We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info
“You’ve always had a strange relationship with death,” Anthea told me once. We were in Mexico on a magazine photoshoot, and tequila shots had taken us back to painful memories of the death of our sister, Ruth. She was 15 when she died and Anthea and I were 18 and 11 respectively.
Ruth was born with spina bifida and died from kidney failure. I was already suffering from depression, and our sister’s death made it so much worse.
Decades later, Anthea’s assessment seemed fair comment. The shock of losing Ruth had never gone and, as a staunch atheist, I’d never had any comforting thoughts of heaven. Hence perhaps the desire to believe that Mum would soldier on into eternity.
I was aware her dearest desire was to see her two remaining daughters reconciled. Following our very public fallout several years ago, Anthea and I were not speaking.
She had lent me money to solve a cash flow problem with two problematic business projects. The full story of how these perfectly sound ventures were blown apart belongs to my husband, the actor Gary Webster, so I won’t explore that here. Suffice to say the fallout nearly put him in an early grave and we were left with a debt we couldn’t honour.
Anthea and I are both fiery people and each of us was backed into a corner; she felt let down and I felt helpless to do anything about it. Worse, she was going through the personal agony of a divorce from her husband Grant Bovey and I was struggling with severe depression. Sometimes I was scared to leave the house; I felt I couldn’t trust myself to stay sane. We needed to go our separate ways to lick our wounds and take a break from each other’s pain and anger.
Over the following years I assumed the relationship I had once cherished was over; damaged beyond repair. There had been zero communication, just occasional snippets of information via mum or my dad Brian, and various accusations in the press.
Dad often mentioned that his “two warring daughters” were a blight on their otherwise happy lives.
Stubborn to the core, neither of us would make the first move, although I felt my parents’ pain acutely. That our two sons, Jack and Freddie, were estranged from their aunt filled me with sadness too.
So who would have thought that the proverbial olive branch would eventually be passed back and forth between us over the challenge of setting up dad’s new mobile phone?
Before Christmas last year I was teaching him how to send photos via WhatsApp. He feeds the local badgers every evening and had captured a perfect image. I helped him send it to Anthea.
She was so surprised she called immediately to find out how he’d managed it. Dad explained that I had helped him. They then had a conversation about picture messages that caused so much confusion it was hilarious and frustrating.
‘Dad mentioned his two daughters blight otherwise “For God’s sake,” I said to him, “pass me the phone!” Suddenly Anthea and I were chatting. And when we finished talking about Dad’s mobile issues we just kept going. After that, we kept in touch on WhatsApp – sending pictures of our dogs or discussing a present for Mum and Dad’s 67th wedding anniversary. I think we settled on a climbing rose. I never dreamt that the celebration would be their last; that they wouldn’t reach the landmark 70th.
One week I was visiting and Anthea rang Dad to say she was working nearby and would come over to stay the night.
We hadn’t met for about four years but we greeted each other with the usual kiss and hug and the years apart just melted away.
A journalist once described us as being like “two excitable hamsters”. I’m not sure it was a compliment, but it probably describes us well – two sisters bubbling with ideas, news, gossip and opinions; finding sharp humour in our differences and a strange comfort in our similarities. We got a Chinese takeaway that night and our two beloved dogs, meeting for the first time, provided great entertainment, as only dogs know how.
Mum and Dad were so relieved. The joy was palpable. She told me afterwards that she was “so thrilled to see you talking again”. Her world was complete.
She had always been fiercely proud of us. Like most mothers, she felt her offspring could do no wrong.
I still chuckle at how she handled a dreadful story about me that appeared in one of the Sunday papers after I started seeing Gary. The headline claimed we had had sex in the toilets on every single floor of the London store Selfridges.
Setting off for her Sunday church service, Mum thought about how to handle it.
“I just know that story isn’t true,” she announced when she arrived. “My daughter only shops at Harvey Nichols!”
And with that she marched down the aisle to the front pew. Mum had always basked in whatever bits of glory we brought her way via our television careers. Working overseas would sometimes mean she could come along as a guest, and in London, there would be gala events requiring endless debates over what to wear before the excitement of the journey down from Stoke-on-Trent.
It gave us a real kick to see her so happy. When our sister Ruth died, Mum said she felt like she would never smile or laugh again. But time is a great healer. I am so glad Anthea and I gave her reason to smile in the few short months before she died.
Unfortunately, not long after that reunion over the Chinese takeaway, we began to see a decline in her. Arthritis caused serious mobility issues and she was having poststroke seizures.
Increased medication appeared to dull her senses, and she became a toned-down version of her former self. Mum, who only ever transmitted in Technicolor, was slowly starting to fade. Even then, we didn’t expect to lose her. We turned our attention to Dad as it became clear that being her carer was taking its toll.
I declared that we were now Saving Private Brian as we organised help, tools and gadgets to make their lives easier.
Over this time, we were up and down the M6 regularly. Even then, Anthea and I didn’t discuss our years apart and the circumstances and arguments that caused that.
I can honestly say neither of us has felt the need to; the pleasure of enjoying each other’s company now completely overrides the need to dissect the past.
And Mum’s decline brought any of our own grievances sharply into perspective. On one occasion I started to talk about the money Anthea had lent me, but the conversation was cut short.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, “Let’s just forget about it and move forward.”
And that’s exactly what we have done.
When Mum was admitted to The Royal Stoke Hospital in mid-April I never thought she wouldn’t come home. I believed her fighting spirit would triumph. She had pneumonia, but she was getting good care and treatment.
But just three days in, at 7am, came the dreaded call: “Can you come in? Your mum’s had a bad turn and we don’t think she’ll survive the day.”
In a daze, I called Anthea, barely getting the words out through tears. Then I called a friend who could collect Dad and drive him to the hospital.
Anthea was filming in Manchester but cancelled that and travelled to the hospital. For me, the train journey from London to Stoke had never been so painfully slow. I was a sobbing wreck and was thankful that our elder son Jack was by my side.
Seeing Mum so ill and Dad so lost was like a knife in my gut. Even then, I thought I could save her – if I just sat with her long enough, oozing positive thoughts and clenching her hand, she would absorb my strength and get better.
At first, it appeared to work. We returned home to London with trains booked to travel up again a few days later. But we’d only been back one night when the summons came again.
Again, the endless train journey and again, the rota of one of us sitting with Mum while the other looked after Dad. I held her hand and still had an unwavering notion that I could save the day. Eventually, I left, still expecting a miracle.
That evening we went food shopping. Anthea is an excellent cook. I am good at advising how to turn any dish into a vegan one and setting the table.
And so we turned into excitable hamsters again, shutting out what was actually going on by drinking lots of wine and putting the world to rights. We chatted about Anthea’s fiancé Mark who I had yet to meet. She said how wonderful he was. We chatted about the theatre plays that Gary had been doing and how wonderful he was too.
We talked about our children and caught up on the various dramas in their lives. Pent-up anguish was released and we giggled our way to bed. When the hospital’s call came at 2.30am I was thankful the excess of wine dulled the news that Mum had just died.
I waited until 6.30am before knocking on Anthea’s door and telling her. We hugged and cried before going into Dad and telling him what he already knew was coming.
Our family of five, then four, had now become three.
Since Mum died, Anthea and I have been together at Dad’s on many occasions, planning meals, sorting through Mum’s belongings, rummaging through long-forgotten boxes of photos and trinkets.
I reminded Anthea of a favourite snap which had been missing for 20 years. It was of the two of us at the hospital the day after Jack was born.
About 10 minutes later Anthea screamed: “The photo, I’ve found the photo!”
It was as lovely as I’d remembered. We suddenly both had tears in our eyes… we’d found a chink of happiness at a very unhappy time.
From the days when I was Anthea’s “pesky little sister” we’ve had arguments, fallouts and fights, but we have been there for each other in some of our lowest moments – our sister’s death, divorces, career troughs, financial pickles, accidents and illnesses.
And as we have known each other for 55 years, a mere four years apart within that time is surely just a brief stumble on life’s great journey.
After all, we may not always have been friends, but we have always been sisters.
Source: Read Full Article
