What the lonely death of my alcoholic sister says about the fate of single women in Britain today: MoS columnist LIZ JONES'S sibling Clare wanted sexual liberation and a career but died alone with no money and no man after turning to drink

By Liz Jones for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 18:10 EST, 11 July 2015 | Updated: 19:11 EST, 12 July 2015

The last time I saw my sister Clare was at my mum’s wake last August. She was wearing flats as she’d not long been discharged from hospital after breaking yet another bone in a fall – this time her hip. But she seemed fine. She was carrying a Chanel handbag that I’d given her, and held it aloft as jauntily as she could, given she was also carrying a walking stick, as if to say: ‘Still not pawned it!’

But I was cross with her. The day before our mum died, I had picked Clare up from her flat so she could be at the bedside. The next day, after Mum passed away, I’d given her £80 to get a taxi home. In the taxi, she’d stashed paintings from our mum’s wall, and a lovely china bowl; I was furious that she had done this while my mum was still warm.

So things were frosty, to say the least, but as we stood around chatting in the pub after the funeral, she told me she was about to go on a date with a man, someone she’d met years before. ‘He’s the love of my life!’ she said dramatically, sunglasses nestling as always in her platinum hair (we all called her Patsy, after Joanna Lumley’s character in Ab Fab).

Three generations: A family photo taken in 1963. Back row, from left: Liz’s parents Robert and Edna and Clare’s husband Brian. Front row: Clare, ringed, son Matthew, Granny Jones, Liz’s sister Sue and Liz, ringed

But then the current man always was ‘the one’.

Clare was the eldest of seven children and about to turn 74, and despite a catalogue of disastrous boyfriends, she was commendably optimistic. ‘Well, you’d better make sure you put your teeth in,’ I snapped.

This turned out to be the last thing I would ever say to her. On Wednesday, after a friend contacted the warden at her flat to say she couldn’t get hold of her, my sister was found, cold in her bed.

She had died alone, in sheltered council housing.

On Friday, still in shock, desperate to know what killed her, but knowing deep down it must have been alcohol-related, I called the coroner’s office.

‘Your sister is currently undergoing a post-mortem. As soon as I get any results, I’ll let you know, OK?’ And that was it. No ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ I called the hospital, only to get an answerphone with the message: ‘The bereavement service closes at 4pm.’ Obviously, nobody gets upset on a Friday afternoon.

Growing up, Clare – 20 years older than me – was my beautiful, married, sorted sister. She’d fallen pregnant young, which meant my dad threw her out; this was moments before the 1960s got going, and so getting pregnant out of wedlock was a huge scandal. I remember being driven with my mum and dad to a park in Shenfield, and my dad confronting her boyfriend’s dad – I think punches were thrown.

Reunion: Liz, Clare and their mother in 2003 (left) and Clare and dalmatian Bruce in Nairobi in 1954 (right)

Clare was swiftly married, but my dad refused to go the wedding. She moved to boring Tiptree in Essex, became a housewife with two young boys, but still she refused to be ordinary. She wanted what other young women were having: excitement, sex, parties, cocktails. She bought a sports car and a mini-skirt, and even lived in Bahrain for a few years, abandoning her burgeoning small business making soft furnishings for the sake of her husband Brian’s career.

But it all started to unravel. I suspect the drinking started to spiral out of control while she was in the Middle East, an expat with little to do, her youth fading fast. I remember going to stay at her lovely house in Devon in 1990 after they returned to the UK, and when I went to bed I found something cold and hard between the sheets. Empty vodka bottles.

I said nothing – I didn’t think it was my place. I always felt Clare resented me being the baby of the family, and as we four sisters got older, she was the one who found it hardest to cope.

She spent her life on a diet (I can’t recall ever seeing her eat – I expect a lifetime on the grapefruit diet contributed to her brittle bones), and she religiously covered her grey hair with peroxide, a ritual that had never occurred to our mum.

Divorced, and drinking, her sons grown up and living abroad, the flirting with men – petrol attendant, hospital porter, brother-in-law – became more and more inappropriate. With her divorce settlement, she bought a breast reduction and a broken-down old Jaguar. Like Liz Taylor, who pretended Richard Burton had paid for her jewels, Clare told us a boyfriend had paid for the car.

She told me at my mum’s funeral that she was saving for a facelift; strange that I too had plastic surgery, which means we’re more similar than I’d like to think, although her chaotic lifestyle turned me off men completely. I didn’t want to end up like her. What good were all these men, anyway, when ultimately she died alone?

As she reached her 70s, Clare increasingly lived in a fantasy world to make up for her increasingly harsh reality. Her middle name was Olive, after our aunt, but she changed it to the more exotic Olivia, which pretty much summed her up. She didn’t want to be the ageing daughter of a provincial couple from Essex. She wanted yachts and villas.

She even wanted her sons to be better men than they were. She phoned me once to say that her youngest, David, was now the manager of U2. Blimey, I said. That’s amazing! When I spoke to him, it turned out he was the manager of Zoo 2, a tribute act. Ah.

She didn’t own a car, even though when I was young she used to pick me up in a Porsche, so I’ve no idea how she managed to buy groceries; to my shame, I never asked. I would merely drive at speed past the exit for Watford every week, feeling guilty, but unable to visit her. She depressed me.

I hadn’t even sent her a ‘save the date’ card for my wedding, as I couldn’t cope with her turning up drunk. I was worried Clare would embarrass me, would dribble drink down her front, lose a shoe, or flirt with the groom.

And while I tried to help Clare get sober, paying for her to stay in a clinic in Switzerland, the drinking later accelerated, and I ran out of patience.

She would always say she was on the wagon, but a sniff of the water bottle she carried with her proved otherwise. I knew she desperately wanted to stay with me when I moved to Yorkshire, as she too loved horses and dogs, but I didn’t want empty bottles in the spare bed, for her to fall over, or worse. Which was a shame, as she could be hilarious.

I once invited her to Henley to hear me give a talk, and she regaled my friends with what it was like growing up in Kenya, where my dad was posted in the 1950s.

She told them how my dad had bought her a racehorse, but the animal was so uncontrollable, they had to take it back. In that way, she was just like me: loving beautiful things, but unable to quite live up to them.

She told my friends about Bruce, her dalmatian, blissfully unaware how racist she sounded. ‘Oh, Bruce was wonderful,’ she said, bangles glittering. ‘He never let a black face near me.’ What happened to Clare last week – dying alone, with no money, and no man despite having had a string of them – is a modern-day morality tale about how close we are to disaster.

Clare’s only fault was to have been born at the wrong time. She wanted sexual liberation and a career, but probably would have been happier with a loving, faithful man who would adore her and look after her.

She and Brian, a good-looking couple, both had liaisons; it was what you did. Clare spent beyond her means, as I do. She had aspirations of a better life, as I do: it will happen, things will turn out all right one day, if only I’m in the right place at the right time, and have my lippy on. A bad marriage, too many drinks and an expensive car is all it took to tip her (and me, probably!) into a lonely abyss.

Even having lots of grandchildren didn’t make her less lonely: she wasn’t a hands-on, rotund and nurturing type, and anyway, grandchildren made her feel old.

The trouble is that Clare always thought a man would come along and save her, hence saving for the facelift, the designer handbag.

The trouble is, that’s a big gamble to take. In the end, she lived in a fantasy world, which in a way was a blessing, a coping mechanism so she couldn’t see how far someone so lovely had fallen.

Clare was, I think, a little envious of my so-called fame and even my car (‘I’m a Mercedes lady,’ she’d said when I picked her up that day, and she’d struggled to get in). Clare would have loved to see the photo of her and her beloved Bruce, taken in Nairobi in 1954, in a national newspaper. It’s somehow fitting that everyone can see how pretty she was, and how happy.

It’s ironic that the only time she made the front page when she was alive was in the early 1970s – her local paper published a picture of Clare, a blonde with huge blue eyes, and her best friend, a brunette, outside their pub, The Cherry Tree. There they were, the local dolly birds, enjoying a drink in the sunshine. She had a loving family, a house, her looks. Her whole life ahead of her.

Little did she know that there her future was, all along, lurking at the bottom of the glass.

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