HELEN’S LIFE ON PLANET GRIEF
In a tribute to the murdered author Helen Bailey, the Daily Express is today telling her story and sharing extracts from her moving book about living after loss
ON A sultry morning in late February 2011, best-selling children’s author Helen Bailey shouted to her husband John Sinfield to “be careful” as he waded into the sea in Barbados for a swim. Moments later she watched in despair from the beach as “JS” got caught in a rip tide and drowned.
Despite the efforts of onlookers to save him Helen was in her own words “a wife at breakfast but a widow by lunch”.
Together for 22 years and married for 15, Helen, then 46, was shattered by his death and eventually found comfort by penning a blog she called Planet Grief. “I’d love to say I started the blog to help other people but I didn’t, it was purely selfish. It was to prove to myself that I could write again,” she said.
Still, her posts, which were as humorous as they were heart-wrenching, resonated with a global audience of other widows and widowers. So huge was its popularity that in October 2015 the blog was released as a book When Bad Things Happen In Good Bikinis, documenting her life after JS’s death.
Helen could never have known that just six months later she would also be dead.
During the depths of grief the internet had become her lifeline but in a tragic twist of fate it also led her to her killer. On a bereavement site she met Ian Stewart and out of friendship they fell in love. Or so Helen had thought.
This week Stewart, 56, was found guilty of her murder at St Albans Crown Court and sentenced to a minimum of 34 years in prison.
IN AN interview in October 2015 to promote her book Helen spoke of how she had first chatted with him online after JS’s death. “It was all very innocent. We were having discussions about bacon sandwiches. There was nothing even slightly romantic at all there.” Later that year they began meeting to walk Helen’s dachshund Boris and eventually started dating.
In an interview Helen reflected on losing JS and finding Stewart whom she referred to affectionately as GGHW – Gorgeous GreyHaired Widower – “I know it’s a cliché but life really is stranger than fiction. I think if I had written about my experiences as fiction, people might have laughed it off as far-fetched.” What nobody could have predicted was the chilling end to Helen’s story.
In 2013 she and Stewart bought a home together in Hertfordshire where they lived with his two adult sons, and they were planning their wedding for last September. Unbeknownst to her it was all part of a plot by Stewart to get his hands on her estimated £3million fortune. Last April, three months after Helen had written him into her will as the main benefactor, he drugged and suffocated her before dumping her body and her loyal dog Boris in the cesspit beneath their home.
Three days later he reported her missing claiming he had found a note from Helen saying she needed “space” and had gone to her holiday
EXTRACTS FROM HER BOOK: WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN IN GOOD BIKINIS
JULY 2011 I was clear that while my life would be forever shaped by what had happened, it would not be defined by it. I had to accept it. But I believe that there are some for whom acceptance may always be too much to ask such as those whose loved ones have died at the hands of others through malice. AUGUST 2011 It seems like yesterday and yet a lifetime ago. Amid the constant sadness there are still bouts of grief so searing they take my breath away. home in Broadstairs. It was another three months before police discovered her body.
Helen’s friends and family are still reeling from her death, describing her as warm, witty, wise and an exceptional talent. One of them says: “Helen was a smart, gutsy woman, helping herself and others to make sense of grief through her writing. When she started dating Stewart she was ready for NOVEMBER 2011 For months I could barely think about going back to our cottage in Broadstairs on the Kent coast without becoming anxious and tearful. But my friend Mac drove me down and it was a lovely weekend, made so much easier by him being there. JANUARY 2012 Before Christmas I went on a date and ended up sobbing, “I still feel married!” in front of the poor man. Now I can feel the bonds of my marriage vows loosening. But I’m a relationship, she knew what she wanted and she believed she had found love again.
“But now we know Stewart was an evil and convincing man. There was nothing about his behaviour to set alarm bells ringing either with Helen or her loved ones... if only there had been.”
Now that the extent of Stewart’s deception has been made public during the trial, the dedication at still living in some sort of marital limbo land. ONE YEAR ON On the morning of the first anniversary of JS’s death, I woke up feeling anxious, tired, desolate, terrified and physically sick. I had taken the bold step of planning a lunch for 10 at one of JS’s once-favourite restaurants.
In tears I thought about cancelling. Why put myself through all this?
But those widows who told me that it would be OK were right. It was a great day with friends. the end of Helen’s book makes for difficult reading: “To my Gorgeous Grey-Haired Widower, Ian Stewart: BB, I love you. You are my happy ending.”
To order When Bad Things Happen In Good Bikinis by Helen Bailey, published by Blink Publishing, £8.99, call the Express Bookshop with your card details on 01872 562 310. Or send a cheque or PO made payable to The Express Bookshop to: Blink Publishing Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.com UK delivery is free.
Blink Publishing have made a donation to The Dogs Trust charity in memory of Helen and Boris. FOUR YEARS ON OCTOBER 2015 I can now reveal something that my friends and family knew four years ago, which is that “Mac” who came with me to Broadstairs, was Ian, aka Gorgeous Grey-Haired Widower (GGHW), a man I met through a Facebook bereavement group.
Now I’m in a large old house in Royston, Hertfordshire, living with GGHW and his two sons. I’m still shell-shocked that my life after JS’s death is so different from my life before it.
A few weeks ago GGHW and I were walking back home late one night having been out to dinner with friends. I realised that four years ago I had never met any of these people and didn’t know GGHW.
I suddenly felt soul crushingly lonely and homesick, right back on that alien landscape of Planet Grief. I looked up at the sky, inky black and studded with stars and thought, “JS, come back, please! The big experiment is over. You can come home now.” The feeling didn’t last long but for the few moments it did my despair was raw.