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alice.ryan@cambridge-news.co.uk
Interview with Alice
Reaching out to hold her daughter’s hand, Julie Emmerson sat silently at her bedside. Lying there, her blonde hair spread out on the pillow, Nicola looked for all the world as if she was asleep. But, aged just 20, her heart had suddenly – and inexplicably – stopped beating: Nicola was dead.
“She was so still, but still so warm,” remembers Julie, tears welling in her eyes. “I knew what had happened, but I didn’t want it to be the truth… And I knew I had to leave her but I didn’t want to. I just wanted to pick her up and take her home.
“My son was saying ‘Wake up, Nicola. Come on, wake up’; it was heart-rending. She was a real ray of sunshine: when she died, our whole world clouded over – even now, those clouds are still there.”
Looking round the sitting room of her Royston home, Julie points out a whole gallery of family photos. Many of them contain Nicola’s smiling face.
“She’ll always be with us,” adds Julie. “I hate it when people say ‘It’s time to move on’. As far as I’m concerned, to move on you have to leave something behind – and I’d never leave her behind, never.”
Nicola died in January 2007. Out clubbing with her girlfriends, to celebrate her 20th birthday, she suddenly collapsed; tests later showed Nicola had died instantly, and was dead before she hit the dance floor.
A post-mortem found Nicola had suffered a sudden cardiac death. Shockingly, 12 young people in the UK are lost to sudden cardiac death each and every week. And, at the moment, doctors don’t know why.
“We’ve still got questions that need answering,” admits Julie. “It’s horrible not having a reason…”
Describing her eldest daughter as “very lively, always the centre of attention”, Julie says Nicola had, ironically, suffered heart problems as a tiny baby.
“She was a healthy 8lb 1oz and she wasn’t sickly,” remembers Julie, who also has two other children, Daniel, 23, and Charlotte, 14. “But my mother’s instinct told me something wasn’t right. It turned out she had a very, very fast and irregular heartbeat.”
Rushed into hospital, doctors said baby Nicola was in a critical condition. “They said we had to be prepared; they wanted to give her the last rites,” remembers Julie, with a shudder. But, with the aid of a defibrillator, the medics managed to restore a normal heartbeat.
They diagnosed Nicola with Wolff-Parkinson-White, a rare heart syndrome. After taking medication for two years, she recovered – and went on to live a full and healthy life.
“Ironically, after she died they tested her heart and found out she’d never had the syndrome at all,” adds Julie. “So that had nothing to do with her death.”
A former pupil at both Meridian and Greneway schools in Royston, Nicola went on to work for the town’s famous chocolate company, Hotel Chocolat, for five years, up until her death.
“She loved a party and was always socialising,” adds Julie. “On the night she died she’d booked a minibus to take her and her friends to a club in Watford; she’d even chosen the music they were going to listen to on the way.
“All the girls came here to get ready. I can still remember her walking in here, all dressed up; when she turned round she’d got her dress tucked into her knickers! We were all joking with her about that…
“When she left Nicola was on a real high. I said ‘Have a great time. Love you’ and she said ‘Love you, Mum’. That was the last thing she ever said to me.”
Julie’s husband, Steve, a driver for Sainsbury’s, then left to start a night shift. A funeral director, Julie herself was on call: during the evening, she was called out to two deaths. “I can remember coming in and saying to Charlotte, Daniel and his girlfriend ‘That’s it, I don’t want to have to go out again tonight’ – next thing there were two policemen at the door, telling me Nicola had collapsed’,” she recounts.
“At that stage I didn’t realise the urgency… Nicola’s boyfriend had given her a teddy bear for Christmas and I remember grabbing that, thinking that she’d want something to cuddle in hospital.”
Daniel went with his mum to Watford; Steve went straight to the hospital from work. “We got there and they asked us into a little room,” continues Julie, closing her eyes. “I knew then… Nicola’s mates said they knew she had gone because they could hear me screaming – and they were standing outside the hospital.”
The accident and emergency team had spent an hour trying to resuscitate Nicola, to no avail. Taken to see her body, Julie says she spent more than two hours at her bedside, unable to tear herself away.
“We’ve since been told she was dead before she even hit the floor,” says Julie. “Later on I’m sure we’ll take comfort from that. Nicola wasn’t even aware: as far as she was concerned, she was out with her friends and having an absolute ball.”
Forced to say goodbye, Julie, Steve and Daniel returned home – to break the news to Charlotte. “She was only 11,” Julie explains, tearful at the memory. “She said ‘How’s Nicola?’ and I had to say ‘She’s not coming home. She died’… Her little face…”
Because Julie was a funeral director at the time, she immediately started planning “the send-off Nicola deserved”. “Because of my job, it was something we’d talked about,” she adds. “Nicola said she wanted a white coffin with silver swirls and horses; she even told me the music she wanted played – including Aerosmith’s I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing. She wasn’t here long enough to have the wedding of her dreams, so I wanted her to have the best send-off possible.”
But the funeral plans had to be put on hold for a month: following a post-mortem, Nicola’s heart was removed for further tests. “It was dreadful,” continues Julie. “We were asked to go back down to the mortuary to visit her before they took her to another hospital; they put her in a deep freeze and took her heart away. And then we just had to wait for the phone call, saying her heart was back with her and she was coming home.”
The tests revealed sudden cardiac death, the cause of which is unknown. There were no drugs in Nicola’s system and only a small amount of alcohol – she was below the drink-drive limit. To this day, Julie says there is no explanation.
When the time came, Julie chose to lay out Nicola’s body herself. “I wanted to do it,” she says. “I dressed her in the dress she’d bought for New Year’s Eve; it was strapless and she loved it. Organising the funeral was the last thing I could do for her, and I wanted it to be perfect.”
The funeral took place on February 12 and Julie says the church was packed. Everyone was asked to wear something pink, even the men, because it was Nicola’s favourite colour, and her body was driven to the church in a glass carriage, drawn by a team of horses. In line with her wishes, Nicola’s coffin was white with silver swirls; instead of flowers, Julie topped the coffin with the pink, glittery Stetson Nicola wore clubbing on the night she died.
“It was a strange feeling,” admits Julie. “You’re there, but you’re not there, if you know what I mean? It’s like watching a movie, a very sad movie at that.”
Julie admits it was months before she stopped expecting Nicola to just walk in the door one night, with “a smile or a sarky comment”. “But that was it,” she says. “We had this new life and we had to try to live it.
“Even now some days are very hard; there have been times when I don’t even want to get out of bed. But then you think of Nicola and you bounce back: if you were miserable or had the hump, she always had a way of getting you out of it – by saying or doing something to make you laugh.”
Julie says the whole family was left devastated by Nicola’s death. Eventually leaving her job as a funeral director, because she found it too painful, Julie had 18 months of counselling and admits reaching “a very dark place”.
“I went through a horrible stage where I wanted to go and find her – and I knew the only way I could be with her was to take my own life,” she explains. “I wanted to be with her, but I knew I needed to be here, that everyone here needed me…”
Julie says throwing herself into fundraising gave her both a focus and a sense of hope. She discovered that a team of doctors, based at Papworth Hospital, were researching sudden cardiac death and trying to identify young people who might be at risk.
“They think it’s something to do with the electrics in the heart, like it having a short circuit,” explains Julie. “We want to help them find some answers – and stop other families going through what we’ve been through.”
The Emmerson family have set up a charitable trust in Nicola’s name: by holding a whole series of fundraisers, from golf days and auctions to sponsored challenges (Julie has just done the Great North Run), they are aiming to make £25,000 for Papworth. The trust has already raised £7,000 and Julie says she has been both touched and overwhelmed by people’s generosity.
“We’re doing this in memory of Nicola: she’s at the heart of things, which is where she always wanted to be – in the limelight,” adds Julie, with a smile. “It’s also a focus for us, and it’s for a very important cause. By telling this story, we want to make people aware of sudden cardiac death; it’s a silent killer.
“Losing a child changes your life: life can never be the same again. All you can do is try and make the best of the life you have left – and that’s what we’re doing.”
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