‘Emma didn’t want to leave her children’
CELEBRITY chef Rachel Allen has spoken about her departed friend, author Emma Hannigan, and tearfully recalled how the mother-oftwo, who died last year, ‘didn’t want to leave her children’.
Bestselling author Emma, from Bray, Co. Wicklow, passed away after an 11-year battle with cancer in March 2018.
Two weeks before her death, the 45year-old shared a heart-wrenching post on social media about losing her battle with cancer.
In her final days, Emma raised €136,000 for Breast Cancer Ireland through sales of her book Letters To My Daughters. Her last novel, Gift of Friends, was published in 2019 and it became an instant bestseller.
In an upcoming RTÉ documentary, Ms Allen remembers her friendship with Emma, who she met as a teenager after the budding writer took a cookery course in Ballymaloe.
In 2005, Emma discovered she had the cancer-carrying gene BRCA1, which predisposed her to breast and ovarian cancer. She decided to have a double mastectomy and her ovaries removed.
Ms Allen said: ‘She didn’t want to leave her children... so it was always just what she was going to do to, hopefully, only have a small chance of getting cancer.’
Other friends remember how the novelist bravely fought with humour through ten cancer diagnoses.
Fellow Bray woman and boxer, Katie Taylor said: ‘She was a person I looked up to but she was the one saying I was her hero and she looked up to me. I just couldn’t believe that.’
Cloch Le Carn, May 7, RTÉ One