There was no disbelief. It was just there. Dad was dead
In the final extracts from his new book, Jenson Button recounts the mystery of his beloved father’s death, and how his grief was almost compounded by fear of losing a leg
There is a restaurant in Santa Monica that I have to pass in order to reach a bike shop I use. I can hardly bring myself to look at that restaurant. I don’t like to think of the last time I was in there. It was January 2014 and I was in that restaurant having lunch: me, my physio Mikey Collier, Chrissy Buncombe and a Japanese friend of ours, Yu.
Mikey’s phone rang, he took the call and it was impossible not to notice the change that came over him. Other conversation died and I leaned towards him, looking at him, like, What? What’s wrong?
“JB,” Mikey said, “it’s Richard on the phone. We need to talk outside. He has something to tell you.”
Mikey and I stepped out to the sidewalk where I leaned against a windowsill and he handed me the phone. “Jenson, I’m so sorry,” said Richard. “It’s about your dad.”
Richard Goddard, my manager, and Dad had been out for dinner the night before. After their meal, they stopped for a nightcap at La Rascasse, a bar the mechanics love to visit during grand prix weekend.
While in the bar, Richard took a call, and he stepped outside to deal with it. By the time he had returned to the bar, Dad was gone. This wasn’t particularly unusual. Dad’s diabetes meant that he tended to get tired quickly. It was perfectly normal for him to just leave like that. However, when Richard rang to check on him the next morning, he couldn’t get hold of him.
One of Dad’s favourite jaunts was to take his Ferrari down to Italy for the day and meet up with friends for coffee. He’s probably done that – silly old sod’s probably left his phone in the car, thought Richard.
The alarm bells came later. Richard became more concerned with each unanswered call, and so at about 7pm, he set off for Dad’s house.
The house was built on the side of a cliff, and to get to it you had to enter through a front gate, which had been reinforced after a burglary attempt. Once you were inside, there were about 60 steps up to the front door, which was quite a climb. When Richard arrived, he found Dad’s keys on the outside in the gate, which was odd.
Richard was remembering the break-in attempts and, deciding he’d better check to make sure everything was OK, he let himself in and began the climb to the front door.
He found Dad’s body on the steps. There was blood and, at first, Richard thought that he might have tangled with burglars. Subsequently, we’d discover that wasn’t the case, but there was a lot of initial confusion, and after Richard’s wife, Caroline – who’s half-french – alerted the authorities, Richard himself became a suspect; he had to call a lawyer and they wouldn’t let him phone me.
In the end, he told them: “Listen, I’m going to call my mate to tell him what’s happened. You’ll have to arrest me if you want to stop me.” And that’s when Mikey’s phone rang.
There was no delayed reaction; it hit me straight away. I put that down to my job, the way I lived, something about the ability to absorb a sudden and shocking turn of events, being able to quickly process matters of emotional intensity. There was no period of disbelief or numbness. It was just there.
My dad was dead.
How could it have happened? The answer is that we don’t know for sure. We know that Dad returned to his car. But we think that somewhere between La Rascasse and the car he fell and hit his head. In Monaco, the escalators don’t work until you step on to them, and even then they’re not very reliable. Sometimes they don’t go at all; sometimes you’re halfway down and they suddenly shudder into action. They catch a lot of people out.
Maybe Dad, that night, was one of those caught out. Certainly when we saw CCTV from the car park, he had blood on the back of his head. There was also a little blood found on the headrest of his car.
Nevertheless, he made it to Cap d’ail, and at about 3am arrived at his house. Again, we don’t know how it happened, but what we do know is that, having let himself in, the gate shut behind him and his keys were on the other side of it. Now he had a problem. The only way to open the gate was from inside the house. But he couldn’t get into the house because his keys were outside.
There was a little granny flat halfway up the stairs, and judging by some blood on the pillow, he lay down in there for a bit. Then we think he decided to have another crack at gaining entry to the house.
Wearing his shirt, underwear and socks, he climbed the remaining steps.
Whatever the brainwave, it didn’t work, because he had turned away from the door and was returning down the steps when he slipped, fell forward and hit his head for a second time. This one proved fatal.
The days after the phone call were a blur. We returned to Monaco, joined the rest of the family, tried to keep things together as we concentrated on organising the funeral, operating in a kind of daze.
At the same time, I had a sore spot on my leg. I didn’t know how,
why and where it had first appeared, but it was like a little painful area on my knee. I didn’t think much of it. One night we had an evening out – a mad night with alcohol a catalyst for our tears – but the next morning I woke up and my leg was in agony.
I asked my mum to come up to the hotel room: looking at my leg as we spoke, I saw for the first time how swollen it was. Moments later, she was at the door. I answered it and promptly collapsed.
Somehow I’d picked up blood poisoning. They thought it was from swimming in the sea in Hawaii. I’d cut my foot and my body didn’t have the strength to fight the infection.
My mum called the rest of the family to the room. I fainted again. The next thing I knew I was being carted off to hospital and all sorts of drips were going in me. If the infection’s reached the bone, that’s bad, I was told. Like, amputation bad.
So, that was a sweaty few hours, while they ascertained whether the poisoning had indeed reached the bone. It hadn’t and I was free to leave, except I couldn’t walk because the pain was so bad.
In the end, I made it to Richard’s house, and that’s where I stayed for the next few days, sorting out funeral arrangements.
The pain was intense – like nothing I’d ever experienced, before or since; to keep it at bay I had to raise my leg above the level of my head. Showering was agony. Using the toilet, oh my God.
Even so, it didn’t take my mind off things.
I could hardly walk and yet there was no way in the world I was going to shirk my responsibilities as a pallbearer. Just you try and stop me. I gritted my teeth, expecting tremendous pain. But I suppose certain emotions take over; the body assumes control to makes sure you get through it. That same internal autopilot helped me deliver the eulogy – the hardest, most painful speech I’ve ever had to give.
Dad would have loved the fact that Prince Albert of Monaco was in the front row at his funeral. Loved it. He would have loved the fact that his funeral was at turn one of the Monaco Grand Prix; he would have been thrilled to see all the people who turned up that day.
I’m not sure about the choice of funeral vehicle, though. He always said he wanted to slide into his grave, locked up, sideways in a cloud of tyre smoke. What he got instead was a Volvo estate.
F---’s sake, Jense.