No Holding Back

by Amanda Holden

  All filming took place around Somerset in some really romantic locations. With each day that passed on set with Neil, I felt a knot of anticipation tightening inside me because I knew where the script was heading. Before too long our characters were due to share a passionate kiss. Further into the filming, we’d be taking a bath together.

  The day of our first kiss I was nervous but ready. What I didn’t legislate for was how great a kisser Neil would be. I think that’s what finally did it for me – especially as I was feeling so vulnerable. I absolutely fell for him (or at least, the idea of him). I just couldn’t help myself, I found him attractive – he was the catalyst for the change I’d longed for. I don’t think women have sex with someone without feeling something – at least, I don’t. One thing inevitably led to another and before too long Neil and I ended up sleeping with each other.

  We were insane, lost in our own little world. Whenever we could have a moment together, we did. Instead of going home to Les (and Jane, who was house- and dog-sitting while we were both away working and she saved up for a deposit on a flat) or to Norfolk at the weekends, I’d pretend I was working and sneak to Neil’s flat in Crouch End. I didn’t even feel that I could confide in Jane because I didn’t want to put her in a difficult position at home with Les. (She still says now she is grateful she didn’t know.)

  I agonised over what we were doing. My behaviour reminded me of what GB had done to me, and I would think back to when I was nineteen, waiting on the street corner for him to come home, and how wretched I’d felt. Yet here I was, doing the same thing to my husband. I knew in my heart that my marriage was on the rocks but the guilt was unbearable and I hated myself for being so deceitful. I knew Les had been unfaithful to his wife (and lover) in the past and that Neil was being unfaithful to Rachel, but I’d never done this kind of thing before. I’d lie awake at night, feeling how wrong this was, and wanting to stop it. I absolutely hated myself.

  Eventually, of course, filming finally ended and I went home to Les, Jane and Primrose Hill. I was still seeing Neil whenever I could but it wasn’t easy, and we communicated mainly through texts. I had no idea where Neil and I were heading but I became jealous when he went back to Rachel. She didn’t live far from me and I’d walk Nobbie along her street and feel gutted every time I saw his car parked outside her flat. He always had the perfect excuse about how she’d needed to see him or how their relationship was ‘mostly intellectual’. (To this day I have no idea what that means, probably because I’m not intellectual enough!)

  Les undoubtedly had his suspicions. He asked me outright if anything was going on between us. I was completely wrong-footed and went bright red and hot. I was shocked – at the directness of his question, and at myself, because a lie just came straight out of my mouth – I’m not normally very good at lying. I hated myself, because I was being everything my mum said Frank had been. I could imagine her telling me, ‘You’re just like your father!’ That thought alone put me in a state of depression with a lurching sense in my stomach. I lost my appetite (very unlike me) and then I lost almost a stone in weight.

  My anxiety not only wore me down, it affected Les too. On Christmas Day that year, at my parents’ house in Devon, it all came to a head. Les flared up when I announced that some presents I handed out from the tree were from me, not from ‘us’. We had a huge row in front of everyone and he got in the car and drove off. I burst into tears, told Mum I wanted to leave Les and then ran upstairs and hid in the wardrobe. I hadn’t done that since I was little. As I sat there sobbing, two decades later, I didn’t feel different to when I was a little girl. I was utterly miserable, and had no idea what would become of my marriage. But once again I picked myself up and got back into work.

  The new millennium brought good news for both Les and me. I was offered two new jobs – a part in a BBC drama series called Hearts and Bones and a major role in a two-part drama for ITV called The Hunt. Ironically, Les was picked to play the cuckolded husband Amos Hart in the West End production of Chicago. It wasn’t just good for our careers, I reasoned, it would be good for my head, too – the new projects enforced distance between Neil and I.

  Hearts and Bones was a really well-written series exploring the loves and lives of a group of mates living in Coventry. It was a proper drama, and one of those special career moments – it was an amazing collaboration of actors (Sarah Parish, Dervla Kirwan, Rose Keegan, Andrew Scarborough, Damian Lewis and Michael Fassbender), and a tough part, but it is still the acting job of which I am most proud. My friend Jason says it is the best thing I have ever done. (That’s what friends are for, after all!)

  Aside from what was happening in my personal life, it was a fun and thrilling time. It was the first chance I’d had to form my own circle of friends and contemporaries – other up-and-coming actors and actresses – and much as I loved our joint friends, I was enjoying making new ones too.

  Before my next project started filming, Jane and I went on a much-needed break to Cuba. Jane had recently split up with her boyfriend, I was in a total state about Neil, and there we were in the most romantic place we had ever been. As we got off the plane in the airport lounge there were musicians playing music from the Buena Vista Social Club. Couples were everywhere – old, young, holding hands, smooching, dancing . . . We stayed at the Nacionale, and people thought Jane was a Cuban prostitute (her words)! She had to show her passport to get back into the hotel after one evening out.

  While we were there, we hired a car to see the rest of Cuba. I drove, and we couldn’t work out how to get out of the one-way system. The car’s brakes weren’t working and Jane thought we were going to die, so we ditched the car and stayed at the hotel for the whole time. We talked and talked. I needed time to think and she has always been such a wise influence on me.

  My next project, The Hunt starred the actor I had started my career with, Philip Glenister, as my grouchy husband. I played a married woman named Sarah who had everything but who risked it all to have an affair (the irony!). There was one small problem. I’d written on my CV that I could ride a horse, as all actors do, but I couldn’t so I had to take a crash course in horseriding.

  I was cantering in the middle of nowhere with my instructor one day when I felt my mobile phone vibrate. My tummy flipped when I saw it was from Neil, and then again when I read, ‘I love you.’ I was stunned, and hesitated a moment before texting back, ‘I love you too.’ I looked around me at the surrounding countryside but for a moment I couldn’t focus on a thing. This was huge. Neither of us had ever expected to say that to each other, and all I could think to myself was, ‘Oh God, Amanda, you’re really buggered now!’

  My friend Jess had been in India and I called her when she got back and told her everything. She was incredibly understanding and full of common-sense advice (as ever!). She, of all people, knew how hard it was to love Les sometimes and she was adamant. ‘We knew it was never going to last.’

  Despite our relationship deepening, it was really difficult for Neil and I to see each other and one spring weekend he suggested we hire a cottage near Yeovil, close to where I was filming. Les was busy doing eight shows a week in Chicago and, in spite of my gnawing guilt, I couldn’t wait to be reunited with Neil.

  We had the most blissful few days. We didn’t just hole up in our hideaway as we’d planned. The weather was beautiful, so we went for long walks and to the local pub for lunch together – in public! We visited stately homes like an ordinary couple. The woods near our cottage were beautiful, and carpeted with bluebells. We found wild garlic nearby and took some back to our cottage where Neil prepared us scallops with a garlic and butter sauce and we drank champagne. It was all so ridiculously romantic – we even came across an old boat on a pond and took it out for a row, just like the scene we had filmed together in Happy Birthday Shakespeare. Everything seemed to have a movie-like quality to it. We thought it was our little secret, but it was so stupid.

  I returned to the set of The Hunt in Somerset the fol
lowing week still glowing from my time with Neil. I’d become close friends with my other co-star Samantha Bond during the course of filming, and to make things even cosier, I’d got Mum and Dad some work as extras in a funeral scene and they were on set too. Nobody had any idea what was happening in my life. Not yet, anyway.

  I was immersed in a dramatic scene one sunny Saturday in May in which I’d packed my bags and had to leave my on-screen husband. During a short break, I switched on my phone to check for texts from Neil but instead took a call from my PR agent.

  ‘Hi, darling!’ I said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘We’ve just had a reporter on the phone,’ she said. ‘Are you having an affair with Neil Morrissey?’

  My stomach fell through my arse – it was like dropping twenty floors in a lift. I stood there speechless; frozen in time, aware that somewhere in the distance the director was calling my name. ‘One more time please, Amanda?’ Somehow, I managed a shaky smile and waved back at him. ‘I’ll be right with you!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have been seeing Neil.’

  ‘Does Les know?’

  ‘Not yet. Oh God, what am I going to tell him?’

  ‘Ready when you are, Amanda!’ the director called.

  I looked up and saw the entire cast and crew waiting for me. I told my PR that I’d call her back, plastered a smile on my face, turned myself around, and shot the scene all over again.

  Standing over Philip Glenister as Rob Campbell as he sat slumped dejectedly on a sofa, I walked myself through my lines and, as per the script, asked him if he’d be alright. ‘Yeah, fine,’ he replied glumly (as per the script). ‘New house, new life, new women . . .’ Then he looked up at me and said, ‘We had some good times didn’t we, Sarah?’ I was almost unable to speak. I nodded and said, ‘Loads.’ I ran out of the house crying and jumped into a car to be driven away. My tears weren’t fake, though, and when the director shouted ‘Cut!’ I felt like I was dying inside.

  I had to confide in my make-up artist, and she was so good to me – she was like a therapist. She cleared everyone out of her trailer, made me peppermint tea and radioed the director to say, ‘Amanda’s had some horrible news. Can you go to the next scene?’ As I sat blubbing into my mug, the first thing she asked me was if Les knew yet (cue more tears!).

  When I could finally catch my breath enough to speak, I rang my PR, Alison back and she told me the Sunday Mirror planned to run the story the following day, that they claimed it had been going on for months, that we had been in a cottage together last weekend, and – the worst bit – that they had photographs. All I could say was, ‘What am I going to tell Les?’ At that moment, it was the only thing I could think about. ‘So it’s true, then?’ she asked. I said nothing so she sighed and added, ‘Okay. Tell me everything.’

  For the next hour, as I sat in my trailer or wandered around the car park in the middle of nowhere, she and I tried to work out a plan of damage limitation. (My parents were still around but at that point I couldn’t even talk to them about it.) Les was in London and I knew I had to speak to him before somebody else did. Suddenly it was all so real – what I’d done, how much it was going to hurt him – and I felt wretched.

  My make-up artist sat with me for moral support as I made the call. I dialled his number with trembling fingers and listened to it ring. When Les finally picked up I said hello and then blurted out, ‘You know when you asked me before about Neil Morrissey? Well, I lied, Les. I’m sorry, but I lied to you. It’s going to be all over the newspapers.’

  I can’t remember exactly what he said to me but I do know he slammed the phone down, which I couldn’t blame him for at all. I called back, of course, and after our initial row, I was amazed when he took my call. All I could do was cry. He listened to me sobbing and eventually he asked me if I was alright. ‘No!’ I wailed. He said, ‘I’m coming to you now.’ He sounded unbelievably calm! I, however, was anything but. I put down the phone and called my friend Jess, who promised to come too. I went back to the hotel to wait for Les, who was being driven from London because he’d had too many drinks to drive himself. I was nervous, but so badly wanted to see him. He was the only person in the world who could truly comfort me. He was also the only one who could forgive me. I must have called Neil but I don’t remember it. Maybe we just texted.

  When he finally arrived, Les and I fell into each other’s arms. I was apologetic and full of self-loathing, and both of us wept. Once we’d stopped crying, we had an incredibly normal, rational conversation about it. He didn’t want to know the whys and wherefores; he only wanted to know one thing: ‘Do you love him?’ That was my next betrayal, as I told him ‘no’. I didn’t want to hurt him any more, but inside I felt that I did love Neil. How else would I have justified the whole situation to myself all along?

  In response, Les was heroic – there’s no other word for it. He stayed with me, and when the newspaper article about Neil and me was published (headline: ‘Amanda and Neil’s Romantic Weekend Trip’), Les and I read it together. I can’t bear to think how that must have felt. I stared red-eyed at the photographs of me and Neil on one of our weekend walks and emerging from the local pub. I felt so ashamed.

  When Les left for London to return to his role in Chicago (after missing just one night’s performance) we were both wrung out, but it was time to go back to work. Jess came back to work with me, and Philip Glenister greeted me at my door with a bottle. Samantha Bond was so reassuring, telling me that Les and I could survive if we worked hard enough at it. The problem was, I didn’t even know if that was what I wanted.

  By the Monday morning, I was back filming scenes in front of a director and crew who now knew every sordid detail of my personal life. To their credit, they didn’t treat me any differently. The plot line I was acting out was – once again – the story of my life. I was so embarrassed but I somehow held it together. No one judged me and they were all very kind.

  As soon as the news of the affair leaked out, the press swarmed around everything in our lives. There seemed to be photographers lurking everywhere. I had at least one more week of filming but the media attention almost got in the way of that. I had to hide in cars to get on and off set – it was like nothing any of us had ever experienced before. No one had been particularly interested in Les and me before that; we just didn’t get that kind of attention. But suddenly my hotel, the set and our home were surrounded.

  Les had ten cars lined up outside our house around the clock and one newspaper spotted my slim, beautiful, mixed-race friend Jane leaving and reported that Les was being ‘comforted’ by Diana Ross! His sister Margaret stayed with him for extra moral support and Andy Grainger kept an eye on him too. Neil was under siege as well, and had to ask a neighbour to buy him bread and milk – he needed a police escort just to get to his own car.

  But that wasn’t all. Stories kept appearing about us that were so intensely private that even close friends came under suspicion. I had a phone call from a friend in the press who tipped me off that a tabloid newspaper was tapping my phone. She advised me to put a security code on my phone. I was devastated at the idea of hacking but did as I was told. I never thought to go to the police. I never even thought, ‘How bloody dare they!’ At that point, I think most people in the public eye just accepted that phone-tapping was an inherent risk of the job.

  Piers Morgan was the editor of the Mirror at the time and was one of the chief protagonists chasing me. I wanted to kneecap him – I felt he was cruel and showed complete lack of understanding about my situation and that of Les. He persecuted me for five years from the day Neil and I were caught, which is something I never thought I’d be able to forgive him for. (One night, much later, Chris and I were having dinner at The Ivy and I spotted Piers Morgan sitting across the room, stuffing his face. I didn’t even want to breathe the same air as him. ‘Look at that bloated fat shitbag!’ I said, but Chris stopped me going over and saying something.)

  When The Hunt finally wrapped, sick with tired
ness, I fled back to London where reporters and photographers were practically camped outside our house. I was never able to watch that show when it was eventually broadcast. I couldn’t – it would have been a reminder of the worst time of my life.

  I moved out of the home I shared with Les and into a new-build one-bedroom flat I rented. It hurt to leave my home and my marriage, but it felt like the only solution. I spent a lot of time soul-searching and, now I could talk to her about it, confiding in Jane. Jane loved Les, but she felt the balance had been tipped from the start, and she made me feel less of a cow when she reminded me how maudlin and full of self-loathing a sober Les could be, let alone when he was drunk, and how tricky he was to be married to. ‘You seem to spend your life chivvying him along,’ she said, ‘and you can only do that for so long.’ She also reminded me how not long before, she’d seen me at home after a major shopping spree at Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. I had bags and bags of stuff all wrapped up in tissue paper. Jane asked me what I had bought and I said that I didn’t really care as the thrill had already gone. I didn’t even unwrap the bags, no fashion shows like when I was a little girl, nothing. She said she’d had a sense on that day that I was really low – sad and trapped.

  But despite all that had happened, and all the hurt I’d caused, Neil and I couldn’t give each other up – not yet. Even though I had left Les, and was living in my flat, the press followed Neil and me everywhere for months, desperate for pictures of us together, so if I wanted to see Neil I had to creep out in the dead of night. He had an even worse media backlash than I did and really got it in the neck for having an affair with a married woman (he was perfect headline material – ‘man behaving badly’ and all the rest). As if he’d had to twist my arm! I had made one attempt early on to push him away when I told him, ‘No, I’m not doing this!’ – but I clearly didn’t try hard enough. I felt it was me who should shoulder the blame, because I was the one who was married.