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Chapter Three
Making an impression
Nicky and I kept in touch. We’d pop in to see each other at the salons where we worked, and we spoke on the phone most nights and went round to each other’s houses quite often. She was soon planning another big night out, about a fortnight after the last one. This time there was a minibus organized to take a load of us to a club in Leeds and, despite myself, when Nicky said Paul would be there, I was looking forward to seeing him again. Nicky had told me that he often popped into her house as he was so close to her and her family, but so far he hadn’t turned up when I was there. I hadn’t seen him again since the night he had given us a lift into town. I didn’t want to ask about him, as I wouldn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was a bit intrigued by him. Anyway, that didn’t matter since my plan was to find Mr Sensible, wherever he might be, and Paul obviously wasn’t him.
That night, I gave a bit of thought to how I was dressed. I put on quite a short skirt and a low-cut top. I’d given myself a facial and a manicure, and had taken care with my make-up. Of course, I didn’t consciously do all this for Paul – it just so happened that this was a night when I felt I was looking good.
The minibus turned up at my house and Nicky bounded down the aisle to greet me as I stepped on. As she hugged me in her usual open way, I spotted Paul out of the corner of my eye sitting in an aisle seat. He nodded to me, with a smile on his face as usual, and I gave him a little smile back. It was only when I passed him to get to my seat beside Nicky that I noticed he wasn’t alone. There was a dark-haired girl attached to him and, by the way she clung to his arm, they were obviously an item. It didn’t stop Paul saying, ‘All right, Lindsey?’ as I went by. When I said I was fine, he added, ‘Looking good, looking good!’ It was dark so no one could see me blushing a bit, but I did notice that the girl beside him flashed me a look. Not a very friendly one at that.
‘Who’s that with your little cousin?’ I asked Nicky once I’d sat down, trying to be as casual as possible.
‘That’s Gemma,’ she whispered.
‘Girlfriend?’ I replied, in what I hoped was an offhand manner.
‘Yeah,’ she said, but after a bit of a pause.
I felt that I was on fairly safe ground here if I wanted to ask more questions. This was the sort of thing that came under the topic of us two just having a good old gossip. ‘What’s the story, then?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ said Nicky, getting warmed up straight away, ‘they’ve been together since school, really. She’s a lovely girl, but they argue all the time. They often fall out before Paul goes away to tournaments and by the time he gets back, they’ve forgotten what they’ve argued about and get all loved up again. Paul’s been around a bit but they always end up back together.’
‘She’s very pretty,’ I said, and a voice in the back of my mind told me that if they’d been going out together since school, that wasn’t very long as they were still just kids now.
‘Isn’t she?’ answered Nicky, before going off onto another topic. I could hear her talking but, to my surprise, found that my mind had wandered back to the girl sitting beside Paul. She was kneeling on her seat, talking to someone behind her, and I could see that she really was pretty, with long hair and big brown eyes. She and Paul looked good together.
When we got to the club in town, everyone piled out of the minibus, paid their admission money, and went inside. As usual, Nicky and her friends made themselves at home by pulling lots of tables together and we all settled down in one place. There were long, velour couches against the back wall, with glass tables in front, and then individual chairs on the other side. I got myself a seat on one of the couches, quite a few spaces down from Paul and Gemma, and started drinking.
Before long, Gemma and Paul were arguing. Not loudly or badly, but enough that a few of us noticed. ‘God, Paul,’ shouted Nicky above the music. ‘Do you two ever manage to get through a whole night without falling out?’ She dragged me up to dance and by the time we got back, things seemed to have calmed down between Paul and Gemma – although only to the extent that they weren’t talking at all.
I didn’t know either of them particularly, so I couldn’t make any judgement about what was going on, but I did think that I wouldn’t be able to carry on like that if he was my boyfriend. I liked things settled and straightforward – I’d run a mile from complications. To be fair, neither of them seemed particularly bothered, which presumably meant that this was just a pattern for them. I didn’t really care because I was having a good time with a few drinks inside me, and there were plenty of people to dance with.
The night went quickly, with nothing much different from any other night out, but at one point when I came back from the loo, I walked straight into the middle of Paul and his girlfriend having another of their rows. There were lots of hissed comments to each other as well as some shouting, and I slipped into my seat beside Nicky, who was watching it all with interest.
‘Nicky,’ I said, trying to get her attention away from the argument, ‘do you think my skirt’s too short?’ ‘Is that possible?’ she said, glancing at it. ‘Come on, Lindsey, you’re young, you’re gorgeous – stop worrying.’ I tried to ignore the continued bickering from the side of me, at the same time as pulling my top further up and my skirt further down.
As I busied myself with my clothes, the very public, very heated row between Gemma and Paul ended with her storming off to dance without him. Nicky draped herself across me to talk to her cousin. ‘Paul Hunter!’ she said. ‘When you two are like this, I can’t believe you’re supposed to be each other’s first loves! You’re on and off all the time! What’s it about now?’
‘Can’t remember,’ said Paul, despite the fact that the argument had still been going on minutes before. ‘I’ve got other things on my mind.’ With that, he leaned over to me, smiled a bit and said, ‘Are there any more like you at home, but a bit younger?’
What a cheeky little rat! ‘Are you saying that I’m nice but old?’ I asked him. He looked at me all serious for a minute, then winked and went back to chatting to his friend on the other side.
Nicky was laughing, having heard it all, and I said to her, ‘I feel self-conscious enough tonight about what I’m wearing without someone telling me I’m old as well!’ She kept laughing and got me to have a giggle when she said, ‘Oh, you’re ancient, Linz, absolutely ancient! You should have said and you might have got a discount on your entry fee here – maybe they give cheap rates for pensioners!’
We all headed back to the minibus soon after. When Gemma got on, she made a point of not sitting beside Paul and I was left on my own when Nicky decided to go and keep him company. While I was sitting there, I kept thinking about what he had said to me – and every time I did, I couldn’t help but smile. When I remembered Paul saying that I was looking good when I first got on the bus that night, I had an even bigger smile.
We all got dropped off at our houses in the early hours of the morning and when I got in, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened that night. I knew it wasn’t much, but Paul Hunter was so different to other boys that I had known that I had to admit he had made an impression on me. He was certainly on my radar now. I was used to Dave being attentive to me all the time, predictable even, but there was something about the way Paul had looked at me and joked with me that had already got under my skin. This was a boy with a lot of life in him – and that was something I was beginning to be drawn towards.
It was another few weeks before I met him again. Nicky and I were fast becoming best friends who wanted to meet up most nights. Neither of us could afford to go clubbing all the time, so we hung around each other’s houses a lot; fortunately we both had friendly parents who always made us welcome.
All the Hunter cousins lived on the same estate and Paul and Nicky’s family were especially close, going on holidays and for nights out together. She looked after him, and had done since they were kids; in turn, he adored her. He used to come round to Nicky’s mum’s house all the time and, over the next three or four months, I started to get to know him a bit better because of that. I’d be there to see Nicky, he’d pop round to see his cousin and auntie, and we’d just hang out together casually. He was still going out with Gemma – they’d got back together the day after falling out at that nightclub – and they were stuck in the pattern of falling out then making up over and over again.
I did like him – there was no doubt about that; and I was a bit attracted to him, I suppose, but I would have liked him anyway even without that. Paul was just great fun to be around. He lit up any room he was in, and everyone thought the world of him.
When he was round at Nicky’s house, we’d all have a laugh together. We’d watch films, eat loads, have a natter and muck about. Looking back on it, we weren’t more than kids even though we were all working (I had to accept that snooker was a job now!), and we got into the habit of play fighting. Nicky and Paul would shove each other around, and I got drawn in. We spent hours in Nicky’s bedroom or their front room rolling about the floor together, and, because they were family, I never thought much of it. I was close to Paul without there being any major stress on our blossoming relationship. In fact, I didn’t even recognize it as that.
Away from Paul, I was having a great time with friends but I hadn’t been seeing any particular lad seriously, preferring to just have a dance and a drink when I felt like it rather than rushing into another long-term relationship. On top of that, as I got to know Paul more and more, I was finding him easier and more fun to be around than any other boy I knew at that time. Because he was clearly still with Gemma despite their on-off behaviour, I could allow myself to have a little daydream about him without having to do anything about it, since he was spoken for.
One day, just as summer was beginning, I was round at Nicky’s house. We were sitting out in the garden with her mum, having a nice cold glass of wine, when Nicky said, ‘Here, Mum, tell Lindsey what you were talking about earlier.’ Her mum shook her head and got the giggles, but it didn’t stop Nicky. ‘You like our Paul, don’t you?’ she asked. I tried to stay very nonchalant and said that I hadn’t really thought about it, but they claimed it was obvious.
‘Come on, Linz!’ said Nicky, and she shoved me just the way Paul did when we mucked about. ‘What about all that play fighting you always do?’ she asked. As she said that, Nicky kept pushing me just like Paul did, and I collapsed in a heap of giggles, knowing that she was right – we did that sort of thing a lot. ‘But you do it too!’ I protested. ‘Yeah,’ she admitted, ‘but we do it because we’ve done it since we were kids – you and Paul do it because it’s a chance to have a cuddle and a sly feel without admitting it!’
Slowly, it dawned on me that I did like him, but I didn’t admit it to them. Not then.
How could I? He was still someone else’s boyfriend.
Chapter Four
Golden boy
Sitting here amongst the packing boxes, I can’t help but look at all the old photographs I come across. Memories can be tricky things – the same picture can bring back both good and bad. For me, looking at ones of Paul as a kid is somehow easier because I wasn’t there. I wish I had seen every moment of his life, but photographs at least give me glimpses. I pick up one of him as a baby. The colour is fading and it looks older than it is; he’s golden-haired and smiling, with his mum beside him, grinning as if she’s going to burst with pride. I know that feeling.
Here’s another of Paul at Christmas surrounded by people and presents, always smiling. Always smiling.
I pick up another. Paul looks tiny. A little boy dressed up like a man. He’s wearing a waistcoat and bow tie, standing by a snooker table that seems made for a giant. His parents have told me the stories behind these images, and Paul has gone over his memories too. I feel as if they are my memories now – I’ll be the one to pass them on to our baby girl when she grows up. They are evidence of how handsome he was, how talented, and how adored. I wasn’t the only one to fall in love with Paul Hunter.
Once I got to know Paul and his family, I found out that he could always make people fall in love with him. It wasn’t a manipulative thing; he didn’t explicitly decide to have people fall at his feet so that he could get what he wanted – it was just that he was incredibly engaging. Paul would do anything for anyone and most people would do anything for him too. I remember thinking at the time, What’s going on here? Why am I suddenly head over heels for this boy? Of course, it wasn’t sudden really but I was still shocked by it.
I suppose I was becoming part of Paul’s world without it being a big deal. If I had been his girlfriend at that stage, I’m not sure that I would have got to know him as well as I did. We spent our first months together quite naturally, with no pressure, and that would always stand us in good stead. As time went on, I found out a lot about his background and it helped me make sense of some of his behaviour.
To be honest, Paul had never really grown up.
We had been brought up very differently as children. Both sets of parents are still together – in itself, quite unusual nowadays, I guess – but snooker-mad Paul was treated like a little prince from the moment he was born, whereas my mum and dad showed their love by giving me strong values and independence.
Paul’s big sister Leanne had been born three years before him in 1975, the same year as me. His mum, Kristina, was over the moon when she got pregnant with Paul – he was very much a wanted child – but she had a huge scare when she started bleeding very heavily at three months and thought she was having a miscarriage. Paul’s dad, Alan, and a friend carried her upstairs to bed feet first to try and stop her losing so much blood, but I know that it was terrifying – she was sure she’d lose the baby. Next day, she was taken to hospital and stayed there for a week. When the bleeding stopped and she was sent home, she says she somehow knew that her baby was a survivor, and the rest of the pregnancy was fine.
Alan was present at the birth and seemingly was so overcome by it all that as soon as the baby came out and the doctor said, ‘It’s a boy!’ the proud new dad keeled over in a faint.
Paul Alan Hunter was born on 14 October 1978, weighing 5lbs 3oz. He was put in an incubator for a few days as he was so tiny, and when his mum looked at him, he seemed like a little dolly; perfect and with incredibly blond, almost silvery-white, hair. He liked attention from the outset – and that wasn’t to change much. When you put baby Paul down, he’d scream. If you picked him up, he’d smile. Everyone says that, as a baby, he just wanted a cuddle and a bit of love.
He had an extended family nearby, with several cousins who were roughly the same age as him, and Polish grandparents, Babcia and Dziadek, on his mum’s side. Everyone loved the golden-haired little boy who had come into the family. However, more than anything, Paul was a mummy’s boy. He hated Kristina going out, and whenever she did, he would sulk at the bottom of their stairs; often he got his own way and made his mum feel so guilty that she would come back early.
This didn’t stop in later years. When Paul was about 13, his mum came home to find him asleep on the sofa one night. She tried to wake him up, but nothing worked – he was so sound asleep that prodding and whispering in his ear had no effect whatsoever. Finally, she lugged her teenage son upstairs and tucked him up in bed without disturbing his dreams. It was years and years later that Paul admitted to her that he was awake the whole time and only pretending to be asleep so that she would cuddle him, pamper him, and make him feel like her baby again.
Any of the tricks Paul played, however, were purely fun and games. He got away with a lot because he was a genuinely nice lad who had a smile to break hearts and a sense of humour that got him through everything. Even as we faced our darkest days together, that smile would appear and the sense of humour would kick in and I sometimes got glimpses of the little boy he must have been. He was a crowd-pleaser even as a kid; a soft touch who always did his best to keep everyone happy, and who wanted everyone to like him.
These days, as I sit without him, I wish I could go back to the years when I didn’t know him. I want to soak up all those memories, those times when I wasn’t in his life. I wish I could just top myself up on all the Paul days to keep me going. I’m sure if I had known him then, he’d have made me adore him then too. Before his true talent came out, Kris and Alan say that they had no idea what he would become but they always had a feeling that the smiling little lad with the golden hair would capture many more hearts than just those of his immediate family.
By the time Paul turned three in October 1981, he had already started showing an interest in snooker. He kept trying to hit marbles with a chopstick so when Christmas came, a tiny snooker table was bought. This was at the time when snooker was reaching its heyday – it was on telly a lot and there were some real characters associated with the game so there was always some sort of coverage going on. Paul was born in the year that the BBC first decided to give blanket coverage to the World Championship. Snooker was booming when the little boy got his first taste of life on the baize.
On Christmas morning 1981, Paul opened the miniature snooker set and it was pretty much the only thing he played with all day long. It was so small that it fitted onto the coffee table in the lounge, but it was big enough to start turning Paul’s dreams into reality. He picked up that snooker cue when he was three and never really put it down again.
For his fifth birthday, Paul was given a 6ft x 3ft set, which was kept in the living room, and it was his favourite possession. Alan played regularly with friends at a local club called Snooker 2000. One night, when Paul was eight, Alan’s usual partner rang to say that he couldn’t make the game that night. As he put the telephone down and shouted through to tell Kristina what was going on, young Paul jumped up and down by his side. ‘Dad! Dad!’ he shouted. ‘Take me! Take me!’ Alan tried to ignore him, but an excitable Paul wasn’t too easy to shut out. He wouldn’t stop pleading for Alan to take him to the snooker club, and his dad finally said that, if it was up to him he would, but the manager would never let a kid in to play. He hoped that would be an end to the matter, but he should have known Paul wouldn’t be put off so easily.
‘Dad! Dad!’ he went on. ‘Can we find out? Can we ask if they’ll let me in? Please, Dad? Please?’ Alan relented. Given that he was pretty confident that he was right and Paul wouldn’t get to play, it seemed easier to make the trip and let someone else explain things to his snooker-mad son. When they got there, either the snooker gods were watching or the manager was in a particularly good mood because Paul got his way and he was allowed to play his dad on a proper-sized snooker table in a proper club.
The boy was like a duck to water.
He never looked back.
Paul and his dad went to Snooker 2000 a few times over the next couple of weeks, and it amazed everyone there that the little lad was giving his father such a good game. People used to congregate while he was at the table, until there were dozens standing watching. He was cute – which helped – but he could also play the game, which made things even better.
Now snooker is a pricey hobby and Alan was renowned for being careful with cash so everyone assumed Paul would just have to accept that the 6ft x 3ft table in the living room was going to have to do for now. They hadn’t accounted for the attention Paul had been getting while he was playing his dad. The club decided that he was so good for business that they would let him play for free as often as he liked, and Paul was over the moon.
When he was 10, Alan took little Paul to the Crucible in Sheffield, the sport’s most famous venue, for the first time. There the boy made a wish that would come true sooner than anyone thought: ‘One day, Dad,’ he said, ‘one day, I’d love to play here.’ He knew what he wanted from that moment on.
Paul’s first love was just playing the game. He wasn’t bothered about competitions and trophies to begin with, but it soon became clear that he was so talented, such challenges were the next logical step. He was winning under-12 tournaments from when he was 10 – the same age that he first beat his dad at the Snooker 2000 club. He was 11 years and one week old when he made his first century break (scoring more than a hundred points in one break).
Of course, he lost sometimes. He entered a Prestatyn Pontins under-16s tournament when he was only 10 and was devastated to lose in the second round. He rushed back to the chalet he’d been sharing with his dad, absolutely heartbroken. In later years, fellow players and fans would all say that you could never tell if Paul had won or lost a game because he always had the same happy demeanour. This certainly wasn’t the case when he was 10. He sobbed his heart out and said to Alan over and over again, ‘You said I had a chance! You said I had a chance!’ It was the last time he ever got really emotionally upset about losing; he was never up or down from that point on. Snooker was massively important to him but there was a dividing line, and that first clear loss was the turning point. He learned. He learned that you couldn’t always trust your talent – luck was involved. He learned that you don’t make yourself feel any better by getting upset. He learned that there’s always another game just around the corner. As Paul matured he was gracious in success and defeat, and he never had a bad word to say about anybody.
He was never sulky about the game but he was extremely competitive. Snooker was more than a hobby for Paul – it was a calling. Just before his 12th birthday, he moved from Snooker 2000. He was asked to bring his talent and potential elsewhere – he was poached, really – by the management at The Manor, a health and leisure centre that also had a snooker club. That was where the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson practised. Joe was never Paul’s coach but he did take him under his wing to an extent and gave him advice on shot selection, as well as no doubt telling him plenty of stories about life in the snooker world.
Paul beat Joe for the first time when he was 13 years old, and that year he also won his first prize money at a Willie Thorne under-16s competition in Leicester. The prize was £100 and he got an extra £25 for the highest break as well. From this age on he was pretty much self-financing.
Kristina was more sceptical about the whole business than Alan. His dad went with Paul to the club and games, so he knew what was going on and how good Paul was. However, Kris tended not to be there, so she only heard about it all second hand. Maybe you wouldn’t really appreciate how good your kid was at something like that at such a young age unless you were seeing the proof for yourself. Kris tried hard to get him to go to school and do his homework but Paul couldn’t have been less interested. Many mornings he’d get dropped off at school, only to nip off to his grandparents, Babcia and Dziadek, for the day to get spoiled rotten. He’d be treated like royalty before slinking back to school to get picked up again by his unsuspecting mother later in the day. By the time Paul was 14, he was allowed to leave school by the education authorities on one condition – he had to employ a private tutor. From that point on, Paul had nothing to distract him from his beloved game.
Once her son started to earn money, Kristina realized that what Alan was telling her and what she hoped was true wasn’t just parental pride – Paul Hunter really was going to be snooker’s next big thing. All he wanted was to play, all the time, in whatever tournament he could.
He won the Pontins under-16 tournament at the age of 14, which sent out a message to the sport. It was a really prestigious event that had been won by lots of lads who have gone on to become famous names in snooker, such as Stephen Hendry. When Paul won, they all knew that here was someone who would be a danger to them in a few years’ time. He hadn’t had coaching up until that point – Paul always said that while coaching might work for some people, he thought that most problems needed to be dealt with in your own head. It certainly worked for him, but he was very young to be hanging around snooker tournaments and halls all the time.
People have this image of snooker being played in smoky, dingy places, real men’s clubs, with an atmosphere of drinking and being a right lad – and that’s exactly what it was like when Paul was learning his trade. I’ve heard from his friends that there were always girls hanging around. As a result, he definitely grew up quickly – perhaps too quickly. He lost his virginity at a very young age – well before it was legal. He definitely had an eye for the ladies, although I don’t like to dwell on it now.
The first time Alan took her boy away for a week, Kristina felt as if her heart had broken. He turned pro and went to the Norbreck Castle in Blackpool, to what is known as ‘qualifying school’. There, between three and four hundred budding players were competing for the glory of reaching the televised stages of tournaments. Paul’s talent shone through and he won all of his first 36 matches as a professional. Then when he was 16, they went away to a tournament for a whole month. It was a great adventure for Paul, of course, but Kris was very aware that she was losing her smiling little mummy’s boy. Eventually, she says, she got used to him being gone for periods of time.
Of course, she never dreamed for a moment how soon he would be gone from her life forever.
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