Unbreakable: My life with Paul – a story of extraordinary courage and love
Unbreakable tells Lindsey Hunter’s moving and heartbreaking story. Lindsey is the widow of snooker star Paul Hunter, who died tragically aged only 27 in October 2006 after a battle with cancer, leaving Lindsey and their one year-old daughter Evie bereft and alone.Lindsey met Paul Hunter when she was 21 and he was 18. When they married seven years later, Paul had become a golden boy in the world of snooker, dubbed ‘the Beckham of the baize,’ having won the Masters trophy three times, and attained a world ranking of number four, and Lindsey's happiness looked assured. But tragedy struck when Paul was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, neuro-endocrine tumours in his abdomen.Aggressive chemotherapy appeared to work, and within six months Paul was competing in a major championship, with Lindsey cheering him on from the side-lines. More joy came when Lindsey gave birth to their daughter, Evie Rose. But tragically, Paul died in October 2006, 18 months after his diagnosis, leaving Lindsey a widow and single mother.Lindsey was determined to celebrate Paul's life rather than mourn his death, and has dealt with the loss of her young husband on the beginning of their life together with strength and courage, for the sake of their daughter.This is not just a heartbreaking and inspirational story about LIndsey and Paul’s unbreakable love but a testimony to one of the greatest sportsmen the snooker world has ever seen.
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Lindsey Hunter
Unbreakable
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
Contents
Title PagePrologue: MarchChapter One: Twenty Three MarchChapter Two: MarchChapter Three: Making An ImpressionChapter Four: Golden BoyChapter Five: SummerChapter Six: Summer LoveChapter Seven: My WorldChapter Eight: Which Girlfriend?Chapter Nine: The Lost YearsChapter Ten: Polishing The DiamondChapter Eleven: Plan BChapter Twelve: EngagedChapter Thirteen: Wedding PlansChapter Fourteen: Shorter, Tighter, Better!Chapter Fifteen: Mr And Mrs Paul HunterChapter Sixteen: D DayChapter Seventeen: RealityChapter Eighteen: ‘Your Husband’s Got Cancer’Chapter Nineteen: DreadChapter Twenty: Life Goes OnChapter Twenty-One: The Battle BeginsChapter Twenty-Two: A Ray Of HopeChapter Twenty-Three: Chemo CountdownChapter Twenty-Four: ‘Little Paul’Chapter Twenty-Five: For Better, For WorseChapter Twenty-Six: Our BabyChapter Twenty-Seven: What’s The Sex?Chapter Twenty-Eight: NormalChapter Twenty-Nine: Hard LabourChapter Thirty: Hello, Evie RoseChapter Thirty-One: A Perfect FamilyChapter Thirty-Two: Wishing For MiraclesChapter Thirty-Three: Father ChristmasChapter Thirty-Four: SummerChapter Thirty-Five: Letting GoChapter Thirty-Six: Goodbye, My LoveChapter Thirty-Seven: Paul’s LegacyChapter Thirty-Eight: Life Goes OnEpilogue: Dear Paul –Appendix: Letters For PaulAcknowledgementsCopyrightAbout the Publisher
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.
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!
