I was Elton’s FIRST fiancee
has in the US, France and Italy as well as London and Windsor.
Linda says: “We had furniture on hire purchase. We didn’t have much money. I paid for everything. We went everywhere by bus. We were happy, or so I thought. I don’t think Reg actually proposed, we just discussed getting married and talked about wedding plans. I went out and bought my own ring. Reg was absent. I still have the ring, it’s a garnet, which is my birthstone, with diamonds around it.”
Then Elton’s moods darkened. Linda says: “He’d be silent and moody. I didn’t have a clue he was struggling with his sexuality. A few weeks before Reg left, Bernie and I found him lying with his head in the gas oven with the window wide open. At the time he said it was because his music career wasn’t taking off as quickly as he hoped. He was in one of his big depressions.”
But the couple forged ahead with their wedding plans. Linda says: “The register office was booked. And his mum had ordered the cake. We weren’t planning a huge affair. It was going to be family, a few close friends.”
But after Elton’s 4am bombshell the wedding was off and all contact was severed. Linda says: “Reg and I have never been in communication since he woke me up to say he was leaving.
“His stepfather arrived with a truck and moved him out. I read somewhere that Elton paid me off. I’ve never received a dime from him. If we’d married, maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here in Dallas, still working as a doctors’ office manager at 75.”
Nine months after they split Linda wed James Bowens, but admits: “I was still in love with Reg. We weren’t married long.”
She then met Tony, father of her three sons James, Oliver and Alex. While pregnant with James, Linda contacted Elton’s management to ask if he would be godfather. She says: “The message came back that he was out of the country and could not do it and that was the end of that.”
After splitting from Tony she met William Hannon, who was in the US military, and moved to America. But they split too. Linda is still a fan of Elton’s music and saw him in concert for the first time nine years ago. She says: “I tried to contact Reg’s people through the stadium and through the local press but I never heard a thing. I choked up a bit when I saw him walk on stage. It was hard to imagine the Reg I knew as the man up there in the arena.”
Linda says she will go and see Rocketman, which hits UK cinemas on May 24. But she says: “No one from the film production company has been in touch with me.
“Maybe I’ve been forgotten or written out of Reg’s life. I have no bitterness now and his biographer told me Reg regretted the way he’d dumped me. It was such a long time ago and I prefer to think of the happy memories.
“I never imagined he’d be as popular as he is. But to me he’ll always be just Reg.”