Bobby had been gone more than a year when I started to realize I had to get my act together. Although it was difficult to admit it to myself, I was handling the split badly. I was drinking and smoking too much and still relying on sleeping pills. I had played on the fact that Bobby couldn’t steel himself to let go completely, hoping against hope that I could manipulate him into coming back to me, working on the guilt and anguish he felt. I was hurt.
I deluged Doss with phone calls. I felt lost and heartbroken and I was worried about the children. Burdening her with my own anger and sadness made me feel guilty, but I didn’t know who else I could turn to. Doss was always very patient. She tried to reassure me, but what on earth could she say? She found the split very hard to come to terms with herself. Bobby had been reared to have strong family values. What happened wasn’t something she welcomed. No one in her family had ever had a broken marriage.
Even after Bobby left, he rang constantly to find out if I was coping. He couldn’t come to terms with what he had done. Leaving his children and splitting up a family was a truly dreadful thing for a man like him. All the values he had grown up with were turned upside down. He didn’t like untidiness or ugliness in anything, especially his private life. The split was tough for him as well as for me.
He would drive over to Morlands to see me. The two of us would sit on the terrace, trying to thrash things out. Every time he came, the children would think he was staying, so when he left it was like a new wound for them, but we were too wrapped up in our own pain to realize how much it affected Roberta and Dean. I was so immersed in grief and unhappiness I couldn’t take on board how much they were suffering too. I was still there, but I wasn’t there - that’s the only way I can put it. It was a rotten period which had a tremendous impact on them both. They had always idolized their father and now he had fallen off the pedestal, big time.
Their school work bore the brunt. Roberta, who had notched up 10 O-Levels without difficulty, really had her work cut out to concentrate on her A-Levels although, being a fighter, she ended up acquitting herself extremely well. Dean, at fifteen, felt angry and terribly, terribly rejected. That age can be hard for any boy. Dean was in real pain and it showed in almost everything he did. I was so desperate about Dean’s acting up that in desperation I rang Bobby. ‘You’ve got to take some responsibility,’ I said. ‘Dean’s going off the rails. He’s getting drunk and playing truant. I don’t want to cope with this on my own. I can’t cope with it on my own.’
Off Dean went to Southend for a fatherly talking-to. It was a disaster. Bobby might have realized he had to pull his weight, but he was still reeling from the shock of it all, too. With Dean, he did the worst thing he could have done. ‘Now, come on, son,’ he said, ‘let’s go and talk about it over a pint.’ Dean returned barely able to stand up. Their relationship was bad for some time. Deep down, Dean was still enormously proud of Bobby but right now, he just didn’t want to know his father.
Roberta was knocked off track by the split as well. She decided to go to Paris for a year to attend the Alliance Franchise while working as an au pair. I went over for a visit to make sure she was all right. She was fine but Mummy was not. As Roberta’s host family were very chic, I had bought myself a Gucci handbag so as not to let the side down. The two of us went out to dinner and on the way back, strutting my stuff alongside the Bois de Boulogne with the bag swinging from my shoulder, I suddenly became aware of pounding feet and the sound of Roberta screaming out in French. Then I was pushed to the ground as a mugger ran off with my handbag.
‘You stay there,’ Roberta ordered, and ran after the thief. She didn’t catch him but came back with a gendarme. My evening out ended in hospital in St Germain, at three o’clock in the morning, with no money, no passport and no Gucci.
Roberta phoned Bobby to tell him what had happened and he wanted to fly out. That was typical of him. He hadn’t stopped being thoughtful and protective. I suppose it was important to him to let me know he was still there for me, but suddenly I realized it was the last thing I needed. ‘It isn’t enough for me, Bobby,’ I said. ‘If I can’t have all of you, I don’t want any of you.’
It was a case of nothing being better than something. I was going to have to stop relying on him. I had let things slide long enough.
Turning my life around wasn’t going to be easy. I had to wean myself off the sleeping pills. Then I had to get out of the habit of drinking at home on my own.
I wanted a job, too. It wasn’t only that I needed the money. Self-respect was what I was looking for. But what work could I get? I had won a place at grammar school, so obviously I wasn’t stupid. Even so, when I was in my teens, girls like me from ordinary backgrounds were less aspirational about education. As a matter of routine we were expected to leave school at 16, go to secretarial college, train as hairdressers or work in a shop until we found a husband. Only a few of my contemporaries would have contemplated staying on to do A-Levels and heading off to university before landing a high-powered job.
I wasn’t one of them. When Bobby and I married, the expectation still was that unless a wife had to have a job to make ends meet, then she gave up work and became a full-time wife and mother. The husband and children were your universe. A husband’s status depended on his being able to provide for his wife and family, which was one of the reasons why Bobby had felt so ashamed about his money problems. But when you split up from your husband, you’re forced to take control of your own life. I decided the best thing was to give myself a target and challenge myself.
I had got a lot out of my seven years working for the Samaritans and for Roy, the sandalled social worker, so it made sense to put myself through college on a year-long advanced course in sociology and counselling. As part of the training I had to work with clients, so I found myself a placement at a clinic. Having a job to go to and making a success of client work began to restore my confidence.
By then I was already nerving myself for the final split. I no longer felt my heart leap when the phone rang in case it was Bobby. I stopped relying on him to come round and sort out anything that went wrong at home. One day, eighteen months after the split, we agreed to meet up for lunch. We went to Langan’s, as usual.
‘Bobby, I want a divorce,’ I said.
That actually seemed to shock him. Perhaps he liked the fact that I was there in the background. I don’t know. I just knew that I had to make him confront the reality.
‘You know I’ll always care for you, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘And I’ll always care too, Bobby, but you’ve turned my life upside down. I’m not going to live like this any more. We’ve got to make the break final. It’s the only way either of us are going to be able to move on properly.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he said.
‘I’m going to start a new chapter.’
I poured myself a glass of wine and walked all round Morlands. Bobby and I had always called it ‘the home of our dreams’ and reminders of the good times were everywhere. One of Rodney Marsh’s fivers was probably still stuck in a hole in the grouting somewhere.
It hadn’t been a happy house for a long time, though. I had set things in motion by telling Bobby I wanted a divorce. Bobby was unbelievably generous with the settlement - so much so that I cried and told him he couldn’t afford it. Basically, he gave me everything and now Morlands had to go. I couldn’t afford the upkeep.
DUE TO DIVORCE, ENTIRE CONTENTS OF LUXURY HOME IN CHIGWELL FOR SALE.
It was my friend Jill Budge’s idea to put the advertisement in the Evening Standard. Word quickly got around that the home in question was Bobby Moore’s and on the day of the sale a huge queue formed along Stradbroke Drive. All our friends rolled up. Once Bobby left, he effectively walked away from the Chigwell crowd, but I never felt excluded because of my new single status. Inevitably the sale turned into a party, with the usual moments of comedy. The local butcher was put in charge of catering but got paralytic instead and started groping all the girls. People were so keen to have a memento of Morlands that we were even cutting up the carpets and curtains. I thought I had got rid of everything, but at the last minute I glanced into the now empty lounge. ‘Oh my God, I’ve forgotten Bobby,’ I wailed.
Back in the halcyon days, we had been given a wonderful oil painting of Bobby by a prominent artist. There it was, hanging above the fireplace. We held a mock auction for it, but eventually I relented and it ended up going to Doss.
Wherever it was, my new house was going to be a lot less grand than Morlands. That was the first decision I made. I was very sensitive to the fact that Bobby felt he had failed financially and so we were no longer able to live the showbiz lifestyle - something I had told him time and again was of no importance to me. I was determined to downgrade as he had. Now I would prove the truth of my words to him, that I didn’t need the high life. It was a case of, Anything you can do, I can and will do smaller. ‘You were so wrong, Bobby,’ I thought. ‘I didn’t need the finer things in life. You were what I wanted.’
I found a two-bedroomed house at King’s Green, Loughton. It had a lovely location opposite the cricket ground and practically the first thing I did was to plant a magnolia tree in memory of the one Bobby and I planted at Glenwood Gardens, our first marital home which we had loved so much. I had overlooked one vital factor about my new house, though. ‘Mum,’ said Dean, ‘it’s only got two bedrooms.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, when Roberta’s home, that makes three of us. Who’s going to sleep where?’
I was obviously still off my head when I bought it. I had forgotten I had kids! Whenever all of us were under the roof at once, someone had to sleep on a Put-u-Up in the front parlour, but the children refused to go in there because, they said, it was haunted.
I didn’t believe that for a moment but even so, there was something quite unique about King’s Green. It should have been called Queen’s Green, really - every house bar one was occupied by a woman on her own. The token man was one half of a very nice married couple. He looked out for all of us ladies and was an expert at fixing the plumbing.
Our divorce went through at the start of 1986. My friend, Sue Braine, had split with her husband John just before Bobby and I broke up and she was heartbroken, too, but at least we had each other. It meant I had someone to go on holiday or spend a girls’ day out in London with, so it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Sue was like a sister to me and we did have fun, but she wasn’t always available to go away on holiday with me. That meant that if I wanted to travel, I had to go solo. For someone who had been part of a couple all her adult life, it was one of the biggest challenges of all.
Geoff and Judith Hurst, who along with Alan and Lesley Ball were tremendously caring and supportive around this time, were going to Mexico for the 1986 World Cup and, knowing how much I longed to see Acapulco again, suggested I go to Mexico City with them and fly on from there. So I had two days with them before heading off to Acapulco on my own. I stayed in a suite in the Hyatt Regency. It had a colossal double bed which I rattled around in, and the next morning going to breakfast seemed a terrible ordeal. I wasn’t used to it. I was lonely. But I did it.
Later, I started travelling alone further for longer. By then, Roberta had gone out to Australia and was so taken with the place, or possibly with Matt, the boy she had met while she was out there, that she was increasingly reluctant to return to England. I went out there to lure her back and took the opportunity to fly to the Great Barrier Reef. While there, I learnt to scuba dive. That would have frightened me out of my wits before. But scuba diving hadn’t been my biggest fear. Loneliness was what really terrified me, but I made myself do these things to overcome my fears. It made me feel better about myself. I was healing, slowly.
For Bobby, meanwhile, the manager’s job at Southend worked out no better than the others. In April 1986 he resigned and came back to London. There were no more management jobs on offer. Instead, he joined the Sunday Sport as a columnist. Dean joined the paper, too, in the graphics department, and from that point their relationship started to get better again.
Roberta was also back in London after her travels, working in event management for the Royal National Institute for the Blind. In October that year, she and Bobby were out at lunch together when he started feeling dizzy. He had chest pains, too. Roberta went with him in the ambulance to hospital. They suspected a heart attack. He sent a message to me via Roberta to say he would like to see me. I really wanted to see him, too. I didn’t say so to Roberta, but if he was very ill it might be for the last time.
On the day I visited, I dressed up to the nines. It reminded me of going to see him in hospital when he was recovering after his operation for testicular cancer. I had been determined to look my best then and I felt the same twenty-four years down the line. This time it wasn’t only that I wanted to look good for him. I was going to show the rest of the world I wasn’t beaten.
Unfortunately, I felt so upset by the time I set off that my mascara was running down my face. I wiped it off as well as I could and then decided to buy him some strawberries. What I hadn’t taken into account was that the weather was unseasonably hot, and during the journey to the hospital the sweltering heat turned them into a veritable blood bath.
When I reached Bobby’s room, three people were already there: Doss, Roberta - and Stephanie.
I was formally introduced to her. We shook hands over Bobby as he lay in bed. Roberta told me afterwards that before I arrived, Doss had suggested to Stephanie that she leave Bobby and me on our own for a couple of minutes.
‘I don’t see why I should have to go anywhere,’ Stephanie told her.
Poor man. The mother, the daughter, the girlfriend and the ex-wife. The room was fizzing with tension. I was very concerned because Bobby looked so on edge and the graph on the heart monitor was shooting up. I didn’t want to finish him off completely so I took my leave quickly. But not before he turned to me and mouthed, ‘You look lovely.’
I actually skipped out of the hospital. I knew he’d be all right. The problem had been diagnosed as hyperventilation - unpleasant and scary, but not life-threatening. As for me, I was relieved. I’d survived the meeting. I felt free - or at least, freer than I had been. I still loved him, there was no escaping from that, but I was feeling more like the old Tina.
Our paths didn’t cross for more than two years after that. I carried on working as a counsellor. I had been offered a job at the clinic on a full-time professional basis, but to supplement my income I wanted to do something else a little lighter and more profitable. I had always really enjoyed hunting for houses and as bricks and mortar were the only things Bobby and I had ever made money on, I dabbled in property development and successfully ‘did up’ two flats.
Through our children, I knew that the Sunday Sport job had been a turning point for Bobby - the FA might have rejected him but the press never did and he was building up a successful media career. Capital Radio hired him to work as a co-commentator with Jonathan Pearce - he loved that work and was very fond of Jonathan. He was also involved in a new business, an event management group called Challenge, and Roberta joined him there. One of Bobby’s staff told Roberta that he had worked for some really intolerable people, in contrast to which Bobby was the nicest employer ever. He had no attitude whatsoever - he would even make tea for the office staff.
Then one day, when I was on the Tube in rush hour, the oddest thing happened. A man sat down next to me and nudged me. Twice.
I threw him a cursory glance, but he didn’t seem to be anyone I knew so I raised my eyebrows at the woman sitting opposite me and returned to ignoring my pushy neighbour.
I received a third nudge. ‘Madam?’ he said.
‘What do you want?’ I snapped.
The man laughed.
‘Bobby!’ I said.
That day I was wearing a cashmere coat. He reached out and stroked it.
‘You always did like quality,’ I teased.
I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t recognized the man I’d spent twenty-five years of my life with. But I had always remembered him as the old Bobby - mischievous, gorgeous and laughing. This new Bobby looked gaunt, even haunted.
We talked until the train stopped at Bank, where he got off. But he hesitated and then, just as the doors were about to close, he jumped back on. We chatted and laughed about old times until my stop arrived, all too soon.
I rushed away, unable to get our meeting out of my mind. How did I feel? The same as Bobby, I suspect. I was talking to a reporter a while ago who told me that Bobby had mentioned our chance meeting. That touched me. Bobby was such a reserved, private man that he didn’t normally open up to intimate and personal thoughts. The reporter had asked him how he had felt and Bobby had said, ‘How do you think I would feel, walking away from someone I had spent half my life with?’
That was how I felt, too. I have thought of that meeting often. How strange that it should have happened at all, how odd that we had found each other when the train was so packed. There had been a spark between us but, then again, it’s difficult to wipe out twenty-five years of highs and lows and not have any feelings towards the other partner. I had a knot in my stomach. It was because of the surprise of us meeting each other. No, he hadn’t looked the way I’d remembered him, but one thing hadn’t changed. He had always been such a shy man on the surface but his dry humour was still wonderful and I really, really missed it.
Roberta told me that he had called her that night, incredulous and amused that I hadn’t known who he was. ‘Only your mother could do that,’ he said.
So in that way I hadn’t changed, either. I could still make him laugh.
In the spring of 1991, I had a strange dream that really disturbed me. In it, I was wearing a dress that I recognized. It was a kind of pale lavender colour in real life, but in the dream it had turned dark purple. Someone had cut my shoulder length blonde hair and dyed it black. The dream was still vivid in my mind when I arrived at the clinic where I worked. I was convinced it was a premonition and that Bobby was seriously ill. ‘I feel I’ll never see him again,’ I told a colleague.
At that very moment, the phone rang. It was Roberta, to tell me that Bobby was in hospital. It was just after his fiftieth birthday. She saw him in hospital the day before the operation. He was in a good mood, laughing away. The next day, after it was over, she visited him again. ‘I think they got it all,’ Bobby said. He was getting lots of laughs out of his drip, joking about taking it for a walk and similar. Roberta knew she wasn’t being given the full story. She asked the consultant for the truth and he told her that a huge tumour had been found in the colon. The cancer had already spread to the liver.
After Bobby came out of hospital, he stayed at Jimmy Tarbuck’s place in Marbella to rehabilitate for a few weeks. He went running every day. Back in England again, he was told the cancer was inoperable. To the children, he seemed philosophical. He didn’t complain at all, just accepted it.
Or did he? Not long ago I spoke to Dr Kennedy, an elderly man now but one whose memories of Bobby are as sharp as ever. He told me that late one evening he received a phone call from Bobby, urgently asking his opinion about what could be done. Dr Kennedy agreed to see him the next morning at 8 o’clock and they spent twenty minutes discussing Bobby’s failing health. It was the last time Dr Kennedy saw him. So it would appear that despite what everyone thought, Bobby was not ready just to give up. My heart went out to him when I heard this story and I realised how desperate he must have been. Right to the end he was fighting to beat this awful illness.