Unbreakable: My life with Paul – a story of extraordinary courage and love

Lindsey Hunter

Unbreakable

My life with Paul

A story of extraordinary courage and love

Prologue

March 2007

The first time I saw Paul Hunter, he was 18 and I was 21. I needed a lift into town for a night out, and a friend said, ‘My little cousin will drive us in.’ I got into his blue sports car and my first impression was, ‘He’s just a kid.’ His cousin said he was a snooker player, and I asked, ‘As a job? That’s not a real job – that’s a hobby!’

The last time I saw Paul Hunter, he was 27 and I was 31. By then, he was my husband and the father of our baby daughter. We’d had the world at our feet for years, but it was slipping away fast. Paul was lying in a bed in a Huddersfield hospice, ravaged and exhausted, finally giving up his 18-month fight with cancer. I held his hand and said, ‘It’s time to go, darling. Just close your eyes.’

This is the story of everything that lay between those two events: the love and the laughter; the glitter and the fame; the pain and the fear; the terror and the loss. It’s a story that doesn’t end with death, that doesn’t end because one of us is no longer here. It’s a story about love …

It wasn’t love at first sight. Not for either of us. When I first met Paul Hunter he was just a daft boy. He had too much time on his hands, too little structure in his life, and too many people telling him he was God’s gift. Yet he had that smile. I can see it, feel it, even now. There was a magic about him that seemed to make him shine from the inside out. It wasn’t just his looks – although he was gorgeous, with floppy blond hair, sparkly green eyes and a cheeky grin. It wasn’t just his success – although by the time I met him he was well on the way to fame and fortune. It was the way he charmed everyone he met, from old ladies to lads in the pub, to shopkeepers and taxi drivers. He didn’t have a bad bone in his body.

I have so many beautiful memories. The best one of all is the living, breathing one I’m holding in my arms right now: Evie Rose, our baby girl. Paul and I ended up loving each other so much that there just had to be concrete proof, and I’m looking at her. As I sit here in an almost empty house getting ready to move, surrounded by packing cases and boxes, of course I grieve for all the happy times I spent here with Paul, but I won’t be broken by the memories of them.

Paul knew how to live; and he packed more into his few short years on earth than most people do in a lifetime. He made people happy. He made me happy. I could sit here in tears – and goodness knows there are plenty of times I feel like it. Who wouldn’t grieve for a husband torn away from them after only two years of marriage? Who wouldn’t feel their heart had been ripped out after 18 months spent watching him dragged to hell and back by terminal cancer?

I think these things sitting on the floor. I realize by Evie’s whimperings that I’m holding her too tightly, rocking back and forward a bit too frantically. She’ll never know her daddy, and he’ll never know what she grows up to be, but I won’t condemn her to life with a mother who only lives in the past.

I’m going to take the devotion that Paul gave me and shower our daughter with it. I’m going to teach her to be strong and fill her up with so much love that she will be able to take on the world one day. I’ll tell her all about her dad and make her proud to be his daughter – and she in turn will form part of his amazing, unique legacy.

Chapter One

23 March 2005

It was a beautiful early spring morning. I got up, showered, got dressed, just as I would on any other day. I shouted to my husband Paul to get up too as I went downstairs to make breakfast. He was quite quick that morning, given that he could usually sleep for England. I glanced at him as he stumbled into the kitchen, long blond hair flopping over his eyes. We’d been married almost a year, together for a lot longer, and I still got a flutter every time I looked at him – my husband!

My husband was Paul Hunter.

My husband was one of the best snooker players in the entire world.

He was famous and loved and recognized – but to me, none of that mattered when he came home at night, when the rest of the world wasn’t there.

He was just the man of my dreams.

I absolutely adored him.

He came over to me behind the breakfast bar of our Leeds home and grabbed a bacon sarnie off the plate, kissing me as he did it. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s be going, Linz.’

I pulled him towards me as he headed for the door. ‘Paul,’ I began, ‘Whatever happens …’

He cut me off. ‘It’ll be fine, Linz. Everything will be fine. You’ve said so yourself often enough.’ With that he smiled, picked up the keys to his BMW and we headed out of the door.

It took over an hour to get there, park, and make our way inside. The sign on the wall will mean lots of things to lots of different people: St James’ University Hospital, commonly known to locals as Jimmy’s. They might be there to have a baby, to get their broken leg fixed, to see their granny – a thousand reasons, each one so important to the person experiencing it. We didn’t know what we were going to hear but, as always, I had a plan. If I prepared myself for the worst, I thought nothing could surprise me, nothing could knock me off course.

I’d already had my shock. The one that took us there. Only a couple of weeks earlier, Paul became concerned about a pain in his side. The worry was that he might be heading for a burst appendix. God, we thought, how awful would that be? But it wasn’t his appendix; it was a lump. That day, in Jimmy’s, one of the largest oncology centres in Europe, we were to find out whether our life could move on. There was still a bit of me that was surprised we were even in an ‘oncology’ centre. I wouldn’t have known what the word meant until this all started. I know now. I know the definition: it’s the branch of medicine that deals with tumours, including the study of their development, diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

The branch of medicine that deals with the word we all fear.

Cancer.

We walked towards the NHS waiting room and I think I was probably shaking, but it was hard to tell because Paul was shaking so much more. There was peeling paper on the walls, ancient magazines on the tables, and a coffee machine that no one was risking. The waiting room was busy. It felt old, as if no one had put any care into it for years and that made me cross. People who sit waiting there are going through a very bad time in their lives. Couldn’t it have been nicer? Couldn’t it have been fresh and clean and pretty? I knew I was trying to distract myself.

Paul and I were holding hands. Tightly. Sometimes I ran my hand over the top of his, back and forth. Sometimes I squeezed his fingers and smiled when he looked at me. Sometimes I gave him a little kiss on the cheek. It was all meant to comfort – but why was I trying to comfort him if everything was going to be all right?

I wanted it to be over and done with so that we could get on with our lives, be together until we were old. Another part of me didn’t want to move, didn’t want time to tick by. If the news was bad, I knew everything would be broken from the moment we were told.

There were people of all ages, all types, beside us. Every so often, someone nodded towards Paul, or smiled, or hesitantly said ‘Hiya’. He didn’t know these people and I wondered whether they recognized him as the snooker player from the telly or if there was just some sort of automatic friendship between people waiting to hear if they had cancer or not?

‘You’ll be fine, babes,’ I said. Again.

I’d been saying it for two weeks, ever since he first got the pain in his side. I said it in the middle of the night when he woke up in a cold sweat. I said it when he came back from doing an interview in which he talked about the future. I said it to everyone else, and I said it to myself.

This was D Day. We’d staggered through the last two weeks, trying to be a normal couple, trying to forget what was going to happen that day, but we couldn’t ignore it any longer. There was only one thought going through my mind: PLEASE LET EVERYTHING BE OK.

Paul walked into the consulting room and I followed. We sat down and went through the usual pleasantries, constantly aware of the folder on the doctor’s desk. I tried to read things upside down, tried to read the body language of the consultant. Then the reality hit me. I actually heard what he was saying.

I had prepared myself for the worst and it happened.

Those words were being said.

Paul had cancer.

Chapter Two

March 1997

Eight years earlier, Paul Hunter had arrived in my world without any fanfare. It started innocently enough, but none of us know how little, everyday moments are going to join together to form the story of our lives, do we? I was working in a Leeds beauty salon at the time and probably could have won competitions as the most reliable, steady 21-year-old in the city. I’d gone to a local beauty college at 16 and worked in a salon to get experience from that point on, always taking any chance for extra responsibility, always planning ahead. I’d had a pension plan and an endowment fund since my first pay packet was put into my hand as a teenager, and I’d never taken a day off work in my life. As well as working in the salon full time during the day, I worked as an assessor and tutor in a college in the city centre at night.

One day, into this sensible, organized world flew Nicky Hunter, Paul’s cousin. The door of the salon burst open and this dark-haired bundle of energy ran straight behind the reception desk and threw her arms around me. We’d met a few years earlier at college when we did some classes together but as Nicky was in the year ahead of me, we’d lost touch once she graduated. I’d always liked her, and seeing her again brought a smile to my face – she was loud, funny, and never backwards at coming forwards.

‘Lindsey!’ she screamed once she’d released me from a bear hug. ‘Where have you been?’ I hadn’t been anywhere. I was in Leeds all the time but to Nicky life was only what happened around about her, so as far as she was concerned I could have been on the Moon for three years. She had known all there was to know about my life back at college, so she launched straight into the question she was most interested in.

‘Are you still with Dave?’ she asked. Before I got a chance to answer, she went on, ‘God, that’s been years now, hasn’t it? I’ve never known anyone to have a boyfriend that long. Weren’t you only about 15 when you started seeing him?’

Nicky was right. Dave had been a family friend ever since I could remember, and we’d always hung around together. About six years ago, that natural friendship turned into an equally natural relationship when he came on holiday to Spain with my friend’s family. We went away as mates and came back as boyfriend and girlfriend. He was my first boyfriend. In fact, he had been my only boyfriend. And now, he was my ex-boyfriend.

‘We’ve split up,’ I told her, aware there was a queue forming behind her in the reception area.

‘Don’t get yourselves all worked up,’ Nicky announced to the tutting customers behind her. ‘I’ve come to book a day of beauty for my twenty-first, and I need to speak to this young lady about it in detail.’ She shepherded me out from behind the desk and onto the sofa in the waiting area. As a junior took my place, Nicky settled down for some gossip.

‘What happened, Linz?’ she whispered, no doubt hoping for something juicy.

‘Nothing really,’ I had to admit. ‘It just sort of reached an end. We weren’t going anywhere, so there didn’t seem much point in sticking together.’

Nicky didn’t mince her words. ‘Was it because he was a bit boring?’

‘He wasn’t boring!’ I protested. ‘He was just … well … normal.’

I felt I had to defend Dave; he was a genuinely nice bloke and he’d always been good to me in our years together. ‘Just because he wasn’t out on the town every night, clubbing and drinking, doesn’t mean he was boring.’

She snorted at me. ‘Ha! Maybe you’ve turned into him, Lindsey Fell. In fact, you were always in need of a bit of lightening up. You’re a bit too serious sometimes.’

Judging by her looks and gestures, my boss was making it clear that I needed to do some work, so I got Nicky booked in for her manicure, facial and everything else she could think of, swapped phone numbers, then went back to dealing with other clients. I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day, though; Nicky had always put me in a good mood, and I was glad she was back in my life.

As soon as I got home that night, the phone rang. ‘Lindsey?’ said Nicky on the other end. ‘I’ve not forgotten about you,’ she said, as if it had been much more than six hours since we last spoke. ‘This weekend you’re coming out with me and some mates. We’re going to get you enjoying yourself and meeting some lads; it’s time you had a decent social life.’ Nicky made it sound as though I was a nun, but my life wasn’t as quiet as that – just a lot calmer than hers. I had lots of friends, and I did go out a fair bit, but we weren’t wild. That just wasn’t in my nature.

I still lived with my mum, Pauline, and dad, Graham, in a house in the Leeds suburbs, the house we’d lived in since I was a baby. My big sister Tracy, who was five years older than me, had left home already. I’d been brought up in an environment where hard work and independence were thought of highly. My parents always had their own businesses, from an American-style car valeting service to a squash club, and, along with Tracy, I took all of that in from in an early age. I saw that if you were decent and worked hard, you could have a nice life. I knew that the holidays abroad and cars and house all came from the fact that my mum and dad were strong, committed people who did an honest day’s work and put their family first.

To be honest, I’d had an idyllic childhood. I loved, and was good at, gymnastics and swimming. I liked horse riding as well, and I always had Tracy there beside me whatever I was doing, so I never felt lonely. We weren’t spoiled – we were expected to do chores and be well-behaved – but Mum and Dad made sure we had a great time.

As I became a teenager, I never felt I had anything to rebel against, because I was really happy. Lots of people at school complained about their parents or home life, but I adored my family. Why would I want to do anything to hurt them? Besides, I didn’t have the personality for rebellion. I liked things to be straightforward, predictable even, and it was that side of me that Nicky seemed determined to change.

That weekend, we hit Leeds. I was a bit nervous while I was getting ready. I remembered Nicky and her friends from college and they were so colourful and lively that I wondered whether I would fit in. I put on a pair of black trousers and a plain black top and left to meet them in town. It was a cold, wet night, but when I got there, they were all skimpily dressed as if it was the middle of summer.

‘Going for a job interview later, Linz?’ joked Nicky good-naturedly as soon as she saw my outfit. ‘You’re not exactly dazzling there, are you? I’m going to have my work cut out with you; come on, let’s have a decent night for starters.’ And we did.

It was the first of quite a few, as Nicky and I realized how well we got on. Every weekend we hit the clubs and bars, and Nicky always seemed to know where there was a party going on. After being quite nervous that first night, I started to enjoy myself. This group of girls always had a laugh; they chatted up lads and got plenty of attention, but they stuck together as well. Sometimes there were a few blokes in the gang – boyfriends or brothers or just friends – but it tended to be the girls who organized everything, and who made the most impact.

I fitted in much better than I’d expected, to tell the truth. Maybe at first I was a little resistant (perhaps I was just worried about spending too much money), but I loosened up pretty quickly after my initial reservations – you couldn’t help do anything else when Nicky was around. After so many years with Dave, I was finally having the social life most other girls had been getting on with for a long time. Once Nicky came back into my life, she shook me up. She showed me how to be young and have a good time, and that was just what I needed.

She lived at home with her Mum on a council estate in Leeds, and most of their relatives seemed to have houses there as well. Nicky worked at another salon in the city centre, where she did really well with tips as the customers loved her personality, so she always had a bit of cash. We were completely different when it came to money. While Nicky was the type to spend her wages all in one go at the end of the week, I had my savings and I just couldn’t bring myself to spend a fortune on clothes. Maybe the financial stability I’d learned from my parents made me that way; although they encouraged an entrepreneurial attitude, they also made sure that any risks were measured ones. I’d built up a little safety net for myself but spending £100 on a t-shirt, as Nicky would be quite happy to do, was way outside my comfort zone.

One Friday afternoon about a month after we’d met up again, Nicky popped into my work to confirm the arrangements for a new club that we were going to that night. ‘We still on?’ she checked. ‘Course we are,’ I replied. ‘What are you wearing tonight?’ she asked. I told her that I hadn’t even thought about it, which was something Nicky couldn’t begin to understand. ‘Lindsey! That is why you always end up looking like you’re going to a funeral! You’ve got a gorgeous figure – why don’t you show it off a bit for once?’ That was a touchy subject for me. I was about 5 foot 4 inches and a size 8, but I’d always worried that I had a really big chest, so I tended to dress sensibly to cover myself up. ‘I’m too self-conscious about my boobs. I don’t want drunken men leering at me all night,’ I told her. Predictably, she said, ‘Show everyone what you’ve got, Linz. It’s not your problem, it’s theirs. Anyway, there’s loads of us going tonight, so we can always protect you.’ She mentioned the names of a few of the girls’ current boyfriends before adding, ‘And my little cousin Paul is going to drive us there – we’ll save taxi money if he’s driving, and we can always get him to be your bodyguard too.’ With that, and a reminder to get to her house early so we could do each other’s make-up, she left.

I got through my appointments that day – mostly nail extensions, which were starting to be very popular for the weekend and weddings – and thought that maybe Nicky was right, maybe I should dress a bit more like the rest of them. So that night, I took a sheer black top from my wardrobe and, instead of slipping a black t-shirt on underneath, I just wore a black bra. I was hardly half-naked, but to me, the outfit seemed pretty revealing.

I left my car at Nicky’s house – I’d never even think of driving after a drink – and she clattered down the hall as soon as she heard me, tottering on heels she could barely walk in and poured into a top that she’d probably spent a fortune on earlier that day.

‘God, Linz,’ she said, pulling at my top, ‘I can almost see a bit of flesh under there! You sure you’re feeling all right?’ Laughing, we went to her room to put the finishing touches to each other’s make-up. I felt really happy that night – Nicky had given me a bit of confidence as she had dragged me to clubs and parties and shops over the past weeks, and it had definitely been for the best.

That night, another night out in town, promised to be a good one. We heard the front door downstairs slam as we were getting our bags ready, and Nicky’s mum shouted. ‘Nicky! Our Paul’s here. You girls ready to go?’ Nicky said that we would just be a minute and that her cousin Paul should wait outside for us. I was trying to loosen up, but there were always practicalities in my mind and I needed to ask Nicky a bit about this cousin of hers.

‘This Paul. How young is he exactly?’ I asked, worried that if he was her ‘little’ cousin he might not have a licence. Or insurance. Some habits are hard to break, and being sensible hadn’t entirely been flushed out of my system.

‘He’s old enough, Linz,’ she reassured me. ‘Eighteen. Just three years younger than us.’

We walked out of her mum’s front door towards a blue sports car waiting for us. I was trying to keep an open mind, but there was a skinny blond lad resting himself against the driver’s door, smoking. I hated smoking. Absolutely hated it. ‘All right girls?’ he said as we walked over, casually flicking his fag butt away and breathing smoke in our faces.

‘This is my mate, Lindsey,’ said Nicky as we climbed in. Looking back, maybe there should have been a bolt of lightning or a peal of thunder. My future was starting there, that rainy night in Leeds. The reality was that I barely batted an eyelid. I just got in the back, and said ‘Hiya’.

As we drove off, I noticed him having a sly look at me in his rear-view mirror. Actually, when I looked back at him I realized that he was quite good-looking. We caught each other’s eyes in the mirror, noticed each other having a sly look, and he gave me a cheeky smile. I flushed a bit with embarrassment and looked out of the window.

‘So, Lindsey,’ he said – and at that moment I swear I could hear him smiling – ‘Nicky tells me you’re in beauty as well?’ ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I told him. ‘What is it you do for a living?’ He said he was a snooker player. What a ridiculous answer! ‘Snooker?’ I said to him. ‘That’s not a job, that’s a hobby!’ Actually, I knew already what he did as Nicky had told me, but I didn’t want him to think I was bowled over by meeting him – her family all thought he was the bee’s knees, but there was something about his cheeky confidence that made me want him to work a bit harder to impress me. He wasn’t really on my radar, he’d barely registered, and I certainly didn’t want to come across like an adoring fan. I didn’t know anything about snooker anyway, and he seemed too young, too full of himself, too daft if he thought that hitting little balls into pockets with a stick was a real job. I had to stop myself giving him a lecture about setting up a pension early, but as I looked at him in the mirror again I saw that he was still smiling. He gave me a wink, a shrug, and got back to concentrating on the road – after he’d copped another look.