Had she paused to reflect on the way her life was going a year ago, Clare might have judged herself to be very happy indeed

Had she paused to reflect on the way her life was going a year ago, Clare might have judged herself to be very happy indeed. Christmas lay just around the corner, one of the vibrant 49-year-old’s favourite times of year, and there was the birth of her first grandchild to celebrate.

Not that she looked old enough to be a grandmother. The effervescent blonde and four-times-married mother-of-three was still in her prime, revelling in a bustling social life, which included polo matches and horse-racing, and indulging in Mediterranean beach holidays with her husband where she showed off her enviably girlish figure in colourful bikinis.

Then there was the cosy boutique hotel she owned in the south of England where she loved to entertain guests with delicious home cooking and endless chat.

All of this, however, was before she was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2014 and her life began unravelling at breakneck speed.

Refusing to undergo chemotherapy — in case it affected her appearance in her beloved bikinis — she underwent surgery in January and radiotherapy in March, but refused to take other medication in case it made her fat.

By the time summer arrived this year, the stress of her illness had caused her marriage to fall apart and her business to collapse.

In September, she washed down 60 paracetamol tablets with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne — not quite enough to kill her, but enough to seriously damage her liver and kidneys.

She was admitted to King’s College Hospital in London for specialist care and initially agreed to undergo kidney dialysis to treat the overdose.

Although her recovery was taking longer than expected, doctors reassured her that her prognosis was good. If she wanted it, she could have a second chance. A future awaited her.

But last weekend, Clare’s life ebbed away in her hospital bed. Just days before, an extraordinary court case saw doctors try to force her to accept the medical treatment which would have saved her life and in all likelihood restore her to perfect health.

They argued that she had a ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ which was distorting her judgment. But Clare, who turned 50 in January, insisted she was fully aware of the consequences of refusing treatment.

It was a profoundly complex case, heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London two weeks ago, and it raised important moral questions.

Clare refused medical help and wanted to die, the court was told, not because she had no hope of getting better, but because she didn’t want to ‘live in a council flat, be poor or be ugly’.

At the heart of the evidence heard by Mr Justice MacDonald was the issue of whether or not Clare had the ‘mental capacity’ to refuse treatment. Was she, the judge had to decide, incapable of making up her own mind, or was she simply a stubborn ‘bloody-minded’ woman fully aware that she would die as a result of her ‘unwise decision’?

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust sent three psychiatrists to examine Clare in a bid to answer this troubling question.

On November 5, one of them recorded a conversation with Clare, noting that: ‘C states that she remains adamant that she does not wish to continue with dialysis treatment... She states she knows she will die as a result of not having it. She believes herself to have the capacity to make this decision.’

Another doctor concluded that Clare was suffering from a ‘narcissistic personality disorder which constituted an impairment or disturbance in the functioning of her mind’.

A third psychiatrist who examined Clare said that in his view she was suffering from ‘an underlying histrionic personality disorder’.

All of them observed she was frustrated that her recovery was taking so long and had become ‘petulant’.

Mr Justice MacDonald, however, decided that Clare had, in fact, weighed up all the facts in her case and reached a ‘clear and reasoned decision’. Reluctantly ruling in the woman’s favour, he admitted that his judgment ‘will alarm and possibly horrify many’.

But the decision to die was hers to make, he said, quoting from John Stuart Mill’s 1859 treatise On Liberty: ‘Over his or her own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.’

Yet the cold legal arguments heard in the courtroom barely scratch the surface of this utterly tragic story.

In court, Clare — not her real name because she cannot be identified for legal reasons — was painted as a shallow hedonist. She was described as a reckless spender, an excessive drinker who led a life ‘characterised by impulsive and self-centred decision-making without guilt or regret’.

Worst of all, perhaps, she was described as an ‘entirely reluctant’ and ‘completely indifferent mother’ – an appalling epitaph for any woman to be given.

For those who knew Clare and who are still struggling to understand how she could have chosen death over treatment, such descriptions do not sit comfortably with their memory of this vivacious, happy-go-lucky woman.

‘She had a zest for life,’ said one 48-year-old neighbour. ‘She was full of life. She really had lots of energy. She was fun-loving, chirpy and spirited. It’s so sad what has happened and it’s such a shame on her family.’

Guests staying at her beautifully decorated home filled with the second-hand furniture she skilfully restored, speak of Clare’s ‘magnetic energy’ and the warm welcome they received from her and her husband.

She was ‘charming and affable’ they say; she ‘thrived on looking after people’ and was at her happiest in the kitchen baking for friends and family. When it came to helping others, nothing was too much trouble.

Friends also recall how happy she appeared after becoming a grandmother. Photographs taken less than a year ago show her cradling her eldest daughter’s newborn child in her arms, smiling joyfully at the camera.

Others show her on holiday in Greece with her fourth husband, gazing at him adoringly; larking around in front of a yacht; laughing with friends at an idyllic country wedding; enjoying polo matches; posing by a vintage car; and at the allotment she and her husband shared, the produce of which she used in her home-cooking. Above all, she always looks happy.

So how on earth did this vibrant, feisty woman, with seemingly everything to live for, decide so quickly that her life wasn’t worth living any more?

The speed with which this happiness ebbed away is what truly disturbs here. It raises far-reaching questions about the ephemeral nature of happiness and the fragility of a materialistic, money-oriented existence.

In court, much mention was made of this — how Clare had built a life of fun and possessions, and how, when she saw everything slipping from her grasp like sand, the whole edifice quickly crumbled.

This is certainly something that resonates with her first husband — father of her first two children — who knew Clare when she was in her 20s and working as a nanny to a wealthy family. ‘She wasn’t very good with money,’ he says. ‘I never had any money. She would spend money we hadn’t got.

‘It was mainly things like trying to put the girls through private school. By the time we lived together it was a negative equity thing, where the mortgage rate was 15 per cent.

‘I was getting paid £1,000 a month and the mortgage was £940. So I’ve got £60 — it was as tight as that. And she was off seeing private schools for the girls.’

She may have been financially inept, but her determination to give her daughters a good education partly contradicts the image painted of her in court as a feckless mother.

Clare’s aspirations took her onwards and upwards. By the time she walked out on her second marriage, she was a mother of three.

When her second marriage failed, her daughters remained living with their stepfather while Clare moved on with her next lover.

This, no doubt, is what led to the descriptions in court of her being an ‘indifferent’ mother. Her first husband admits that Clare’s relationship with her daughters at that point broke down.

‘The girls didn’t like her and didn’t speak to her for years,’ he says.

But, more recently, they had been reconciled — as the photographs of Clare cradling her grandchild show all too well.

‘She had a better relationship with her children in recent years,’ says a friend. In an online tribute posted after her mother’s death, her eldest daughter, a mother-of-one in her 20s, described Clare as ‘the life, soul and sparkle of any party’.

The effervescent blonde and four-times-married mother-of-three was still in her prime, revelling in a bustling social life, which included polo matches and horse-racing, and indulging in Mediterranean beach holidays with her husband where she showed off her enviably girlish figure in colourful bikinis

Generously, given her undoubted selfishness, they learned to accept their mother’s limitations and reluctantly supported her decision to refuse treatment and effectively end her life.

‘My mother would never have wanted to live at all costs,’ her middle daughter, who is also in her 20s, told the court.

‘Put bluntly, her life has always revolved around her looks, men, material possessions and “living the high life”. She understands that other people have failed relationships, feel sad and continue living, but for her, as she has said, she doesn’t want to “live in a council flat, be poor or be ugly”, which she equates with being old.’

And Clare gave glimpses of these feelings in deeply moving conversations she had with doctors last month, in the last weeks of her life. At that point, she was bed-bound and in pain with a treatment line in her neck, still in recovery from the overdose.

She told one: ‘I know that I could get better. I know that I could live without a health problem. But I don’t want it. I’ve lost my home. I’d lost everything I’d worked for. I’ve had a good innings. It’s what I have achieved.

‘Everything is ifs and ands and pots and pans. My quality of life won’t be what I want.’

In the end, Clare was unable to believe she would ever find her way back to the fun-filled, hedonistic life she had so recently enjoyed.

‘I can’t go on like this for months and months and for ever,’ she told doctors.

And on another occasion, as medics desperately tried to reason with her, to persuade her that she had everything to live for, she told them: ‘No, I am not going to have weeks of this. I am at peace with myself.’

She would also tell her daughter that she had botched the suicide attempt. In her words, she had ‘royally cocked it up’.

For many, her death last weekend, just days after dialysis treatment was halted, comes as the disturbing conclusion to this suicide bid, as if the court gave her permission to finish what she started when she took the paracetamol overdose on a South Coast beach in September.

And once Clare had made up her mind, there was no changing it. In court, the judge spoke of her ‘bloody-mindedness’.

Her first husband recalls just how ‘strong-willed’ she was. ‘I could understand her refusing treatment,’ he says. ‘Once she’s made up her mind and it’s something she’s going to do, that’s it.’

A friend who has known Clare for 30 years says that her decision to end her life has nevertheless come as a ‘huge shock’ to everyone.

‘She liked her parties, she liked the champagne and she liked the glamour,’ he says.

‘I always thought she was a survivor as she was such a tough cookie, but her decision has come as a huge shock to her friends.

‘I know her most recent former husband and he is not taking things well. I don’t think her family were happy about her decision.’

Given her zest for life and the warmth that radiated from her, the tragedy is that Clare could find nothing to keep her here — not family, not friends, indeed none of her relationships.

For the husband and daughters she leaves behind, the manner of her death is heartbreaking.

She told them that she wanted to ‘go out with a bang’ before old age spoiled things for her.

But who knows what the future might have held if she’d just been prepared to give it a chance?

Additional reporting: Tom Witherow