LITMIR.BIZ

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and had for some reason decided to demonstrate my party trick, which consisted of climbing through an elastic band (nope, me neither).

      But now here I was, a national home-grown celebrity, about to return to the very show that had got me where I was today. And it’s the reason I’ve been able to afford to get a nice house, expensive cars and keep my kids in a manner I could never have dreamed of when I was young. I waved to the crowd with a big grin on my face and held Jack’s arm as we walked into the house. It was such a nice feeling, knowing that all these people genuinely liked me and wanted me to do well.

      Perhaps John Noel was right. Maybe this was a good thing to do. After all, what could I possibly have to lose?

      29 January 2007

      I lay on the bed in the dark and sobbed. I was too scared to take off my coat because it felt like if I did it meant I had to stay in this unfamiliar place for good. And being here – in ‘rehab’ – frightened the living hell out of me. It was as if I was in that film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Was that what it had come to? Was I mad? How was I here? How could I have fucked up so royally?

      I was in The Priory, under doctor’s orders.

      For the past week I’d been on the front page of every newspaper and magazine in the country, alongside words like ‘racist pig’ or ‘vile bully’. The nation hated me. My life was crumbling beneath me.

      Every five minutes or so someone would gently prise open my door, peer silently into my room and shine a torch in my face to see that I was OK. It was a really traumatic time for me. In the end I must’ve cried myself to sleep because the next thing it was morning and the doctor was calmly informing me that he was upping the dose of my depression tablets.

      Depression tablets? I never ever dreamed I’d need them in my life. Was I depressed? Was that what was wrong with me? Was that why I couldn’t eat and couldn’t stop crying? Was that why I didn’t know who I was any more?

      A few minutes later a lady came in and explained what kind of treatments I would be having while I was in The Priory. I was going to have to confront some of the issues from my past. I was going to have to talk about my mum and address stuff that I’d never dared to tell anyone before. Things that had been buried so far back in my mind that I thought I might never be able to find them again. Because I didn’t want to find them – the memories hurt too much.

      I sat in this small, characterless room listening to the therapist coaxing me through what I needed to do. I was just staring blankly at the wall, willing myself to forget. But slowly she began to prise my brain open, asking me to recall the things that upset me the most. I started talking and talking. And all of a sudden the floodgates opened and it was like it was never going to end. As I spoke I could feel my heart aching. I talked about my relationship with my mum: how I’d looked after her; how I’d acted as her carer after the horrific motorbike accident she had when I was five years old when she was paralysed on one side of her body and lost all use of one arm.

      I described how since as early as I could remember I’d spent my whole life trying to protect my mum – frantically hiding the stolen chequebooks she used to have lying around the house when the police barged in on one of their raids; desperately denying to the teachers at school that she’d hit me for fear of being sent to social services (which I still was – and foster care was one of the worst experiences of my life). I told the therapist that my main concern and fear had always been making sure my mum would never become like my dad – ending up in prison, doing drugs or having to leave me – and how for so long I’d succeeded in keeping her safe. For the best part of my teenage years she stayed out of trouble. But it all changed when I was 18. And at that point in my life, when I needed her most, it felt like my whole world had come crashing down.

      This was my pain. More painful than anything I’ve ever felt in my life before or since. And this was what I was being forced to talk about. Something I’d never admitted until that day in rehab. I glossed over it in my last book – I’d been too frightened to tell a living soul. You see, I didn’t want to hurt my mum – as usual, I wanted to protect her – and I hadn’t been able to cope with what opening up these memories would do to me emotionally.

      It still cuts me like a knife just speaking about it now. But, as I discovered in The Priory, it’s one of the reasons I’m so fucked up to this day.

      I’ve always told people, ‘Mum’s not like my dad was. She’d never get involved in hard drugs. Her only vice was weed, and she smoked it because it kept her mellow.’ And for most of my life that was true. I accepted her doing puff, and I’d had a bit of a period with the old ’erb myself in my teenage years – hardly surprising considering she taught me to roll my first spliff aged four, then captured the whole proud event by taking a photo. But this was different. When I was 18 my mum fell into the trap I had spent my whole life fearing. She was hanging around with a group of people who I knew to be into crack cocaine, and possibly other even nastier drugs, and I was petrified she would end up the same way as my dad.

      For those of you who don’t know, my dad was a heroin addict, a smack head or a scag head, as it’s known in the back alleys. He was in and out of jail all my young life. He spent the entire time lying to me about whether or not he was using; and once he even made me take a urine test and pretend it was his because he and his heroin addict of a girlfriend had had a baby and they wanted to pretend to the hospital that they were clean. Pretty heavy stuff for a young girl to have to deal with, I’m sure you’ll agree. My dad’s dead now, and it’s all because of his relationship with drugs. He was found overdosed in the toilet of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant – which must go down as one of the classiest exits in history.

      Of course my mum knew all this. Like me, she’d seen first-hand what drugs could do to a person. And she’d always been adamant that she would rather lose the use of both arms than get involved in that world. She knew how shit scared I was about her ever doing crack or heroin. But one day, just as I feared, she gave in to the temptation. And from then on, for around three years (until I went into the Big Brother house in 2002), she lied to me. She told me I was wrong, that she wasn’t on the stuff and that I was being delusional (which I still pronounce ‘deluged’). Lies, lies, lies.

      Day in day out she would say to me, ‘I’m not doing what you think, Jade. I wouldn’t do that to you.’

      Every evening when I came home from whatever shitty shop job I was managing to hold down at the time I’d walk through the door, scared of what I might find, and I’d confront her and demand to know if she was doing crack – but every time she would deny it. I wasn’t stupid (OK, I wasn’t completely stupid). I could see the signs. She was erratic, scatty, nervy – and high. I was convinced I was about to lose my mum for ever and that meant my own life might as well be over. It wasn’t worth living. She meant everything to me, and what’s more I’d given up everything to look after her. I’d sacrificed my whole childhood. I’d acted like I was her bloody mum, for God’s sake, and I felt kicked in the stomach that this was how she was repaying me.

      You might think I’m a wuss, but tears are streaming down my cheeks just knowing I have to talk about my mum in this way in the pages of this book. I can’t deal with it. I can’t bear to talk about it. The memories are so raw; too raw. I can’t face the fact that she lied to me for so long. But at the same time I don’t want you to judge her for it.

      In the end the therapist at The Priory actually had to stop me because she could see it was far too much for me to be able to deal with at that time.

      My mum’s lies have haunted me ever since. Now, whenever anyone hides the truth from me – even if it’s just a tiny insignificant little thing – I get angry and I see red.

      Liar, liar. That’s all I can see …

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       Low Life

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