Football star Gary Speed’s suicide left millions devastated, but no one was more broken than the woman who cut down his body and had to carry on without him.
His wife kept hearing how the football world was struggling to come to terms with the shocking loss of an apparently happy-go-lucky, 42-year-old icon who was not long into his dream job of managing his country, Wales.
Louise Speed lost the soulmate she had been with since she was 13 and the father to their two teenage boys.
At 41, she had to pick up the pieces of a world torn apart by, in her words, “sadness, heartache, a sense of abandonment and an anger”.
Mystified about why he had taken his own life, unsurprisingly Louise became extremely depressed in the aftermath of Gary’s suicide in 2011, to the point where she could not get out of bed.
In new book Gary Speed: Unspoken – The Family’s Untold Story, serialised exclusively in the Mirror this week, she reveals she turned to the bottle.
She says: “I did start to drink an awful lot. I didn’t need a drink as soon as I woke up, but I did drink virtually every evening for the first two years.
“It was always wine and I felt it helped numb the pain I was suffering. For a few hours it helped make me forget the terrible event. I was at the lowest point I could possibly reach. I couldn’t function. But I could never have done what Gary did. I could never have given up on my two sons. Which makes me think Gary must have been so ill to do what he did.”
Gary died in the November and Louise, now 48, did not go out properly until the following March, to a friend’s house party.
“I really didn’t feel right putting on a dress and going out. I was the wife of Gary Speed who had hung himself. How could you act normally? People though, generally, were very good.
“I just wanted to talk about anything but Gary. But poignantly, when we arrived at the party the first song we heard was Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds. That was mine and Gary’s song. It obviously hadn’t been arranged, it just came on. Was it a sign? To be honest it really spooked me out.”
At first she kept expecting Gary to walk in and make everything normal again. If the phone went or she received a text message, she thought it was him.
It was the second year after his death, when everyone who had helped her pull through got their lives back to normal, that she found the toughest.
What kept her going was focusing on her boys – Ed, now 21, and Tommy, 20.
She says: “Hearing them laugh again, having their friends around, helped so much. I’m very proud of them and how they have coped with everything. Their take on life is to take every opportunity you have and go for it.
“We talk about their dad and the things we did together, the great times we had. We don’t talk about why.”
Both Ed and Tommy inherited their dad’s instinctive love of football. Ed was capped by Wales Schools and Tommy represented the Independent Schools FA at Under-16 and Under-18 level. Tommy was also a decent boxer and became a junior English champion.
Both moved to America when Neil Roberts, a former Wales international and good friend of their dad, asked them over there to study and play football.
Ed went to Herkimer College in New York State and is now studying in Boston. Tommy got into Adelphi University on Long Island, and is in his second year.
Louise says: “Ed would eventually love to go into football, whether it’s coaching or playing. Tommy, who is doing a business degree, is more open-minded. Football is not the be-all and end-all for him.
“The main thing is they are both enjoying life out there. You never know, one day we might be seeing one of them playing in Major League Soccer. There’s a new club starting up in Miami with David Beckham. That would be nice.”
Louise says it was not hard seeing them move 3,000 miles away from home because she wanted them to assume some normality. When they return to Cheshire on holiday she always feels there’s a part of Gary back in their house.
She says: “I wish he was here now to see how well they’ve done. He would be very proud of them.
“He has missed out on so much of their lives. We’ve missed out on him and gone through so much pain.
“It’s something Gary obviously didn’t think of at the time. The rippling effects of what he did have devastated so many people. But you have to move on.
“You can’t stay trapped in the barbed wire. You have to box it away to move forward, although you never truly do. It’s always there. A big scar inside you that will never disappear. It’s tough. We had a lovely life.”
Louise finally feels in “a good place” and co-operating with this book has been cathartic.
She says: “After it happened I woke up thinking I don’t want to be me today. I don’t want to carry on.
“But I’ve got myself to a place of stability. I’ve got to find my niche now. I’ve got another good 10 to 20 years or more in me, hopefully, and I look to the future with optimism.
“One of Gary’s great sayings was, ‘You can’t move forward while you’re looking back’. I still use it now. Because there is no going back.”
Gary Speed: Unspoken – The Family’s Untold Story, by John Richardson and published by Sport Media, is on sale from Thursday, September 20 priced £18.99.
Louise Speed is not receiving any proceeds from the book. At her request, we are making a donation to the Heads Together campaign.
- If you need to speak to anyone you can call the Samaritans, 24/7, on 116 123.
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