisters: Tim, Dan, Simon, Jamie, Toby, Sunshine, Jessie, Holly and Jade.
Frosty, Anne Vaughan, Robert Davidson, Gary, Jude, Ania, Mina, Chip and Heidi, Francis Ridley, Daniel Bee, Laura Reid, Simon Benham and Zoe Lewis.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One Mary and David
Chapter Two Sadie Vaughan
Chapter Three Growing Up
Chapter Four That Boy
Chapter Five Finding My Feet
Chapter Six Love and Marriage
Chapter Seven Big Changes
Chapter Eight Coming Home
Copyright
Primrose Hill
I smell paint. Big hands scoop me up – from my cradle. I’m suspended through air. Wrapped in a blanket. Cold air touches my throat. I jolt. Through every step. Big feet. Left, right, left, right. Walking up. Up. Up a long path, a hill, dark green and dewy. Streetlamps flick past. Up, further up the hill, to the top. I’m lifted in the air, up high into darkness.
I see buildings, lights. The birdcage. I twist my head to look up. Stars – all the night’s stars for me to see.
Mary
With a finger, Mary wiped the bead of sweat from her forehead, tracing its journey down her temple. It was a useless task as no sooner had she brushed it away than more beads formed on her chest, her neck and even her arms. It was as if what was inside of her was pushing everything outwards. She repeated the words to herself, ‘If the contractions are two minutes apart you are entering the final stage of labo –’ She resisted the urge to shout out and forced herself to concentrate on the facts in the book, dog-eared and dirty, clutched to her chest like a bible. The childbirth manual that she’d found in a second-hand bookshop in Camden Town was her only source of knowledge. There was no one else she had been able to ask about her expanding stomach and all the complicated feelings that came with it.
After the cramping pain had subsided she tipped her head back and studied the anaemic little delivery room that they had shoved her into at the Whittington Hospital. The only sound, apart from her own breathing, was the ticking of the clock on the wall, which displayed the date in a little box within the face: 19 June 1965. So this was to be the day. She gripped the book to her breast and nursed her belly with the other hand, rubbing the material of the crème anglaise-coloured nightdress that she’d chosen with great care for the birth. She’d so desperately wanted the birth of her first baby to be special, but she was totally alone. No mother or father or sisters or friends. She’d resigned herself to that months ago. But I want him to be here. Him. Where is he? Where was he when she needed him? Even the nurses were too busy to sit and comfort her, and she felt ashamed. Of what, she didn’t know exactly.
She returned to the book and wondered if she would ever have got this far without it. All her friends back home were busy with homework or enjoying school discos. London was huge and unfriendly, and however much she adored him, he hadn’t been much help at all. A vast, shuddering pain interrupted her reading and the book slipped from her grasp as she reacted to the searing rip – as if someone was chopping her open from the inside. Her cry brought a nurse to the door, a stern woman with a time-worn face.
‘Nurse!’ said Mary, panting. ‘I think my baby’s coming.’
‘Just keep breathing, love,’ said the nurse, distracted by something that was happening outside the door. ‘We’ve just got something to deal with out here.’ And then she disappeared again. Through her pain Mary heard shouting in the corridor but instead concentrated on the cruel strip light on the ceiling as if it was a beacon showing her the way. The shouting became louder and she made out a man’s voice. She heard ‘Fuck you!’ and ‘Let me through, you bastards!’ and other swear words, but it meant nothing to her because of the pain. She couldn’t understand who was shouting and why. All she wanted right then was him beside her, holding her hand. She leaned her head to one side and a tear slipped down her cheek as she remembered the first time she’d ever set eyes on him, standing on that bridge in Ashton, over a year earlier.
She hadn’t really wanted to meet him but her mate Maureen had persuaded her.
‘Come on, Mary, what’s up with you? Don’t you want to meet a fit lad? He’s not from ’round here.’
‘Where’s he from then?’ she’d asked.
‘Ashton-under-Lyne,’ Maureen replied in a magical whisper, as if Ashton was the most exotic place in the world. Mind you, compared with Denton, where Mary had spent all her life, it was. Even a town five miles away offered excitement and new possibilities. ‘And he’s like 18 and he’s dead grown-up and he’s got this nose that’s like dead flat, like a shark. He’s been in loads of fights and he’s not like other lads round here. He’s right nice. And he knows stuff. Come on, Mary, come and meet him. He said that I could bring a friend and he’ll take us both out.’
Mary listened as she pushed her hair back into place, using the window of her parents’ sweet shop as a mirror. Maureen only wanted her to go along because she was too scared to go and meet him on her own. ‘OK then,’ she sighed, as if it were a big hardship. ‘If it makes all that much difference to you, I’ll come.’
She and Maureen were the adventurous ones at school, and Mary had always been up for a bit of excitement to ease the dull life that her parents wanted her to live. Mary dreamed of something other than the terraces of tiny, red-brick houses in Denton, a working-class hinterland a few miles from the heart of Manchester. She dreamed of anything else but her parents’ shop. Through the window she could see Tom Nolan, her father, serving a customer, his bald head shining, a healthy, sturdy man who loved his beautiful daughters. Of the three strong-willed, intelligent Nolan girls, Mary was the youngest and the most easily led. She didn’t want to work in the sweet shop or a bakery and had already got herself a part-time job as a magician’s assistant at the local theatre. At the tender age of 15 she was far too interested in the glamour of the stage and the adult world for her father’s liking.
‘Eh, brill,’ said Maureen, doing a little jump. ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow and we’ll get the bus to Ashton. We’re to meet him on the Guide Bridge at four o’ clock,’ she said, skipping off happily. Mary caught her father’s eye through the window and waved at him. For some reason, the description of the boy that Maureen had given her had piqued her interest more than usual. That night she conjured up a mental picture of him, which meant that as she approached the windy bridge the next afternoon with Maureen, she couldn’t help but be a little nervous. As they walked along, their smart, pointy shoes clacked against the pavement and their linked arms were