Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [66]
That would be the last time we spoke.
Since I had my driving licence, I was barely at home. On the evening of 27 December, I was in Highgate at the house of a friend whose parents were away. There was a group of us, including Sam and some girls, most of whom I fancied. We had been larking about all day, watching movies, smoking cigarettes, eating junk food. This was prior to the days when everyone had a mobile phone, so my mother was clueless as to my whereabouts. I remember the phone ringing and being told it was for me. ‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Michael, it’s Mum. I’ve been trying to find you all day. You need to come home immediately.’
‘Why? Has something happened?’ I asked, not overly concerned.
‘You just need to come home now. I can’t tell you over the phone,’ my mother said coolly. Her voice seemed relatively normal. I didn’t sense that anything terrible had happened.
‘Why can’t you tell me now? Is it something bad?’ I pushed.
‘Michael, don’t worry. Just come home now, OK?’
‘OK,’ I said, hanging up.
Because of my mother’s tone, I was intrigued rather than panicked. As I drove home I wondered what might have happened. Might it be to do with one of my brothers or Lucy or Grandma or Jim or Steve’s parents? All I knew was that it couldn’t be that serious. My mum’s performance on the phone was too convincing. As I neared Golders Green, the thought suddenly entered my head: what if it is something serious? That’s exactly how my mum would behave on the phone. It was like when my dad asked me to sit down when he told me I was leaving Merchant Taylors’ – people don’t like to deliver bad news on the phone. I was so consumed with mucking about with my mates and my various teenage crushes that I hadn’t really thought this through. Something bad had happened. To whom? As I drove alongside the park towards my house, my father’s face popped into my mind. A chill came over me.
I turned the corner into my road just as the panic in my mind was reaching a crescendo. The front door of my house was open, my mother was standing outside, her body buckled with pain, tears streaming from her face.
I jumped out of my car. ‘What is it?’
‘Your daddy’s died.’
It was strange because I felt like I knew before my mother opened her mouth to tell me. I knew, I knew my father had died.
‘Where’s Lucy?’ I said.
I ran upstairs to find Lucy in my bed waiting for me, crying. Through all the changes in my life, my parents divorcing, remarrying, moving home and school, having new half-brothers and sisters, Lucy was the constant in my life. We experienced everything together. Our dad had a new life, a new family, and so did our mum, and as hard as everybody tried for it not to feel this way, Lucy and I were stuck in the middle. But we had each other, and at this moment we needed each other more than anybody else.
The previous day, Boxing Day, my dad had complained to Holly about chest pains in the night. He went out for a walk and some fresh air, had a heart attack and died on the side of the road. It destroyed me to think of him on his own, strangers trying to help him. He was fifty-three years old.
Holly lost her husband, their children Billy and Georgina lost a dad they hardly got a chance to know. His first wife, to whom he was married long before I was born, held a memorial service for him. A death affects so many people in so many different ways. For me, I lost a future with my dad. I felt that our relationship had been dominated by circumstance and distance, but that we were cut from the same cloth and that we would become closer and I would learn from him. But that was not to be.
The months following were a bit of a whirlwind. My dad was cremated, and Holly brought his ashes over from America. We didn’t really know what to do with them. Holly, Lucy and I decided to go to Scotland, where his parents