If this works, tell Charlotte I’m sorry

Dad’s note heartbreak for family

There can be no bigger regret than words unspoken, things left unsaid.

Few people know more about that than Lanarkshire mum Grace O’Neil and her daughter Charlotte Cassidy.

Having lost the lives of two loved ones to suicide, “what if?” will always haunt them.

Charlotte was only two years old when Grace found the body of her partner, her little girl’s daddy, lying on the couch of their home.

As well as an empty bottle of pills and a discarded bottle of cider, 28-year-old George Balner had left a note saying: “If this works, tell Charlotte I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t until after his death that Grace learned from his sister that he had previously battled mental ill health.

“Immediately after he died, I went from one stage to another,” remembers Grace, 49, who says there was no indication during their eight years together that the man she loved had been troubled.

“I cursed George. I hated him. I loved him. I had all different emotions because of what he had left me with.

“How could he have denied these kids a grandad, a papa, a dad? At times I’d think: ‘If it was me you didn’t want, you could have left me and Charlotte would still have her dad’.”

Grace, in her grief, told her toddler daughter “Daddy has gone to the angels.”

The post mortem report cited the cause of death as choking by overdose.

Throughout her early childhood, Charlotte grew up believing her daddy had become unwell and had choked. It was, Grace reflects, a half-truth. Then, when Charlotte was nine, an older cousin let slip the real reason her daddy had “gone to the angels”. He had taken his own life.

That revelation was to set Charlotte on a long and spiraling path of destruction.

Grace said: “She would tell me she wanted to die the same way that her dad had died. That was not normal for someone of her age. She hated me with a passion at one point because I had lied to her and she no longer trusted me.

“I was desperate, getting up through the night and siting by her bed, watching her, beside myself with worry. As a parent, I felt useless, hopeless. I took her to doctors, to counsellors and she’d say: ‘Why do you make me go to that place? I hate it’.”

Charlotte, whose lack of concentration at school was put down to bad behaviour, says counselling for her did not work.

“I couldn’t relate to someone in a suit, asking me questions from a book,” said Charlotte, who began self harming when she was in first year at school.

She was not alone. Her best friend, Steven McCloy, was also cutting himself, using sweat bands to hide his injuries.

A mutual friend’s mum had taken her own life and Charlotte and Steven chatted on the phone the night before the funeral, making plans to attend together.

The following day, Charlotte received the devastating news that Steven, her rock, had killed himself.

She began drinking heavily, which would prompt her to self harm more frequently.

“I was lifted by the police and they put me on suicide watch. They ripped my clothes off me with an instrument and put me in a white boiler suit,” said Charlotte, who twice went on to attempt suicide.

“I had known Steven was struggling, but I didn’t know it was bad. After our friend’s mum died, Steven asked me what I thought I would do to end it. I missed that sign.

“Looking back, I was battling the same things and did not notice the signs in Steven. I could have tried to piece it all together. I was 17 and it was a conversation I didn’t know how to have.

“If I had said how are you, are you feeling like taking your own life, maybe it could have been prevented. I did not know we both needed help.

“I was feeling so low, I felt empty, I felt nothing. When you are bleeding, you know you are alive. It makes you at least feel something.”

The next momentous event in her life would either mend a broken 17-year-old Charlotte or ruin her. She became pregnant.

“I fell in love with my wee boy from the minute I knew I was pregnant. When Tyler came along, I had something to wake up for. He was my turning point. I could sleep and eat. I had a purpose,” said Charlotte, who immediately turned her back on her old life of binge drinking and waiting in A&E to have her gashed arms stitched.

Grace gained a grandson and got her daughter back.

“If Charlotte had not fallen pregnant, one of us would not be here today,” insists Grace, of Bellshill.

“Mentally, I could not have coped with it for much longer. I had tried everything in my power to help her.”

Now a mum to Tyler, six, and the aptly named three-month-old Hope, Charlotte, now 24, has re-assessed her mum’s decision to protect her from the truth about her dad’s death.

“How do you explain to a wean how a man, a father, a parent was able to do that? How do you explain why he is no longer there? It must have been so hard for my mum, but I didn’t see it that way at the time,” admits Charlotte, who says George’s note proves that his final thoughts were of her.

“We all need to talk about how we feel. You cannot get help to get over your fears if you will not face them. You can kid on it is not a problem but it will eat away at you if you do not speak.

“It took me 20 years to speak about my dad and seven years to speak about Steven. My mum was trying to protect me, trying to do her best for me when she didn’t know what best was. It put even more stress on her. Maybe if she’d just asked me what I needed and I had just told her...”

Grace regrets not being more honest with her girl about her dad’s passing.

Having moved on to live a positive life, she and Charlotte are now passionate volunteers at Family and Friends Affected by Murder and Suicide (FAMS) – the Wishaw charity co-founded by Steven’s mum Meg McCloy, at which they encourage other people to open up and talk.

Said Grace: “Suicide is the last taboo. Years ago, you couldn’t talk about child abuse. It was brushed under the carpet. Now it’s discussed openly. That’s what needs to be done about suicide.”