This is the story of my sister, Alison Marie Jane Hepburn, who died yesterday aged 57. She had a long and troublesome history of addiction issues and suffered a heart attack before passing a short while later at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth. By all accounts, she was made as comfortable as possible in her last hours even though she knew that the end was near. I had already started to plan the long drive down to try to say goodbye when the message came through that she had gone on her ‘awfully big adventure’. I suspect that she went out as she lived much of her life. Fighting and alone. I know that she was afraid at the end and I must console myself with the thought that nothing I could have done or said would have eased those fears for her.
I don’t believe that she deserved the life she lived. Neither did she live the life she deserved. Of course, that is based on little more than my own memories of our childhood and snippets of information that I have heard over the years. What makes this loss particularly difficult is that I hardly knew the woman that she was. I think that the last time that I actually saw her was at Carole’s funeral, almost 32 years ago. What memories I have of my sister are few and far between. Some I may have shared elsewhere on this blog, so apologies in advance for any repetition.
Alison was the toughest of us all. She would be the last one standing if we were in trouble, defiant and raging at the injustice of the punishments that we would endure. She would be the child telling our father that every smack that he delivered didn’t hurt, even when she had tears in her eyes. She was fierce and independent. I recall, way back in the mists of time, that she had an early interest in all things American (she may even have wanted to be an actress) and in some ways I think that her life displays all of the hallmarks of the fallibility of the American dream. She wanted to achieve the impossible when she was younger. In the end, she reached the stars with little to show for her time on this soggy globe save for years of heartache and poor decisions.
Legend has it that my father once caught Carole, Alison and Rachael smoking his cigarettes when they were younger. Typically, the punishment dished out was disproportionate to the crime and he purchased three packets of cigarettes (one each) and demanded that they sit in front of him and smoke them all, one at a time. Rachael bailed very early on, tobacco-induced vomiting the cause. Carole followed shortly after. Alison, in all of her reckless glory, sat there and smoked twenty cigarettes, staring my father in the eye as she crushed each one out in the nearby ashtray. Legend, I suspect, would also suggest that her defiance earned her a hiding. I sometimes wonder if that was the spark (no pun intended) that ignited her addictive personality.
If we took the time train (what do you mean it’s not a real thing?) back to 1979, you’d find us gathered in front of the television on cup final day, Alison cheering on Arsenal while I was rooting for Manchester United (this was obviously long before I saw sense and transferred my loyalties to the mighty Argyle). In the Devon-based version of the Amityville house, where Uncanny’s Danny Robins would have a field day, Arsenal had earned themselves an early 2-0 lead before United clawed their way back to parity with two late goals. Sammy McIlroy’s equaliser gave me a dose of misguided confidence long before I understood how the sporting gods worked and I confidently declared that United would now go on to win the tie even if it went to a replay, just as Alan Sunderland slid in at United’s back post to bury a winner for the Gunners. Sure enough, Alison bit back and I completely deserved her joyous riposte.
After leaving Teignmouth, we moved to the village of Ideford, where the only source of entertainment was the local church and graveyard, which we would regularly dare each other to run through with our father safely ensconced in the Royal Oak. Often, we were forced into gardening during the summer holidays, an activity that none of us enjoyed but were too afraid of the consequences to ever consider voicing our displeasure. One sunny afternoon, Alison hit upon a cunning plan to get herself out of the heat and back inside the house. She positioned the large fork that she was using so that it was on top of her wellington boot taking care to line up the prongs with the gaps between her toes. She confidently pushed down, breaking the rubber of the boot whereupon she began to scream theatrically, pointing at the offending gardening tool and faking injury with all of the skill of a modern day footballer. Dad rushed over to her, pulled the fork from her boot and carried her inside the house as we all dutifully followed. What Alison hadn’t considered, was that at some point Dad would check her ‘injuries’ and discover that he’d been duped. Frankly, dear reader, if you’ve been following my memoirs you’ll know what happened next and as sure as eggs is eggs, Dad made that discovery. After the inevitable beating, she was handed a fork from the cutlery drawer and spent the rest of the afternoon using it to prepare a decent-sized area of earth for potato planting.
She also had a wicked sense of humour and even though this particular memory is rather niche, it even made my Dad laugh at the time. It’s not a classic anecdote (in the words of Spike from Notting Hill), but I have very few to call on. The daily walk from Ideford to Teignmouth was at least a six-mile round trip and a particularly hilly one at that. Around the halfway mark, there was a bench where we would occasionally be permitted to rest our weary bones to gather ourselves for the last leg. This must have been around 1982, when a cover version of Rock the Boat hit the charts and as we collapsed on bench, exhausted from the walk, Alison knelt up and started to rock the whole bench back and forth, all while singing the aforementioned Forrest hit. A simple gag that would probably have raised little more than a smile outside of our family unit, but we laughed like drains for a good couple of minutes and laughter was rare during those days.
Fast forward a couple of years to my 11th birthday, which I was spending Horsham with mother. We were moving house on the same day, away from Roffey and across the town to Eversfield Road. Alison handed me a card that contained 50p (which research tells me would be worth £2.09 today) and a Manchester United ring that she had bought with her own money. It’s my earliest memory of a gift, except for the bicycle that was given to me off the back of a lorry, which I’ll come to as Christmas approaches. That card and that ring meant more to me than anything else I’d been given up to that point in my life. I now possess neither item, but I wish that I still did.
I think that the older girls would all have been in care homes by this point. Alison would regularly abscond before being returned and I have many memories of hushed telephone calls and police visits in both Sussex and Devon. Alison also discovered drugs and would go on to spend the next forty years of her life battling addiction to numerous substances. Sometimes she would manage to get clean but ultimately her demons couldn’t be tamed. When Carole passed away in November 1994, she came to the funeral. We all made promises at the time that we would be unable to keep. Recalling how she looked back then, it’s a miracle that she made it to 2026. It doesn’t make it any easier knowing that we waited over forty years for the message that came yesterday. In many ways it makes it worse. There have been many rivers that have flowed under many bridges in that time, too many opportunities to try to make a difference and not enough taken. However, Alison was not an easy person to help. The damage that our traumatic childhood and her fragmented existence caused her was deeply ingrained. She was suspicious. She was manipulative and I’m sure that she did some terrible things. She was also the mother of four children and there lies an incredibly complex tale. She was complicated and broken. But she was my sister.
We had contact a few years ago, messages exchanged on Facebook for a few weeks. Before too long, it became difficult to stay in touch. A lifetime of abuse, of disappointment and of paranoia ultimately left her unable to conduct healthy relationships. I fully accept the consequences of not being strong enough to help her and that is my cross to bear. But there are others out there who failed her far more than I did. There are others, some still here and some long gone, who could and should have done more, including those who failed her as a child, who failed all of us as children. I am sad for days that never were and I am angry for a life full of fear and loneliness that replaced a life never lived. Alison, more than any of us, was a product of her environment. I wish that I had known the person that she was and the person that she should have been. Instead, I have the words on this page to scrabble around in and to try and pull together a way to mark a life that should have been filled with love and joy. If my journey has taught me one thing it is this: Be prepared to fail as a parent, but don’t ever be prepared to give up. Failure should keep us honest, hope should light the way.
I should be telling stories of family Christmases, of hope, of certainty and of love. But I have half-remembered tales of squats, of needles and a little bit of snow. Of fear and paranoia, of doubt and self-destruction. Nobody deserves a life like that, yet Alison is one of many, failed by those who could and should have done better. She lived her last few months in a hostel and her fifty seven years of life barely amount to a hill of beans. I am angry as well as sad. There should have been another way.
Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
Autumn Leaves by Nat King Cole.
Copyright Alec Hepburn 2026.
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