My granddad will always be one of the great loves of my life. He’s the reason, along with my mum, that I have belief in myself. When I was little, both of them would get cross with me whenever I used to get down and say, about my dreams of performing, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ My mum would say, ‘Never say that,’ and my granddad was the same. He always told me, ‘You’re going to make it, Megan.’
The whole time I was growing up, I sang for my granddad, I performed little routines for him in the garden with him sat in his chair, and of course we had our fishing. Even as I got older and started going out, I went over to see him all the time and told him everything I was up to. He would even find me good songs to cover. I couldn’t have asked for a better person in my life, but now he was really ill, and it was breaking my heart.
Between the two series of Ex on the Beach, I was spending every single day with my granddad, who we all silently knew was on his last legs. When I started getting shit in the press for my meltdowns during the first series, what nobody realised was that I was spending all my time sharing caring duties with the other members of my family. On the one hand, all that negative press could have made things worse, but really, because I was so worried about my granddad, it meant I wasn’t really worrying about any of that other stuff.
He was fading fast, and, as well as having us to look after him, he had palliative care with him every day. A few months before, my nan had gone out shopping with some friends, which was a rare occasion by now as she didn’t like to leave him, when he phoned my mum and said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.’ My mum called me as she was on her way back home from work, and said, ‘You need to get there asap.’ I was sitting eating my lunch, and I literally threw my plate in the air, got in the car and raced down the wrong side of the road as the traffic was so bad, just because I knew I had to get to my granddad over in Chingford. I could see cars coming at me, people bibbing their horns, but I kept thinking, ‘He’s going to die, he’s going to die.’
I finally got over there, and he was sitting in a chair in the kitchen. I got on the phone to emergency services, and they told me what to do until they turned up, which they finally did. It felt like forever, even though it was probably only a few minutes, and I watched them take him away in the ambulance. Once we got to the hospital, he was in a bad way, and we all stood round the bed, while they put defibrillator pads on him to regulate his heartbeat. The whole thing was terrifying. They got him going again and kept him in hospital, but that was really the beginning of the end.
We knew he was dying, and we were all beside ourselves. Around this time, there was talk of me going back on Ex on the Beach for the next series, and I had no idea whether I should go or not. My granddad started to fade quite quickly after that. Once he got home again, the Marie Curie palliative care team came in – they were amazing, I’ll never be able to say enough good things about them – and our whole family were with him every day. I recorded a song, which we played to him while we sat in his room hour after hour. We all took turns helping him sit up. It was a terrible time.
He had Parkinson’s disease, so he could no longer speak or swallow, but he used to tap out words on his little pad. He kept writing to me, ‘You’re going to be a star.’ I told him about the offers of more TV, and showed him the clips from the first series that I could get away with. He didn’t like me rowing with people, and he used to say, ‘That isn’t the Megan I know.’ He knew it was because I’d been hurt by my previous ex. So we had to be careful what we showed him – there I was singing and smiling, nothing of me throwing plates around and swearing on national television. But he said he knew that wasn’t going to be my line of work, he knew the singing was what I really wanted to do – that was always my dream.
He tapped out that he wanted me to go back for the second series. I kept asking him if he was sure. He said he wouldn’t be happy, thinking I was stopping for him. He wrote, ‘Don’t stop, you go.’
It was definitely one of the hardest moments of my life when I left his room, having made the decision to go, and I’ll never forget that moment. I told him I’d see him later, and I really didn’t think he was going to die, but I did have a massive lump in my throat as I said goodbye. I knew I had to fulfil his wishes. It would have upset him even more if I’d stayed. I said goodbye, went to the door and took one last look back. I was so frightened that it might be the last time we saw each other, and that’s what it turned out to be.
The whole two weeks before I went into the villa, I had terrible dreams every night. One of my constant nightmares was that I was driving my car, with my granddad sat next to me, dead. I told my mum about it and she said, ‘It’s because you know he’s on his way.’
Two nights before the end of the show, I woke up in the middle of the night. I woke Jordan as well and told him, ‘I’ve had a really weird dream. My granddad was there and he was laughing.’ All those previous dreams, he’d been dead, but now here he was laughing.
The following evening was when we got engaged at my birthday party. We were in the penthouse suite, and in the middle of the night, I woke up with a light shining from the corner of the room, where the cameras were. I thought it was the nightlight, but it seemed a bit bright and I carried on staring at it. I suddenly realised it was the wrong corner to be a camera, and I can only say now that I felt something in the room.
I woke Jordan up again, and told him I felt freaked out. I said, ‘My granddad was just talking to me, and it was pure white in this dream.’
In the dream, we were in some place that I can’t explain – it was just me and him, and he looked like he did all those years before, when we used to visit the chalet. He had his glasses on, he was wearing his jumper and he had a big, fat belly. By the time he was ill, he was skin and bones, but he’d been much bigger before. In the dream, he was laughing about his teeth. It was the one thing he used to moan about during his illness – he hardly ever complained, but he hated not having his teeth in, and now here he was laughing, saying, ‘My teeth, my teeth.’ He had his jumper on and his teeth in. I said, ‘Granddad, you’re laughing,’ and we had a proper conversation. He kept reassuring me, saying he wasn’t in pain, and then he wandered off and… that’s when I woke up with the light. Now I genuinely believe that was my granddad making his proper goodbye to me.
He’d actually died two nights before, that stupid evening when I’d got into the fight with that girl, when security had taken me out and had me moved to the next villa. It was the night I’d rung my mum because I’d been beside myself and wanted to come home, but she didn’t want to tell me on the phone, as he’d already passed, and she knew he wanted me to do well.
After Jordan had proposed and rung my parents to be told, ‘It’s not a good time,’ I phoned and asked what was going on. My mum just said that she was busy with work. I even tried to get her to talk to Jordan, but she wouldn’t. Then I asked her, ‘Is everything all right?’ She said it was. I asked, ‘Is Granddad all right?’ She said he was fine. I said, ‘Well, I think he was just here with me.’
My mum and nan were both on the line to me, and there was a silence before they both became hysterical on the phone, almost like a scream, and they didn’t have to say anything else, because I knew. They couldn’t believe he’d somehow come to me in Portugal, but they felt reassured by it, and we all cried together on the phone. I’ll never forget hearing that.
Once again in that villa, I was beside myself, on the floor sobbing. Then the producers decided it was time for me to go.
Jordan came with me and I took the engagement ring off. I told him, ‘I know you want this, but it just seems wrong.’ I knew that if I really loved him, if we were meant to be together, then even at that worst moment in my life, it would have been a comfort having him there, it would have been a positive thing, and it just wasn’t. So I took the ring off and said, ‘We don’t talk about this any more.’ We agreed that if we really wanted to get engaged, we needed to talk about it properly, but there was no rush.
There was meant to be a week-long shoot afterwards – odd bits of filming to finish everything off – but I was in a hurry to get home, so I did the first lot of photos the very next morning and got the first flight home. I was back home as soon as it was feasibly possible, but it killed me that I hadn’t been there for my granddad at the end.
If I hadn’t gone away and done the second series, there would have been no Celebrity Big Brother, no TOWIE and no singing, so it was only by doing what my granddad asked and leaving him behind that his dream for me started coming true. He always told me, ‘Everything happens for a reason, Megan,’ and I do believe that, but the timing was terrible, and it will always be heartbreaking.