They were the last people I expected to see in the middle of a trauma-induced breakdown, suffering through severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and agonising flashbacks of my life. I tried to cope by focusing on the people I knew loved me: my grown-up daughter , my family, my friends. And there into my hallucinating brain appeared two people I was not expecting to see, not least because they’d died more than 30 years before: my grandmothers.
Emma was a doughty East End matriarch, a devout Catholic, who, as bombs fell, scrubbed the doorstep of her council house – later condemned as a slum – lest her neighbours thought she was slacking. Rose lived out in the countryside in Essex, providing for her family during the war by raising chickens and skinning rabbits. I loved my grandmothers, of course, but rarely thought much about them.
I knew they wanted the best for me, but what did their lives have to do with mine as the high-flying, and highly-paid, editor of glossy magazines? Quite a lot it turns out. In 1992, my first husband, John Merritt, died, and just six years later, in 1998, my eldest daughter, Ellie, was killed by a rare form of blood cancer. I was pregnant at the time of John’s death and suffered PTSD but had no choice but to carry on working, including during Ellie’s subsequent diagnosis and ultimately unsuccessful treatment at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
My surviving daughter, Hope, was looked after by wonderful nannies but life was hard as a singl.