I was tucking into Christmas dinner when the phone rang.
It was my daughter Nina, who was on her honeymoon in Thailand, moaning about having an earache.
“What’s the best thing to do for it, Dad?” she pleaded to me pitifully.
I had knocked back champagne before dinner and one or two large glasses of red wine during it. Not having the faintest idea of what to do about an earache I put the question to the guests around the table.
“Anyone got a guaranteed cure for an earache?” I shouted to the twelve friends and family.
A number of recommendations were offered up from the diners who were also, by then, pretty well on their way with the wine.
“Cotton wool soaked in warm olive oil and rammed into the lug-hole. Never been known to fail,” offered our friend Karen.
“My dear departed grandmother used to drown a cockroach in whisky. Stick the insect into her ear and drink the whisky. If it failed to have an immediate effect she would administer further doses, but without the cockroach, until the bottle was empty,” slurred Karon’s husband Tim, who was as high as a kite even before dinner had started.
“No, no, no,” said Kathy seriously. “Hot raisins are what she needs. If she can’t get hold of raisins, then she should try the heart of an onion.”
Pain in the arse brother-in-law Graham, was next to add his pearl of wisdom.
“It’s her honeymoon, for Christ’s sake,” he shouted, spraying bits of, half-eaten, turkey across the table. “She should have better things to do with her time than worry about an earache.”
“Well, there you are Nina,” I said. “A few ideas for you to consider, but probably best if you just have a lie-down. It must be getting quite late with you. Give me a call in the morning. No, on second thoughts, make that the afternoon, and let us know how you are. Goodnight love.”
I was in bed in a deep, alcohol-induced, sleep when the phone screamed next to my ear.
“Who the fuck can that be at this time of the morning?” I chuntered to myself, fumbling to pick up the phone.
It was Nina again. “Dad! I don’t know what to do.”
I interrupted her. “Honestly Ni, I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do for your earache.”
“It’s not that Dad,” she said. “We went down to the beach for breakfast this morning and the sea has disappeared!”
“Don’t be ridiculous Nina. The sea can’t just disappear,” I said softly. Well aware that she did have a tendency to exaggerate somewhat.
“Honestly Dad, it has. People in the hotel are telling us that a tsunami is on the way and that we should run to the hills.”
“A tsunami! What the fuck is a tsunami?” I said as the phone line went dead.
“Really. My daughter and her vivid imagination,” I thought to myself as I settled back down to sleep.
The next morning there was nothing on the BBC news other than the enormous earthquake that had struck, just after midnight, in the Indian Ocean, and the ensuing tsunami which had hit most of the bordering landmass including, of course, Thailand.
The mountain wave or tsunami had risen to a height of over one hundred feet and travelled across the ocean at the staggering speed of more than five hundred miles an hour.
Most of the Western coastal area of Thailand had been engulfed and there were reports of as many as a quarter of a million people being killed.
I felt sick with worry and desperately tried to get in touch with Nina’s hotel, but found it to be impossible to get through. The thought of losing my daughter was far worse than any emotions that I had felt at any time during my military career, or my time as an MI6 agent.
Television reports showed dramatic pictures of the hotel where Nina, and her new husband Tom, had been booked into but had been upgraded for their honeymoon. The hotel was completely destroyed and there were thought to be no survivors.
It wasn’t until the day after Boxing Day that I received a call from Tom, telling me that both he and Nina were safe and unharmed. Nina was however very shocked and distressed. She then came on the line and begged me to hire a plane and fly out to get them both home.
Nina always did think of me as some sort of wonderful SAS hero, who was capable of doing, just about, anything. I wasn’t, of course. And given the circumstances all across the affected area, it would have been almost impossible for anyone to hire a private jet and fly out to get them home, even for her ‘super dad’.
The newlyweds got back safely a few days after the traumatic events and Nina seemed to settle down well. It wasn’t until some months later that the shock of the Indian Ocean tsunami would start to have a devastating impact on my beautiful and vivacious daughter’s health.
One of the many skills I was required to maintain proficiency in as an agent, was skiing. At least once a year, the service would arrange, and pay for, a skiing trip for a couple of weeks, normally in Norway.
But this jaunt was at my expense, and not in Norway but in Chamonix in the French Alps. Nina and I had just raced each other down a Red Run and were in a small queue of people waiting for the chair-lift. As we stood casually chatting Nina took a small step forward and unexpectedly fell to the ground.
“What the hell is up with you?” I asked with a laugh. “People tend to fall while they are coming down the piste. Not while they are standing in the bloody queue.”
“I’m scared Dad,” she said. “There’s something wrong with my legs.”
We didn’t know it at the time, but that fall was the first indication that Nina had contracted the debilitating condition multiple sclerosis, known as MS, which she was convinced was brought on by the horrific events in Thailand the previous Christmas.
Back in London, we went together to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital where, after a series of tests, Nina was diagnosed with Primary Progressive MS.
Over the following few months, we tried everything we could to alleviate the inexorable advance of the disease. We diligently searched the internet to find some sort of cure, convinced that there must have been a newly developed remedy somewhere in the world. We were willing to try anything. We tried barometric chamber treatment; Chinese tablets that cost an absolute fortune; a trip to a hospital in Hungary, where it was claimed that an insert into an artery leading to the brain was the very latest breakthrough and was providing wonderful results. None of them worked for Nina.
After a while, we were convinced that we had found the solution. We identified a ‘world-renowned’ expert in MS who had his offices in Harley Street, London. For only two thousand pounds per visit, the consultant would examine Nina and give her some drugs to take. The drugs proved to be totally useless and the so-called ‘world-renowned expert’ turned out to be nothing more than a fake who had rented a room in a Harley Street clinic on an hourly basis, just for our visits.
We came to realise that our efforts were futile. There was nothing that could stop the relentless progress of multiple sclerosis.
Now, my once vibrant and ebullient daughter, though still beautiful and full of fun, cannot work and is confined to a wheelchair. Her sight is rapidly deteriorating and she has very little strength in her arms.
Watching her waste away has been the most harrowing and painful experience of my life.