The Sunday Times Magazine • 15“It was the lies that killed her,” Christine
says. “Lies that were said about her in court.”
Referring to Burton’s 999 call, Weiss
said: “He was heard asking, ‘What are you
doing?’ and the call goes silent for some
seconds. There is shouting in the
background and he asked repeatedly for
help to be sent to him ... He says, ‘She is
going mad, breaking stuff, just woken up,
she’s cracked my head open.’ ” Weiss went
on: “Ms Flack overturned a table and had
to be restrained on the ground because of
the way she was behaving ... She has ruined
her own life by committing the assault.
Mr Burton is a victim.”
It is chilling to read back, knowing the
other side of the story — that Caroline
was having a breakdown and it would be
she who was taken to the hospital by the
ambulance rather than Burton.
In the following weeks Christine
remembers turning on the radio and hearing
discussions about female perpetrators of
domestic abuse, “inspired” by what was
reported to have happened. “Caroline
Whack”, read one headline. “But she never
hurt anyone other than herself,” Christine
says. “That’s why this label of domestic
abuse, it was so bad to her. Because that
was the furthest thing from what she was.”
Even in that period of darkness, there
was still silliness and light. “It’s hard to say
someone is depressed when they’re not
miserable,” Christine says. “She wouldn’t
come and mope about. She’d still be funny.”
The family found Caroline a new flat to rent
in Stoke Newington, north London, away
from the baying cameras, and helped her
pack up. Caroline’s only job was to buy the
cardboard boxes. A dozen arrived — and
they were tiny. “We laughed all day,” says
Christine. “Actual living — the cooking,
planning, practical things — it wasn’t in her.
She was just hilarious chaos.”
Still, Caroline couldn’t stop reading
the news, obsessed with what was being
written but unable to respond because of
the case. Christine has a box of phones
and iPads that she took off her daughter,
desperate to stop her going online, but she
would just go out and buy a new one. “Her
phone never left her hand. And at the end,
that was awful.”C
aroline Flack was born in north
London in November 1979, six
minutes after her nonidentical
twin sister, Jody. Within weeks
the family moved to rural
Norfolk, near to their dad’s job as a sales
representative for Coca-Cola; Christine
working for a school and then the local
newspaper. During the day Christine would
put the babies in bouncy chairs facing each
other to keep them entertained, and at
night they would settle only in the same
cot. With two older siblings, Paul and
Elizabeth, the twins were “two peas in the
same pod”, Caroline wrote in her 2015memoir, Storm in a C-Cup. “That bond
didn’t break,” Christine says.
As kids they were keen performers,
making up dances and putting on musicals
in the living room, turning into cheeky
teenagers, climbing out of their window at
night to go to the café in the village. They
earned their pocket money by picking
daffodils one summer and working in an
abattoir another, “which was basically a
massive freezer. I don’t know what they
even did there,” Christine says.
Caroline always felt the highs and lows of
life acutely. “Why are you crying, Carrie?”
asks her mum in one home video, as she
sobs at the kitchen table. She fell hard in
love with naughty boys who broke her
heart, including one who worked on the
waltzers when the fair came to town.
At 17, while living in Cambridge and
attending dance school, Caroline tried to
take her own life. “She took some tablets,”
Christine says. “That was shocking. She
was always like it [inclined to feel down]
but you never think they’re going to do
anything or harm themselves. From then
on there was always a worry.” During
another period of depression in her
twenties, Caroline was taken to rehab by
her agent, but she checked herself out
almost immediately. “She didn’t hurt
herself often,” Christine says. “It wasn’t
regular, only a few times, but it was still
frightening when she did.”
Caroline’s moods were also linked to
her menstrual cycle, having a few days of
near-catatonic lows each month.
“Everything normally that you take in your
stride, she couldn’t,” Christine says. “It was
harder for her to handle things. She was a
different person for those few days. And
then she’d be fine again.”
Caroline moved to London in her early
twenties and, after years grafting as a jobbing
presenter while working at various pizza
restaurants, she landed a stint on children’s
TV. But her big break came in 2009 when
she fronted ITV2’s I’m a Celebrity spin-offshow, soon followed by The Xtra Factor.
When she presented The X Factor headline
show with Olly Murs in 2015, Caroline was
relentlessly trolled and told she looked
“pregnant”. It made her so self-conscious
that she had a consultation for liposuction
with a plastic surgeon in her dressing room.
He told her she didn’t need it.
Months later Christine had a call from
Caroline saying she was in hospital after
a fat-reduction treatment on her stomach.
“She only had half done because she
couldn’t stand the pain,” Christine says.
“And she laughed and said, ‘Did you ever
think one of your daughters would have
liposuction?’ And I said, “Not someone
that’s seven stone, no!” I used to tell her she
was gorgeous, and she’d go, well, you’re my
mum, of course you would say that.”
Still, Caroline was known as being
electrifying company, always up for a laugh,
holding court at the piano in the Groucho
private members’ club in Soho, singing
along to Dusty Springfield, or charging
around festivals with her girlfriends. “Don’t
go in there, Mum!” she’d yell, every time
Christine went to check if there was
anything in the fridge. After Caroline died,
an accountant said most of her outgoings
were on McDonald’s and parking tickets.
With fame came scrutiny about her love
life. There were rumours about Prince
Harry, which she always denied, and in 2011
she briefly dated the One Direction star
Harry Styles, who was 17 to her 31.
Columnists called her a “me-first cougar”,
people yelled “paedophile” at her in the
street, and One Direction fans launched
brutal online attacks. “Until this point I’d
been comfortable in my own skin,” she
wrote in her memoir. “I never really had any
doubts or insecurities about myself. Then I
actually started questioning who I really
was. Am I fat? Am I old? Am I wrinkly? Am I
ugly? And that was awful.”
Break-ups, when they came, were tough.
“For nearly two years I was emotionally
dead,” she wrote about her break-upCaroline couldn’t stop reading the news. She
was obsessed with what was being written
Right: interviewing
One Direction,- She briefly
dated Harry Styles,
far left. Far right:
with the drummer
Dave Danger, whom
she dated for
three years
GETTY IMAGES ➤