The Sunday Times May 29, 2022 11
NEWS
Jacqueline Wilson book — are
very happy together,” she
added. “They certainly are
not going to divorce and leave
their children traumatised.”
She added that it was “up
for discussion” whether she
would write a second
Faraway Tree story, and that
she wished to carry on
writing books “as long as I
am able”.
Her previous titles include
Double Act, The Illustrated
Mum, Bad Girls and Girls
Under Pressure.hated each other and there
were endless rows,” she
recalled. “Even on holiday,
you never knew when one of
them would trigger the other
and then they’d rush off in
different directions.”
She received Hay’s Festival
Medal for Fiction yesterday at
a second event in which she
spoke about her book, The
Magic Faraway Tree: A New
Adventure, inspired by Enid
Blyton.
“The mother and father —
which is surprising in amother, meanwhile, was put
down as next-of-kin for both
her husband, Harry, when he
was in hospital, and a
“gentleman friend” on
another ward.
Wilson, who grew up on a
council estate in Kingston-
upon-Thames, southwest
London, said that she had
been “quite an anxious child”
because her parents fought so
often. Many of her novels take
adoption, divorce and mental
illness as themes.
“My parents cordiallyWilson has not written
directly about her mother’s
life, but said that it was an
“extraordinary” story. “I
sometimes dream of having
one of the real bestsellers up
at the top of the charts, and
unfortunately the only thing I
could ever think of was to tell
my mother’s story,” she said.
In the past, however, she
has described her parents’
difficult marriage, during
which both had affairs — two
of her father’s mistresses
turned up at his funeral. HerTracy Beaker series, added
that she told her mother to
get rid of the gun or she
would hand it to the police.
“For once I managed to
stand up to her and said:
‘Look, you must see this man
and give it back to him and if
you don’t... I am going to
hand it into the police station,
because you are not allowed
to have that gun in the house.’
“What she did with it, I
don’t know. Maybe she sold it
to somebody else, but it
wasn’t there after that.”was scared that somebody
would come and burgle her,
so she said, ‘I could kill them’.
“And I said, ‘Don’t be silly,
you’re elderly now... they
will just snatch it from you
and hit you on the head with
it’. And also, often when I
went to visit my mum, she’d
be fast asleep and I’d let
myself in, and I thought: ‘The
person who is going to get
killed [is] me when I go and
enter the bedroom.’ ”
Wilson, a former children’s
laureate and author of theDame Jacqueline Wilson once
feared that her mother would
accidentally shoot her after
discovering that she kept a
loaded gun under her pillow.
The children’s author, 76,
revealed that her mother,
Margaret, who died in 2015,
had bought the weapon from
“some very dubious man”
because she was scared that a
burglar would steal her bric-
a-brac and antiques.
At the time, Margaret,
known as “Biddy”, an
eccentric woman who had
been a bookkeeper but in
later life became an antiques
dealer, was “very elderly”.
“I’m an only child, so I had
to keep an eye on her,”
Wilson told the Hay Festival
on Friday in an interview for
the BBC Radio 4 programme
This Cultural Life. “And she
said, ‘I have got something
wonderful and I’m keeping it
under my pillow’, and I
looked and it was a gun. [She]Rosamund Urwin
Media Editor
68, Olivia’s father. “I have no interest. Do
I want him, if he’s guilty, to rot in hell? I’m
not interested. It won’t make me feel bet-
ter. The concept of closure doesn’t mean
anything to me.”
The Riley family has endured a lifetime
of tragedies: Stephen is twice widowed.
Now he is arranging the funeral of his
daughter. “It is a great, great sadness,” he
said, sitting on the sofa at Olivia’s home in
Southwold, Suffolk, overlooking the mar-
shes and the masts in the harbour. The
house is still filled with Olivia’s things, old
photographs, vintage posters of her
favourite beach in Norfolk where she
walked her dogs, as well as flowers sent
by friends and family.
The night before she died, Olivia had
been for dinner with Leonora. “We
talked about girl things and relationships
and naughty stuff, and it was lovely, just
lovely. She was like a mother to me,” Leo-
nora said. “She hadn’t been happier in
her life than she was at that point, which I
suppose is a nice thing.”
That night, at their family home, the
sisters fell asleep on the sofa, Olivia wak-
ing up early to walk the dogs. “When the
police knocked on the door later that
morning, it was the worst moment,” Leo-
nora said. “I’m still processing it now, try-
ing to figure out what to do with myself.”
Stephen has to make peace with what
happened. “Are you going to stop people
driving stupidly fast cars in London?
Pathetic men driving Ferraris and Lam-
borghinis down the King’s Road, revving
the engine? It’s difficult to believe anyone
can be so trite and pathetic, but there’s
lots of people like that. Given the chance,
they’ll put their foot down.”When the bestselling author Lucinda
Riley died from cancer last year, her
daughter, Leonora, 20, thought often and
deeply about grief. She wondered
whether it was easier to watch someone
you love fade away over years, as her
mother had, or have to cope with a sud-
den death, without warning. “I didn’t
think I would ever find out what the
answer was.”
On Saturday May 14, Leonora’s sister,
Olivia, 41, left their family home in Upper
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, to walk her two
dogs, Lily, a labrador, and Darcy, a golden
retriever, and her father’s labrador, Maia.
The skies were clear, the Thames low —
and Olivia was taking her regular route
towards Battersea Park, past Cheyne
Walk and its million-pound mansions,
previously home to Mick Jagger, George
Best and Ian Fleming.
At about 6.20am, as Olivia was cross-
ing the road by the Chelsea Embank-
ment, she was hit by a black Audi TT. She
died at the scene, as did the three dogs.
The 26-year-old driver suffered minor
injuries and was arrested on suspicion of
causing death by dangerous driving. He
was released on bail.
“Do I want to know what will happen
to the guy who did it?” said Stephen Riley,
MEGAN
AGNEW
Waking Mum up was dangerous — she slept with a loaded gun, reveals Jacqueline Wilson
yesterday, said: “There can
be a stigma around celebrity
wines but I think we have
circumnavigated this through
a shared quest for quality.
“It is mind-blowing that we
have reached so many people
with the portfolio of wines,
especially considering we
launched through lockdown.I
think people can sense my
joie de vivre for this brand.
Making this a reality has not
been without its obstacles but
it really is a labour of love.”
The prosecco rosé is made
on an estate run by seventh-
generation producers in
Gambellara, a picturesque
town in northeast Italy, at the
foothills of the Lessini
Mountains. It received a
commendation at the latest
Drinks Business Awards, with
one judge remarking that itwas “driving new customers
into the [sparkling rosé] wine
category”.
The Italian government
approved the production of
prosecco rosé only in May
2020, with exports permitted
in November that year.
Aside from prosecco,
Minogue has a collection of
French still rosé ranging from
a £9 bottle in Morrisons to a
£32 bottle of Côtes de
Provence Cru Classé Rosé in
Harvey Nichols. Her wines
are also sold in top
restaurants for as much as
£110 a bottle, including the
Carlyle hotel in New York and
Annabel’s, the private
members’ club in London.
Paul Schaafsma, managing
director of Benchmark
Drinks, which has also
developed wines with Garyboomed in recent years.
According to drinks analysis
firm IWSR, 49 per cent of
British wine drinkers drink
rosé, which is more popular
with women than men. This
rises to 63 per cent among 25
to 34-year-olds, who drink
sparkling rosé twice as often
as those aged 35 to 54 and
four times as often as those
aged 55 and over.
Social media may play a
part in its success. Alice
Baker, senior research analyst
at Mintel, said its colour made
it an “Instagrammable” drink.
Humphrey Serjeantson,
research director of IWSR,
said both still and sparkling
rosé had been given a boost
by celebrity endorsement.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
helped to start the trend in
2008, when they boughtChâteau Miraval, a Provence
winery. Jolie reportedly sold
her stake after her divorce
but the wine continues to be
produced. Jon Bon Jovi,
Cameron Diaz, Sir Ian
Botham, and Sarah Jessica
Parker have also launched
wine ranges that include rosé.
Serjeantson said: “Ten or
20 years ago rosé was
generally seen as the poor
cousin of red or white wine in
terms of quality — it was a
drink for summer, chilled,
perhaps even on ice, which
would mask any potential
deficiencies in the flavour. But
more recently, it has become
more of a year-round drink.”
Minogue told the Financial
Times’ How to Spend It
magazine that she hopes to
produce champagne next.
@Louise_EcclesKylie Minogue is an unlikely
figure to change the
landscape of wine drinking
in Britain.
Two years after launching
her range, the Australian
singer’s £12 pink fizz has
become the UK’s top-selling
branded prosecco rosé — this
despite Minogue admitting
she knows little about
vinification and spent her
youth drinking Lambrusco.
The blush-coloured
prosecco made up a sixth of
market share (15.8 per cent)
in the year to May and
generated £7.7 million of
sales, a third more than its
nearest competitor, analysis
by Nielsen found.
Minogue, who turned 54
Louise Eccles
Consumer Affairs Editor
Barlow and Gordon Ramsay,
said Minogue’s appeal
spanned several generations,
from those who
remembered her in the
Australian soap Neighbours
to younger people who
have bought her recent
singles.
“I’ve been in the wine
industry for 25 years and this
is the most successful product
I’ve ever been associated
with,” said Schaafsma. “It’s
just extraordinary how
people have taken to it.
“There is an
incredible following of
Kylie supporters out
there who initially tried it
but then enjoyed the wine
and came back again.”
Sales of pink prosecco
and English sparkling wine
and champagne haveFirst my wife, then my daughter.
These tragedies keep happening
The death of a woman while walking her
dogs was just the latest agony for a family that
has endured no end of appalling misfortune
There have been three fatalities in five
years on that section of the Chelsea
Embankment, called a “well-known blind
spot” by the residents’ group, Better-
Streets4KC (for Kensington and Chelsea).
“But whatever you do,” Stephen
continued, “whatever happens to the
perpetrator, doesn’t change anything to
me. Really doesn’t. Someone has gone
and they’re not coming back. I’m
strangely used to having to push on dur-
ing periods of grief and shock. It just
seems to happen to us.”
Stephen was 19 when he met his first
wife, Helen, then 17, at a ballroom danc-
ing class. After they married and Helen
became pregnant with Olivia, she devel-
oped pre-eclampsia, which went undiag-
nosed, and she died the day after she gave
birth. Helen was 25.
“When you have a newborn, you
haven’t got time to grieve,” he said. “For
the first part of Olivia’s life, I brought her
up on my own, so we were incredibly
close. We moved to Copenhagen together
for my job, and I had a bike with a seat on
the back, so we would cycle along the
coast, just me and her.”
Olivia was always desperate to know
what her mother was like, what she said,
what she did, how she lived. The truth
is that they were “extraordinarily
similar”, he said. The letters he
received after both of their deaths
are almost identical — “people
simply spoke of their kindness”.
“Helen and Olivia both had the
ability to relate to people at all
levels,” he continued. “Livi was
never arrogant to people
beneath her and never intimi-
dated by anyone famous or any-
one senior. That’s why they’re uni-
versally loved.”
When Olivia was eight, Stephen
married Susan Riley. Years later, it
came out that Olivia had been physi-
cally abused by someone close to the
family, when Stephen was away.“Olivia had a very difficult childhood and
suffered terribly,” he said, “and I was too
busy with work ...” He pauses, unable to
go on.
“Olivia knew she would get beaten up
if she told me what was happening. She
still ended up the most unconditionally
loving person.”
Stephen and Susan divorced in 1997.
Three years later, an author, Lucinda
Edmonds, saw Stephen’s personal ad in
The Sunday Times. She called him and
they spoke for seven hours through the
night. They married six months later —
his third wife, her second husband.
“It does happen now and again, know-
ing that someone is for you,” he said. “It is
a complete fluke, very lucky. What are
the chances of her opening that paper
and picking me? What are the chances of
Olivia being hit by a car? Life is full of
ridiculous events and coincidences and
we all seek an explanation, we all seek a
reason for these things, but the reality is
there isn’t one, it’s just chance.”
Their children blended into one fam-
ily: Olivia, 19 at the time, Lucinda’s two
children from her previous marriage,
Harry and Isabella, and the two children
the couple had together, Leonora and
Kit.
Lucinda’s career as an author took
off in the noughties, mainly writing
“bodice-rippers”, selling 40 million
copies. Stephen was a business-
man, at one stage owning Denby
Pottery, later becoming his
wife’s agent. They lived at Wood
Norton Hall, Norfolk, with
houses in Chelsea, St Tropez and
Koh Chang, Thailand.
“Olivia always showered love
and affection on young chil-
dren,” Stephen said. She was
“the fun one”, Leonora said.
“Taking us to theme parks, let-
ting us be naughty, she had this
sparkle, this childlike sense of
wonder about the world. We weresisters but she was a mother, a friend, a
sister, everything.”
After her school years at St Elphin’s
boarding school in Derbyshire, then
Gresham’s in Norfolk, Olivia attended Ita-
lia Conti drama school, followed by years
living in west London and working in
property. At the time she died, she was
managing her stepmother’s literary
estate.
“When my mum was ill and dying, I
found it really hard to talk about it,” Leo-
nora said. Lucinda endured five years of
oesophageal cancer and was 56 when she
died. “Olivia has gone through so much,
but she would never make you feel like a
burden, ever. You could ask her to travel
countries and she’d say, ‘OK! I just need
someone to mind the dogs.’”
They talked on the phone around
three times a day, spending most week-
ends together. “That’s why she was in
London when she died. It was for me,”
said Leonora, who is in her final year at
the Courtauld Institute of Art. “She
dropped everything and came down just
because I was feeling a bit low.”
Olivia’s funeral will be at the church in
Blythburgh, at the top of the estuary near
her home in Suffolk. “The time between
death and funeral is like a parallel uni-
verse where you’re not really engaged
with the world in a normal way, with any-
thing,” Stephen said. “It only starts to
become real afterwards.”
Mourners are flying from Australia, the
United States and the Dominican Repub-
lic to the funeral. “She knew everyone
personally, remembered everyone’s
names,” Leonora said. “People in her
local post office, in her local shop.”
Olivia was Leonora’s “favourite per-
son”. “All these things come up when
people die, you look at the positives, but
I’ve always known it when she was alive,”
she said. “I would think about it every sin-
gle day and note it down in my mind. I
knew all along.”
@MeganAgnewEasygoing, jolly,
uncomplicated and fun are
all words that spring to
mind when defining
prosecco — the gently
sparkling wine made in the
hills above Venice, writes
Will Lyons. Oh, and popular,
immensely popular.
Now Kylie has tapped
into the growing market for
this fruity, faintly sweet
wine.
Once you have removed
the signed silver foil (lovelytouch), it falls into
the glass with a
pale coral pink hue
with small,
persistent
bubbles.
It smells of red
fruit and sherbet
(there is a
generous dose of
residual sugar)
while a sip
reveals a vibrant,
candied citrus
kick. Lively and
fun — like one of
Kylie’s songs.Will Lyons is wine
columnist for The
Sunday Times and
co-host of the Wine
Times podcastAS VIBRANT
AND FUN AS
HER TUNES
She had this
sparkle, this
childlike
sense of
wonder about
the world
From left, the crash scene,
Olivia with her sister
Leonora, and with her dogs.
Below, Stephen Riley with
Kit and LeonoraWhere the wild rosés grow: Kylie’s pink fizz is the UK’s biggest seller
DOMINIC LIPINSKI/PA; MET POLICE