CONTENTS
Title Page
PROLOGUE
1 STAYIN’ ALIVE
2 IVAN’S CHOICE
3 SATURDAY NIGHT IS PARTY NIGHT
4 COLD, DARK MORNINGS IN ST PANCRAS
5 JAMAICAN NIGHTMARE
6 THE ZAVARONI FACTOR
7 WANNABE ROCK STAR
8 MAD ABOUT THE BOY
9 A SINGER IN A BAND
10 THE REAL WORLD
11 AMERICA
12 MY LITTLE CARIBBEAN WEDDING
13 MY BABIES
14 BACK ON STAGE
15 THE BREAKTHROUGH SONG
16 THE FUNERAL PLAN
17 GRANDDAD TO THE RESCUE
18 THE SHOW MUST GO ON
19 THE X FACTOR
20 KIDNEY FAILURE
21 STEVIE AND WHITNEY
22 GOING TO CHURCH WITH STEVIE
23 ‘MELISSA THE VOICE’
24 LIFE IS SHORT, SO MAKE IT SWEET
25 THE WINNER
26 ONE DAY AT A TIME
EPILOGUE
Copyright
The release of Alex’s album at the end of 2009 resulted in a lot of stories appearing in the press about our family. I have chosen not to talk about some of these things when writing this book because I did not want to invade the privacy of my children or their father.
Although I have described my struggles as a single mother bringing up four children on my own, I did not think it was my place to go into detail about my ex-husband’s love life, and I certainly wasn’t going to talk about the love lives of my children.
It is true, as the newspapers have now revealed, that one of the girls with whom my ex-husband had an affair was underage at the time she allegedly fell pregnant by him, and that he served a prison sentence as a result.
I have never lied to the children about anything that happened between their father and me, but when they were small there seemed no reason why the rest of the world should know about our private business. I understand that now Alex is becoming famous it is pointless to hope that other people won’t be tempted to come forward and talk about things that have happened which we might have preferred to keep to ourselves. It was a very painful period of our lives, but we have moved on successfully and I fully understand that the other women and children in his life have an equal right to speak up about the ways in which he has treated them.
There have also been a lot of press stories about Alex and me falling out. It is a fact that we both have strong opinions and we both have a tendency to speak our minds when perhaps we should be a little more diplomatic, and it is true that our quick tempers often lead to fireworks between us. In fact, most of the family is just as outspoken and volatile. But virtually every woman I know who has daughters in their teens and early twenties experiences a lot of highs and lows in their relationships; it is all part of family life, all part of growing up. I’m sure there were times when I gave my mother just as much reason to worry as my children give me.
This is the story of a normal, loud, loving family who have been put under abnormal pressure, firstly through the behaviour of my ex-husband and secondly because of the pressures of the modern star-making media. I’m not complaining about it because show business is the world I chose, always knowing that success would come at a price.
I am so proud of the way I and my children have remained a family unit through everything, and I’m sure there will be plenty more dramas before we are finished. They are, after all, the stuff of life.
Sitting in a bed for four or five hours every couple of days, having the blood slowly and methodically sucked out of my body by a machine, cleansed of all the poisons that have built up and then pumped back in, gives me a lot of time to think. It gives me a chance to remember the dreams I started out with in life and the amazing places that they have led me to.
Everyone starts out with dreams, hopes and ambitions, but they don’t always work out quite how you expect. I guess it’s like John Lennon once said, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’
There’s lots of other stuff to think about too. Not just the dark, dramatic, frightening chain of events that have come about inside my body and my DNA, leading to my being here in this bed, surrounded by machinery and screens, but the fabulous moments as well, like when I was standing on a stage singing strong and proud to millions of people around the world, or when I first heard my voice coming back to me off a little piece of black vinyl or out of my mother’s bedside radio. I think about the future a lot too, and everything exciting that it holds for my family. If there wasn’t so much to look forward to, perhaps it would be harder to get through the bad days, harder to make the effort needed to keep on living.
Today I’m going to be stuck in this bed for the full five hours because I was a little naughty yesterday and ate two nectarines. I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, even as I was slipping them in between my lips and enjoying their taste and the soothing juice as it slid down my throat. In my heart, I knew that they would try to poison me, but the first one looked so tiny and innocent I told myself it couldn’t possibly do me that much harm. And when I actually bit on it, it was so soft and so sweet and delicious the memory wouldn’t go away and I just couldn’t resist the temptation of having another one a few minutes later.
Even after all I have been through, I still wasn’t able to stop myself and the moment I’d finished them I knew I was going to have to pay the price today. When I arrived on the ward this morning, I had to own up to the nurses and ask them to make sure that the potassium which I knew the succulent little fruits had deposited in my blood was all safely removed by the machine; otherwise, if it stays there, it will stop my heart from beating. My whole life now has to be about resisting temptations from all the seemingly innocuous everyday things that are trying to kill me, like they killed my mother and my grandmother before me, and maybe many other women in my family over the centuries.
Three days a week, I have to go through the same tedious ritual, often lying in exactly the same hospital bed, with my hair scraped up inside an unflattering plastic cap. If I stopped coming for these sessions on the machine, I would almost certainly be dead within a week. You can’t live without your kidneys – if your kidneys fail, you have to have dialysis to cleanse the blood and perform the function your kidneys usually would. The machine that stands beside the bed is my best friend and I have to remind myself of that whenever I am tempted to hate it. It is only because of that machine that I am here and able to enjoy the excitement of watching all our family dreams come true.
Some people decide that the pressure and worry of dialysis, coupled with the frequent exhaustion and other symptoms of kidney failure, is all too much and they deliberately give up coming to the clinic to be hooked up to the machines. They literally ‘sign off’ from the treatment, knowing that by doing so they are choosing to end their lives the moment they scribble their signature on the hospital form. I suppose it isn’t exactly