Tina Malone's heartbreaking final texts from husband Paul revealed as he begs her 'forgive me'
These are the last text messages Tina Malone ever received from her husband Paul – and when she reads them the tears fall again.
“Tina, you gave me everything. I love you unconditionally. You made my life perfect throughout the chaos. Forgive me,” wrote the 41-year-old former soldier. Hours after sending them Paul died by his own hand leaving Tina and their 10-year-old daughter Flame devastated.
“The texts were sent at about 4am but I have an old phone and they didn’t come through straight away. When they finally arrived the police were already at my house breaking the news that he’d gone,” says the Shameless star of that terrible day in March.
But even as officers were knocking on the door of the Liverpool home she shared with Paul, nicknamed “Chevy” by army pals thanks to his surname Chase, the 61-year-old actress knew something was terribly wrong.
“Paul hadn’t come home the previous night. There are woods opposite the house and as I was leaving to take Flame to school I heard sirens and saw flashing blue lights and I knew. I just knew.
“I got home and then there was a knock. When I opened the door the police were there. I said, ‘It’s Paul isn’t it?’ We’d been through hell in the 12 months before he died. He had felt so lost, so useless. He couldn’t fight any more.”
We meet in a hotel room in her native city, the bright spring sunshine pouring in through large windows and contrasting sharply with Tina’s still-raw grief. This is the first time she has spoken about the suicide of her “honest, caring, kind” life partner.
A soldier with the Cheshire Regiment, Paul served his country across the world for a decade, including brutal tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. It was witnessing the horrors of war which, Tina believes, caused his PTSD – diagnosed three years ago – and which led him to spiral into anxiety and depression and seek solace in drink and drugs.
“When he got drunk he would ramble about the army and I would tell him, ‘You have depression, you have emotional issues because of what you’ve seen,’ but he would sweep it away. He’d say, ‘How will I get a job if I have that?’ But this is a man who served his country and saved lives. He admitted it in the end but by then things had gone too far. He couldn’t find a way back.”
She is determined his death will not be in vain, though. “We have to talk more about suicide – that’s why I am speaking out now,” says Tina who, as we chat, tenderly touches a gold necklace adorned with her initial and bought for her by Paul.
“It is the biggest cause of death in men under the age of 50 but there is still a stigma around it; there’s not enough support. We hear endlessly about mental health, about getting people talking, but what are we actually doing to help people like Paul?
“The only way I can get through this is by fighting. Fighting for change and addressing the issues facing veterans and soldiers and trying to help others.”
While tears and sadness are never far away, Tina still lights up when she remembers the man she met at a fitness boot camp in 2009. “It wasn’t love at first sight – I hated him!” she recalls.
“He was a personal trainer and he’d knock on my door in this building in the Peak District and go, ‘Right – you’ve got 15 minutes to get downstairs. You’re late.’ I thought, ‘Hang on, I’m being paid to be here. If I don’t want to go white water rafting I don’t have to!’ He got on my nerves so much that after three days I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m going home.’”
But, persuaded to stay on, the relationship began to thaw. The final day saw them paired together on an eight-hour walk.
“He was teasing me with Jelly Babies. There was me – no lashes on, sweating, looking like nothing on Earth, but we talked and talked. We chatted about his army service, particularly Iraq. He didn’t know who I was, didn’t know I’d just come out of Celebrity Big Brother. We just got on.”
At an end-of-camp event Tina, who has an older daughter Danielle, 42, from a previous relationship and is a grandmother to Dorothy, seven, spotted him dancing and knew she may have found someone special.
“I love a man who can move so that was it. We texted a few times and went on a date, spending the weekend in Liverpool. Thirteen days later he moved in with me.”
The relationship raised eyebrows because of their 21-year age gap. Tina herself pulled no punches in briefing Paul about what to expect from a life with her.
“I told him, ‘I am morbidly and clinically obese and bipolar. I’m self-obsessed, self-absorbed, opinionated, loud and brassy. If I want to make a lemon drizzle cake and watch The Sopranos at 3am in the morning, I’m going to do it. I’m unconventional, I’m eccentric, strong and emotional.’
“He just looked at me and said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’”
They married in a lavish ceremony in Manchester with 600 guests, Tina in an Italian silk dress surrounded by thousands of roses. “We travelled all over the world. We swam with sharks in Hawaii, we partied with the craziest people in LA. We had the most wonderful time and we were inseparable.”
The arrival of Flame as a result of IVF treatment was the cherry on the cake of their gilded life. “The doctor said, ‘You’re 49, obese, have had drink and drug issues and work an 80-hour week. I’m not sure it’s advisable to have a baby.
“And when he said to Paul, ‘You do know this treatment will make her emotional, screaming, crying, highly strung – everything will be about her,’ he just shrugged and said, ‘No change there then’!”
Tina, who as a devout Catholic has found great comfort in her faith in the weeks since Paul died, remembers him being an “incredible” dad from the moment she gave birth to Flame at the age of 50.
“He was hands-on. He bathed her, fed her and made her scream laughing. Yes, there were times when, if I was away, he’d send her to ballet class in her gym kit – that’s blokes for you – but the older she got the closer they grew. He was fun. He’d let her ride her bike down the hill without me knowing, sneak her out to McDonald’s. They’d climb trees in the woods opposite our home together. And they both loved to draw and paint.”
But the happy, carefree days of those early years didn’t last as the demons Paul tried so hard to fight slowly began to take over. Tina says she became aware early on that the things he had witnessed in combat had impacted his mental health but, in her words, soldiers are “men’s men and don’t talk about it”.
“He concealed his PTSD but imagine if you’ve been at war and you can’t count how many people you killed. How is that doable? How do you come back from that? He loved the army but it left him scarred.”
Tina too has not been without challenges in her life. The former Brookside star – she played Mo McGee in the Channel 4 soap – has spoken in the past about her battle with alcohol although has now been sober for more than two decades.
In 2017 she was arrested and cautioned for possession of cocaine while performing at a pantomime. Tina has always maintained the drugs were planted in her bag and said the arrest was a set-up.
The following year she was handed an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay £10,000 in court costs after admitting contempt of court for posting a picture purporting to relate to one of the killers of James Bulger.
And she herself has been open about her own battle with depression. Coupled with illness in 2020 – she was in hospital for weeks with a clot on her lung – as well as financial worries, she says the last three years have been “very hard” as Paul’s mental health began to decline.
Work dried up for him – he had been helping troubled teens as part of a community care programme – and his self-worth spiralled. The pair separated briefly but were reunited – “The love was always still there” – but without work and without hope Paul reached rock bottom and made attempts to take his own life.
He was admitted into psychiatric care in a Liverpool hospital but Tina says bed pressures meant he was moved out into a mental health facility in the community where the staff were “lovely” but also under pressure. He also received specialist help for veterans battling addiction and ended up working with The Block, a community interest company, which provides support for armed forces veterans.
“They do a brilliant job although they get no funding,” explains Tina. “But if Paul felt he was getting angry or he was crying, that’s where he could go. He would come home each night but that was his safe place.”
As much as a haven as it was, though, his destructive behaviour would always flare, causing rows between the couple.
“The day before he died we picked Flame up from a school trip but once home we had an argument about money. He thought he was a drain on me, he said he was no good for me. It was awful.” By the following afternoon, things had settled – “We’d made up.”
Later that day Paul left the house. One of his last acts was to make a meal for his beloved daughter. “Then he kissed me, said, ‘See you later,’ and went out. Hours later he was dead.”
His last text makes for heartbreaking reading. “Tina, my amazing wife you have me everything, the most amazing woman I’ve ever met, I love you unconditionally you gave us our beautiful daughter … I love you Flame more than you’ll ever know.
“I am sorry I left you, you lit up my life every time I saw you. I’m sorry. Tina, please forgive me and one day when you are up here with me we will meet again. Xxx
“I love you Tina, I will visit you when I find a way. I am sorry my love, you made my life perfect, throughout the chaos. Xxx
“I will come and visit you and Flame in spirit. Please forgive me xxx.”
His funeral was attended by many of his former army colleagues, some of whom acted as pallbearers. His military dress hat was placed on the flag-draped coffin and the Last Post played. Two months on, Tina says that she still talks to Paul every day.
“I feel him all around me; he’s with me everywhere. His toothbrush is still in the bathroom, his gym bag is in the hall and his coats are still hanging up. I washed and ironed his clothes and put them away.
“I was honest from the outset with Flame about what happened. I didn’t want there to be any mystery about how he died – if you keep things from kids it just makes them more curious. And she tells me she has seen him both in her room and in the woods where he waved at her. It might be her way of coping but it’s a comfort.
“I’m not ashamed of what Paul did. I will always be proud of the man I married but I am worried about the stigma around suicide. I don’t want Flame to be defined as the daughter of a man who took his own life but the daughter of a wonderful dad and a man who served his country. That’s what we have to address,” says Tina.
“I wish to God he’d not gone because I need him so badly and I miss him so much and yes, I am angry but not with him. I’m angry at the lack of support out there for veterans – for anybody – dealing with mental health issues. We have structures and signposts in place for all sorts – if you have cancer or if you have alcoholism you know where to go. Even if you have a broken leg you go to hospital and get it fixed but it’s not like that with mental health.”
Tina has nothing but praise for her local community. From Father Tim at her church, St Mary’s in Woolton, to Mrs Wilson and Mrs Reagan from Flame’s school. Staff at The Block and of course Paul’s army regiment and comrades – many of whom attended his funeral – who have rallied round. But she is acutely aware that Paul’s troubled experience as a veteran is replicated many times over.
“One of his army friends said to me, ‘The thing about the British Army is they are incredible at teaching you how to be a soldier but they don’t teach you how to be a civilian.’ You’ve risked your life, you’ve seen the most horrendous things and then you have to try to reintegrate, build a life and perhaps your own business just like that. I find it astonishing there isn’t more help.”
Now Tina is ready to launch Paul’s Flame, a charitable foundation in his memory to help the most disadvantaged in our society.
“I don’t want to raise money for a retreat or a youth club or a building with bean bags and snooker tables. I want to build a charity to shine a light on people in poverty and in crisis who need hard cash. The single mum who needs a new washing machine, the man holding down two jobs and the exhaust on his car goes and he can’t get to work, someone who has come out of the army and needs a microwave for his flat.
“I saw for myself when Paul died how a community came together and I want to harness that to help others. I am looking to help people have a brighter, better future.”
Tina plans to go live with the charity on 28 May – what would have been Paul’s 42nd birthday. What would he think of the idea?
“He’d be extremely proud,” she smiles. "We could go forever talking about who failed him. Me, the army, society – we can all pass the buck but that’s not what it has to be about now. It has to be about positivity and change and helping people on the ground.”
“I don’t think I will ever stop crying and I will never ever love or be loved like that again,” adds Tina. “But we had more in 15 years than some people get in a lifetime together. I cling on to that.”
To get involved with Paul’s Flame contact Tina on X @TinaMalone23
If you need help with any of the issues raised, please contact Samaritans on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org, contact National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK on 0800 689 5652, SANEline on 0300 304 7000 or CALM on 0800 58 58 58
Photographer: Tim Merry, stylist: Charlotte Burton, make-up: Charlotte Sharples, video: Imade Osagiede
