A little girl and her brother are spotted wandering, coatless, in the snow; mummy is in bed and won’t wake up... because she died several days previously.
This heart-wrenching scenario could have come from a novel by Lesley Pearse, but it’s actually taken from the best-selling author’s autobiography.
Lesley was only three when her mother died of septicaemia due to a miscarriage. Lesley and her five-year-old brother Michael were out in the garden without coats on, when they were spotted by a neighbour. Their dad was in the Royal Marines and was away at sea and they were at home, alone, with no heating and no food.
It’s a dramatic beginning to a life story that continues to twist and turn with unexpected, challenging events and a series of emotional highs and lows.
Lesley didn’t start writing until later in life, she was 48 when her first book was published. She is a hugely successful author with over 30 titles to her name – one of her books is sold every four minutes in the UK.
She now lives in Torquay, with her large garden and four-legged companion, Barney. When I phone her for the interview, we momentarily divert into chatting about dogs. It’s easy to get carried away in conversation with Lesley. ‘My idea of being interviewed is sitting there in the sun all afternoon and having a chat,’ she says. She is interested, open and honest. She’s also very switched on, a smart lady who admits she is ‘a born survivor’.
Since being discovered in the snow, things didn’t get any easier for young Lesley and Michael. Their dad had no choice but to send them both into care; against his wishes they were separated and Lesley went to an orphanage, an experience of which she has very cruel and painful memories.
Lesley’s eventful adult life began as a teenager in London in the Swinging Sixties. She found work in the haberdashery department of a wholesale store and saved enough to move into a shared flat in Earls Court. She was still young, and naive, when she became pregnant. Despite being desperately determined to keep him, she had to give up her baby boy. The loss of Warren deeply affected her, she never gave up looking for him. It’s a thread that runs through her autobiography, which ends with an extraordinary reunion.
In her book, Lesley points out that she didn’t intend it to be ‘a misery memoir’.
‘God forbid anyone would imagine I’m some poor soul lost in the sadness of her youth, because I’m not.’
She reveals some marvellous stories of life in London at that time, including meeting David Bowie, through her husband at the time, a musician who played with several famous names. Lesley has always been a homemaker and Bowie visited their flat, where she made a shepherd’s pie for supper. It was a get-together that even inspired some of Bowie’s song lyrics.
She was also introduced, through a girlfriend, to the ‘thrilling and dangerous’ criminal world that surrounded the East End pubs and clubs. She went to the famous Regency club in Stoke Newington which was frequented by the Krays and became involved with its co-owner, Tony Barry.
Lesley’s life, the characters she met and situations she found herself in, fed her imagination and no doubt influenced the stories she would subsequently go on to write.
She decided to tell her own story at the age of 79, partly for her three daughters.
‘People kept saying to me, when I told them bits about my life, “You ought to write an autobiography, it would be better than one of your books.” I ignored it, but then I thought it would be nice for my girls to know what happened before they came along.’
She adds: ‘It was much harder than I expected it to be. I thought it would be easy peasey, but writing about when my baby was born back in 1964, that was extremely painful. It always is, every time I think about it.’
It was only just as Lesley was finishing her autobiography that, ‘the miracle happened – my son found me; and I was given the perfect ending.’
In many ways, it is a fairytale ending. ‘I think people like a happy ending, I certainly do, and this has been the best one,’ says Lesley.
It’s an entertaining read, a whirlwind, a life of endless choices and challenges, where Lesley never stands still. Yet, at the same time, this central character is one who loves to make a home, who has an eye for interior design, and for making things, from clothing to curtains.
She’s now remarkably stoic about everything.
‘You just have to live through things,’ she says. ‘Some of the worst things in my life were when I was pregnant with Warren, being alone in this room in Earls Court with absolutely no one to turn to and talk about it. I didn’t sit there crying or thinking of slashing my wrists because I’m not that kind of a person. I just put up with it. I’d sit and sew.’
She adds: ‘We all have different coping methods, with me, now, it’s gardening.’
I suggest that, with her sense of daring and adventure, she might take up guerilla gardening, marshalling her skills, taking over public grot spots.
‘Funnily enough my brother did that,’ she says, admitting that she had thought of joining in with him.
We decide that with her own garden, and at least two more books up her sleeve, Lesley already has enough on her plate. And there’s always the dog walking along the seafront. Barney is getting a bit frustrated, waiting for Lesley to finish talking.
For the author of 30 fictional stories, what would she like people to get from her autobiography?
‘I’d like them to read all my other books!’ she says, then after a moment or two: ‘Perhaps I just want to be understood, for people to see where I was coming from? Yes, I suppose it’s wanting to be understood.’
Then she’s off to let the dog in – ‘He's sitting on the doorstep looking very, very, sad...’
The Long and Winding Road by Lesley Pearse is published by Penguin Michael Joseph, £22 hardback. Her latest novel, Betrayal, is now out in paperback,
