Lesley Pearce: Decades of drama (From Dudley News)

Lesley Pearce: Decades of drama

6:50am Saturday 30th January 2010

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SHE'S had more drama in her life than most of the heroines in her books - early years in an orphanage, London life as a bunny girl, three marriages, bankruptcy, a close shave in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand, to name but a few.

It's safe to say that best-selling author Lesley Pearse, whose romantic 'triumph over adversity' sagas have earned her a place in the top 100 best-selling authors of the decade, doesn't do dull.

Today, she is single and lives alone in a cottage in a pretty village between Bristol and Bath where she pens her novels, including Trust Me, Remember Me, Till We Meet Again and her latest, Stolen. Over the years she's covered topics as diverse as the pain of first love, child abuse, fear, poverty and revenge - and readily admits her own life has been a rich source of material for her books.

Stolen begins with the discovery of a young woman washed up on the beach at Brighton with amnesia who is recognised in the papers by an old friend. Ultimately it's a tale about friendship as the two, who met on a cruise ship, resolve past differences.

Pearse, 64, says the idea was spawned during a very boring cruise around South America several years ago.

"It was the most boring thing I've ever done in my life - it was very posh and the towns we stopped at were very boring. I started thinking about what could happen to people who worked on a ship."

So she gatecrashed some of the staff parties, which was far more fun, she enthuses. The people she met and the towns she visited sparked the idea for something more dramatic.

"Ushuaia (in Argentina) seemed to me a good place to stage a rape," she reflects. Drama is clearly never far from her mind.

The most idyllic settings have been the backdrop for some horrendous experiences in her own life, including being caught up in the 2004 Asian tsunami while on holiday in Thailand with two of her daughters and her grandson, Brandon.

"On Christmas Day the girls were desperate to go on a coach to this party near Phuket so I agreed to look after Brandon, who was then six. I went out into the jungle with a friend and in the afternoon someone came up and told us there had been an earthquake in Phuket.

"We all laughed because it sounded so ridiculous. When I returned to the hotel, all these Thai staff were crying. The television news wasn't working in English so I was seeing all these waves and was absolutely panic stricken.

"I knew the girls were going to Phuket but didn't know where they were staying and they weren't responding to my phone calls or text messages. I didn't know if we weren't getting through because their phones were at the bottom of the sea."

Two days later the girls made contact. "It was the longest two days of my life," Lesley recalls. "They didn't realise the magnitude of it."

The incident has brought the family closer than ever, she reflects.

"It made me realise how precious my daughters are," she says. She speaks to them most days on the phone and sees them as often as she can.

Pearse, whose mother died when she was three, spent her early years in an orphanage until her father, a royal marine, remarried and she was brought home.

"My stepmother had been a nurse in the army so the house was run like a military campaign. She had a foster child called Selina, who she adopted when she married. There was my brother Michael and then they had Paul and then my stepmum would foster children as well, so there were always loads of kids around which sounds good fun but wasn't. We were all fairly dysfunctional."

At 16, Lesley headed for the bright lights and spent the Swinging Sixties in London doing various jobs including time as a bunny girl.

"A girlfriend of mine wanted the job so I went along with her but then they picked me, because I'm tall with long legs and big boobs and just looked the part.

"By the time I got there, the heyday of the club was already over. Omar Sharif and Michael Caine weren't there, it was more northern businessmen. I worked eight-hour shifts in high heels and there was no hanky-panky."

Her first marriage lasted 18 months. "I don't talk about that much because it's so boring," she laughs.

But her next marriage to John Pritchard, a trumpet player in a rock band, was much more colourful, she recalls. Together, they had a daughter, Lucy.

Her first novel, Georgia, was inspired by their life together, the London clubs and many musicians she met during that time including David Bowie and Steve Marriott of The Small Faces.

"The marriage fizzled out when Lucy was 18 months. I had to have John committed because he had mental health problems. He just couldn't cope with real life."

After their divorce, she was hitchhiking from Lancashire to Bristol for a job interview with Lucy in tow when she met her third husband, Nigel Pearse, a lorry driver with a body to die for, she laughs.

"We got to services just outside Birmingham and the guy who dropped me off directed me to Nigel. All he had on was a little pair of denim cut-offs - he was my dream come true!

"He also made me laugh and I hadn't had a lot of laughs up until that point. It was like the sun came out."

They married three years later and had two more daughters, Sammy and Jo. During this time, Lesley ran a playgroup and started writing short stories at night.

"One day I wrote a letter about the lack of contents of my fridge to Woman's Own, saying I couldn't understand why it wasn't like the adverts with the ham and the chicken, just a bit of dried up pastry and an old potato, and they paid me £25 for the star letter of the week. I thought, I can make a career out of this.

"I wrote a few more and then developed a sort of following. But when I realised I couldn't make any money out of it, I did a short story course.

"The year I turned 40 I decided to start my own business, get something published and pass my driving test."

She opened a gift shop in Bristol, passed her driving test and wrote her debut novel, Georgia. But it took six years and endless rejections before Georgia was published and it wasn't an instant best-seller.

By then, her business was heading towards bankruptcy and when the shop failed in the Nineties recession, her 18-year marriage broke up when she was 50 and she had a breakdown.

"I had all these debts which I was trying to hide from Nigel for three years, which was really why our marriage broke down."

However, they remain friends to this day. Ironically, at that point her books really started to take off.

"By the time I was 60 I was here in this idyllic cottage and everything had calmed down."

She now has one grandchild and another expected in February, more books on the cards and life is sweet - although a little drama adds to it.

"I'm writing a book about a Victorian brothel at the moment," she reveals. "It's all terribly exciting."

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