Lindsey Hunter - Unbreakable - My life with Paul – a story of extraordinary courage and love

Lindsey Hunter

My life with Paul

A story of extraordinary courage and love

To Evie

I’ll never forget your daddy and the love we shared, but you are my future …

Make your own way, my darling daughter.

Love Mummy xxx

Title Page Lindsey Hunter Prologue: March Prologue Chapter One: Twenty Three March Chapter One Chapter Two: March Chapter Two Chapter Three: Making An Impression Chapter Three Chapter Four: Golden Boy Lindsey Hunter Chapter Five: Summer Lindsey Hunter Chapter Six: Summer Love Lindsey Hunter Chapter Seven: My World Lindsey Hunter Chapter Eight: Which Girlfriend? Lindsey Hunter Chapter Nine: The Lost Years Lindsey Hunter Chapter Ten: Polishing The Diamond Lindsey Hunter Chapter Eleven: Plan B Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twelve: Engaged Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirteen: Wedding Plans Lindsey Hunter Chapter Fourteen: Shorter, Tighter, Better! Lindsey Hunter Chapter Fifteen: Mr And Mrs Paul Hunter Lindsey Hunter Chapter Sixteen: D Day Lindsey Hunter Chapter Seventeen: Reality Lindsey Hunter Chapter Eighteen: ‘Your Husband’s Got Cancer’ Lindsey Hunter Chapter Nineteen: Dread Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty: Life Goes On Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-One: The Battle Begins Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Two: A Ray Of Hope Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Three: Chemo Countdown Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Four: ‘Little Paul’ Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Five: For Better, For Worse Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Six: Our Baby Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Seven: What’s The Sex? Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Eight: Normal Lindsey Hunter Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hard Labour Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty: Hello, Evie Rose Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-One: A Perfect Family Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Two: Wishing For Miracles Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Three: Father Christmas Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Four: Summer Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Five: Letting Go Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Six: Goodbye, My Love Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Seven: Paul’s Legacy Lindsey Hunter Chapter Thirty-Eight: Life Goes On Lindsey Hunter Epilogue: Dear Paul – Lindsey Hunter Appendix: Letters For Paul Lindsey Hunter Acknowledgements Lindsey Hunter Copyright Lindsey Hunter About the Publisher Lindsey Hunter

Prologue

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

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.’