Forever Is Over (66 page)

In all my days, that minute was the best minute of my life. To hear
you have beaten cancer is the greatest feeling. I am sure people react
in all types of ways when hearing this news, I am sure consultants get
bombarded with hugs and kisses from patients, luckily for Mr. Davenport
though, I left him alone. I was just positively beaming! It felt like
the guillotine had stopped halfway down and the executioner had
announced it would take many years to fix.

I wanted to make sure though, that I was not jumping to con
clusions,

“
So does that mean that I won
’
t be needing chemotherapy?
”

“
Not at the moment, no, and hopefully it won
’
t be needed at all.
”

The next few minutes passed with Mr. Davenport and I chatting like
old friends about the regular check ups I would need, about my missing
girlfriend, about Mr. Davenport
’
s wife and three children and how his
oldest, Giles, was a ski instructor in Morzine. I then thanked him, bade
him farewell, left his office and
excitedly ran around the hospital in search of a payphone like
Anneka Rice on
“
Treasure Hunt
”
, to ring home. The whole family had
wanted to come with me to the hospital, to hang around outside the
office like last generation expectant fathers, but I had banned the lot of
them, wanting to deal with the initial verdict alone. I found a phone
and there was no-one on it and no queue, it was definitely my lucky day.
I punched in the digits and once I heard Mum
’
s voice, the pips started
to go and I had to force my ten pence in, like the red telephone boxes
of old.

“
Mum, it
’
s me! They don
’
t think its spread!
They think they
’
ve got
the cancer out!
”

I heard Mum telling everyone and the shrieks of delight from
behind her and then she broke down with relief.

“
Don
’
t cry Mum! It
’
s all good! It
’
s not quite over but if this was
a boxing fight between me and cancer, Mum, the referee would be
stopping the fight and declaring me the winner!
”

I love analogies! I did then and still do. That boxing analogy was
wide of the mark though. I was a long way off winning the fight. A
retrospective analogy was that the cancer was doing to me what Ali
had done to George Foreman in the
“
Rumble In The Jungle
”
in
’
74. The
cancer was lying back on the ropes, taking my punches and pretty much
everything I could throw at it, letting me think it was beaten all ends
up, before it finally retaliated with a sucker punch. Cancer was not my
real opponent, like everyone else my real opponent was time. Time is the
heavyweight champion of the world, it defeats everyone in the end.

I was certainly fighting though, back then, blissfully unaware of
what lay ahead. I was definitely not being knocked out in Round One.

That day, the day of the results, changed everything. The overwhelming
feeling was now relief not worry or concern. There were still subsequent
days, around that time, that I felt all was against me, especially during
Jemma
’
s trial, but on the whole, moments became more precious, life
became more precious, my family, even Jim, became more precious
and sentimentality reigned. I hugged the whole family more, kissed
them more and always remembered to tell them that I loved them. The
same was true the other way around with Caroline, Helen and Mum,
in particular, never missing an opportunity to hug me.It was like my
outlook on life had been myopic and someone had given me glasses.
You don
’
t always remember to wear them but when you do everything
is crystal clear - life is short and fragile, make the most of every healthy
minute.

Jemma

I served twenty one months in Her Majesty
’
s Prison, Styal. Originally
built as an orphanage back in the nineteenth century, to house destitute
children from the Manchester area, it was now home for the morally
destitute. It was certainly not the type of place Judith Chalmers would
have covered on
“
Wish You Were Here
”
! As much as I would have liked
to see it, I just could not see a bronzed Judith and her television crew,
waking up in a cell and inviting her ten million viewers to handle stolen
goods so they too would get the opportunity to stay there.

Styal was a female only prison originally opened for young offenders
in the early 1960s, but by the time I arrived it accommodated female
prisoners of all ages. During my time there, about a fifth of the time,
I had a cell to myself which was great
as I had peace and quiet, the
rest though was time spent with the type of people you would cross
the street to avoid, a lot of prostitutes and petty thieves, who were
regularly self-harmers and drug addicts. I do not condone drug use and
thankfully I have not taken a drug in my life and have no intention of
doing so, but from a self-preservation perspective, in my twenty one
months in Styal, life was easier when there was a drop. Sharing a cell
with a druggie needing a fix was a lot harder than sharing a cell with a
druggie who had just had one.

Bizarrely, Vomit Breath actually went up in my estimation whilst
I was in Styal. She was a drunk, she lived for the weekend and found
children to be an unwanted distraction, especially lippy kids like me,
who she could only control towards the end by administering a beating
but those beatings were nothing compared to a couple I received in
Styal, just for a perceived dirty look or for the indecency of being
“
clean
”
.

As a rule, prisoners at Styal were a hugely fucked up bunch, dragged
into prison from the dregs of society. The large majority of inmates were
addicts of some description, some alcohol but mainly drugs. Some of
them you just avoided speaking to, but the ones that I was able to speak
to, would tend to tell tragic stories how their lives evolved into the messy
state that led to their arrival at Styal. Some of the prostitutes checked
into Styal like a businessman would check into a hotel, back every few
months, as they had to walk the streets to fund their habit. Lots had
been brought up in orphanages and foster homes, many had a mother
who was an addict or a stepfather or family
“
friend
”
who liked nothing
more than carrying out a regular sexual abuse habit on them. They had
all had torturous lives and although middle class society may turn their
noses up at them, it was hard not to sympathise as most of them had
fallen off the rails because they had no moral guidance. Try digging
your way out of hell with a spade made from ice.

Compared to this lot and their families, Vomit Breath was not
exactly Mother Theresa or Florence Nightingale but she wasn
’
t Attila
the Hun either. Vomit Breath did not deserve to die, but then I suppose
no-one had wanted to kill her, Kelly and I just wanted her to leave me
alone.

Fifteen or so years later, I only tell people in my inner circle about
my time at Styal. Others probably know because rumours spread at
school gates like colds in a classroom, b
ut the only people who hear it
first hand, are those I implicitly trust. When I tell them I was wrongly
convicted for a murder (or manslaughter) that I did not commit and that
as a result I spent almost two years in St
yal, the common reaction is to
suggest that I should write a book about my experiences. This is one of
the most ridiculous things I have ever heard! Who would read it? People
who want to cheer themselves up? Not a chance. My time at Styal was
the lowest period of my life and I would rather forget every second of it
than delve into it in great detail. I made no friends there, I partook in no
drugs or sexual relations, although both were as accessible as chocolate
at Willy Wonka
’
s factory, I just tried to be friendly enough to avoid a
beating but distant enough not to get dragged into any cliques. This was
not
“
Porridge
”
or
“
Prisoner Cell Block H
”
where inmates were friendly,
loveable characters who were just a little rough around the edges. This
was Styal where inmates had been pushed out the normality tree at a
tender age and then been beaten by every shitty stick in the surrounding
forest.

Fifteen years on, I remember very few names. Not the wardens, not the
governors, not even the woman
’
s who
I shared a cell with for three
months, although having thought about that one for an hour, I think
it was a Glaswegian self-harmer called Rosemary. It is all just a blur.
I hated the place, I hated the people but I do remember the one thing
that did eat away at me most in my time a
t Styal. It was not the twenty
hours a day in a cell, it was not the beatings or the vile food. The thing
that destroyed me in my first six months at Styal was visiting time. Four
weeks after being sentenced, I received a letter from Amy telling me
that my Nan (
“
Tut
”
) who had been so supportive, had passed away in
Arrowe Park hospital, three days after having a massive stroke. She was
72. After that, for six months, no-one else came. They left me to rot.
My first visitor, six months after
“
Tut
’
s
”
death was Richie Billingham.
When he came, I had to decide whether I wanted to thank him for
coming or reach across the table and punch him for abandoning me
there for six months!

Richie Billingham was fit. Fact. Some things in life are debatable.
Is Da Vinci
’
s
‘
Mona Lisa
’
a masterpiece? Do you to go to heaven when
you die? Are ugly people attracted to other ugly people or are they
just getting by? Of all sexual persua
sions do gay men have the most
sex? There are people who will debate opposing viewpoints on each
of these, but try and find a girl from Ormskirk Grammar School in
the late 1980
’
s who thought Richie Billingham was unattractive and
honestly, you would have more chance finding that elusive needle at
harvest time.

When Richie started
‘
going out
’
with Kelly Watkinson, I must
admit, at first, I found it really, really weird. It was a bit like Patrick
Swayze going for Jennifer Grey in
“
Dirty Dancing
”
or Richard Gere
going for Debra Winger in
“
Officer and a Gentleman
”
. If you had the
pick of absolutely anyone, why would you choose them?

This is not to say that Kelly wasn
’
t
stunning, she probably turned
out to be the prettiest woman I have
ever met, she has mesmerising
green eyes, wonderful skin and a smile that would cost a Hollywood
actress a small fortune, but at the time, I did not appreciate any of that.
All I could see was Richie Billingham, the heartthrob of our year, who
could have trounced Gere and Swayze in any
“
Best Looking Male
”
competition, was
“
going out
”
with my best mate, Jemma
’
s, kid sister,
Kelly. She was just a baby. Kelly was two years younger than us. At that
point in your life, a school year is a gulf, two years is a chasm.