Nicola Horlick

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week has done more than perhaps anyone else to shatter the glass ceiling. She is Nicola Horlick. A mother of six children, and now stepmum to another three, her proud boast is that she's never missed a sports day or a school speech day. She says her career as one of our top investment bankers is an extension of her maternal instinct, nurturing the companies she's ploughing funds into. With apparently limitless energy, talent and ambition, she seemed to be the one woman who had managed to have it all. Until, that is, her eldest daughter Georgie was diagnosed with leukemia. For ten years she combined nursing her daughter with her highly successful career whilst also looking after the rest of her growing family. Nicola Horlick, it was during that time that you were given the nickname Superwoman in the press. I don't know if it makes you blanche or if you secretly quite enjoy it. What do you make of that title?

Nicola Horlick1:19

I I really do, Blanche, actually,'cause I I really think that somebody who has a highly paid job and has lots of help at home is not a superwoman. I've also been very lucky that my mother is relatively young. She was actually only the same age as I am now when Georgie was born, rather remarkably. So as a result, she's always been there in the background and my brother also has always been very supportive. So yeah, I've had lots of help and I really don't regard myself as a superwoman.

Presenter1:45

Um when I say they called you superwoman, the they I'm referring to, of course, is the press. And what drew you to their attention was you were heading up Morgan Grenfell Asset Management's nineteen ninety six. Something quite strange happened. Can you explain to us in as straightforward a way as possible what it was?

Nicola Horlick2:02

Yes, it was a very complicated situation in that we had a fund manager who did something rather peculiar with one of our funds, and we found that instead of the fund being worth over a billion pounds, it was suddenly worth four hundred and fifty million less. And it caused this enormous scandal, financial scandal. And I had nothing to do with any of that, but my boss was swept aside as a result, and I then got involved in a rather political nightmarish situation. And I suppose I was really very naïve. I should have just walked out when they sacked my boss, I should have said, Right, that's it, I'm going home and I'm going to wait for the phone to ring and do another job. Instead of which I tried to keep everything together and then became a victim myself of the whole situation.

Presenter2:43

And the reason that we all found out about it I mean these sort of stories, as dramatic and significant as they are, don't normally stray off the financial pages. But what happened was you I mean, did you yourself call the media in? Did you say you want to know about this because it's terrible?

Nicola Horlick2:56

No, I wasn't allowed to because I was still an employee. I was only suspended. But what happened was I th I suppose and I suppose the people at Morgan Grumfell at the time misjudged it. I think that the press took the view that here is a thirty six year old woman with uh five children, one of whom has uh leukemia, and suddenly the the front door bell started ringing and there were sky vans and film crews and radio cars and hundreds of reporters standing outside. And I was completely shell shocked. It was just so bizarre.

Presenter3:20

He's an

Presenter3:28

And you did what was characterized at the time as storm the headquarters of of the bank. You took camera crews with you. I mean, this was i there was a point at which it seemed that, you know, you thought, Well, if I'm I'm here and they're covering it, then they may as well do it on my terms. Is that fair?

Nicola Horlick3:43

Well, no, what what actually happened was that I decided that I would go and complain about this. So all these people were still camped on my doorstep and they basically just followed me wherever I went. So I got in the car and drove to the city, followed by all of these people. And I then remember feeling nervous about storming into the office. But, you know, my career potentially was going to be shattered by all of this, and I was being accused of things I hadn't done. And I felt that I had to stand up for myself, and I think most people would, actually. And I went and said, I'm sorry, I think this is disgraceful behaviour. I haven't done anything wrong. I've built you this amazing business with my team. And how dare you treat me like this?

Presenter4:23

And we haven't even touched on the six children yet. Let's first of all hear about your first choice. What have you chosen?

Nicola Horlick4:25

Yeah.

Nicola Horlick4:30

My first choice is Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens from The Sound of Music. And the reason that I've chosen this is because it was the very first film that I ever saw when I was five years old. And when I actually got there I was completely mesmerized by the whole experience of being in the cinema and watching this film. And this is my favorite.

Speaker 34:48

Nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into springs. These are a few of my favourite things. When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favourite things, and then I don't feel it.

Speaker 35:09

SOAL

Speaker 45:15

Uh

Presenter5:15

Uh

Speaker 45:15

Uh Ah

Presenter5:16

Julie Andrews singing My Favourite Things from the Sound Track to the Sound of Music. Let's go back then to your beginnings, Nicola Horlick. What was family life like?

Nicola Horlick5:25

Well, pretty normal, I would say. I had a mother and a father who very much loved each other. I was brought up in Cheshire. We lived very near a beach, so we used to spend the summer running around a white sandy beach with islands ahead of us, and when the tide was low, we would walk out to the islands. So it was quite Ina Blyton, really, I suppose. And your brother was born when you were about two and a half? Yes. And what did your dad do? My father ran a family business. So a relatively comfortable background. Yes. Did your mother work? My mother is is a qualified architect, but she never practised. In fact, actually, I hugely admire what she did, because she actually qualified as an architect and went to university after we were born.

Presenter6:03

And not surprisingly, you did pretty well in school.

Nicola Horlick6:06

Yeah, I did fine. Yeah, I I went to Oxford, so obviously I got reasonable A levels and so on. But I did double maths and history at A level and, you know, th that was reasonably okay. I did law at university, but it was okay.

Presenter6:18

Let me take you back to when you were a little younger, because you went to what was predominantly a a boys' prep school, essentially. I mean, what was the ratio of boys to girls?

Nicola Horlick6:25

It was mostly boys. They had a small number of sisters. I'm not quite sure what the rationale was for that. So I went along pretty young, actually, at the age of six. And I had a fantastic time there, so I got a first-class education. And I got to be in a very male environment, which I liked, and maybe that's why I've always been in a sort of relatively male-dominated environment, because that's what I'm used to.

Presenter6:50

Apart from the classical education, did you like the attention? I mean, presumably as a as a girl in in an environment that's mostly male, you got plenty of attention.

Nicola Horlick6:58

Yeah, probably too much because, you know, it didn't mean that we stood out as the only four or five girls in our year. And when I then went to Cheltenham Ladies' College after that school, I was one of a thousand girls, and I think maybe I found that a little bit difficult to cope with. And I hated it so much that in the end I ran away. But I did give it two years.

Presenter7:19

One what one night what jumped over the wall

Nicola Horlick7:20

What one

Nicola Horlick7:22

No, it was actually a Saturday, and we were allowed to go shopping, believe it or not, properly, on the main promenade in Cheltenham, once a term. And this was our once-a-term visit to the shops, and we were meant to go in uniform, but I took what we used to call mufty, ordinary clothes, in a bag. And literally, I was two minutes from getting on to the Liverpool train to get back home when two policemen approached me and said, Are you Nicola? and I said, No. I then threw my bag that had all my school uniform in at them, jumped over a wall and ran as fast as I could. And eventually, I fell over a kerbstone and tripped, and they leapt on top of me, dragged me back.

Presenter7:31

The freedom yeah.

Nicola Horlick8:04

And then we got to the station there was this enormous brown rover, in which was sitting Miss Hampshire, the headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies' College, and I was flung into the front seat, and I was swept away to her house to spend the night with her, and then my parents came the next day. So it was a little bit traumatic.

Presenter8:20

You really didn't like it, did you?

Nicola Horlick8:22

Uh

Presenter8:23

A picture is emerging, and not terribly gently, I mean it's slapping me right in the face of somebody who was incredibly self determined as a teenager.

Nicola Horlick8:31

Uh yes. Actually I'm one of these people who's very laid back until something upsets me and then I and then I sort of galvanize into action. So every now and then I suddenly stand up and say, This is wrong or I want something different to happen.

Nicola Horlick8:46

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Nicola Horlick8:48

As I said, I grew up on a beach and one day I cut my foot really badly on the beach and I got blood poisoning and I had a sort of dreadful shaking fit and my temper went through the roof and I was lying in my bed feeling very sorry for myself and my mother came in with this record and said, I've brought you this to cheer you up. And my favourite track on Bridge Over Troubled Water is The Boxer.

Speaker 49:09

When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy in the company Strangers In the quiet of the railway station, wasn't scared.

Speaker 49:23

They know, Seeking out the poor quarters where the ragged people go, Looking for the places only they would know.

Speaker 49:35

By the night

Presenter9:38

Simon and Garfunkel and the Boxer. As you said, Nicola Horlick, you studied at Oxford, at Balliol College, which has an interesting, again, interesting ratio of boys to girls. Was that why you chose it?

Nicola Horlick9:49

I chose it because I considered it was one of the best colleges at Oxford and I felt I had to aim high. I mean as you probably know, in nineteen seventy nine it was a year when a lot of colleges opened their doors for the first time to women. That's quite shocking if you think about it in some ways, because it took them that long. But it was a big year.

Nicola Horlick10:07

But what it meant was that in a very big college like Baylor, which had five hundred and thirty students altogether, there were only thirty women, because we were the first year. So it wasn't so much that it was a male college that attracted me to it, it was more that it was you know, I was aiming high, it was such a good college.

Presenter10:22

Interesting to me that you'd also you had in fact auditioned for Rada before you'd gone to Oxford. That that was a a real ambition, was it, at one point, to to pursue acting?

Nicola Horlick10:30

Yeah, I really wanted to be an actress and I did that at the same time as I was applying to Oxford and they said, Well, you know, why don't you go to Oxford, do lots of drama and come back? and I went to Oxford, did lots of drama and didn't go back, so who knows what would have happened.

Presenter10:42

Given that you were a teenager with a fair degree of self possession, as we've heard, were you glad to get away from home? Were you glad to be at university and to be doing things on your own terms?

Nicola Horlick10:52

Yes, I always used to dream a lot about independence when I was a child. I always used to have this dream about driving cars, for example. I think that was a symbol of independence. And I I don't think I really particularly liked being a child and having to answer to other people. And yeah, I did crave growing up and being able to make my own decisions.

Presenter11:12

And it was at university that you met your husband Tim. How did you meet?

Nicola Horlick11:16

We met. Where did we meet? Actually, we met in the street because I was walking along with one of my friends who'd been to school with Tim, and he said, Oh, this is Tim. Like to meet each other. And then, because we have this mutual friend, we saw quite a lot of each other as a result of that. And then we got married when we were 23 and had Georgie when we were 25. Let's take a break.

Presenter11:39

Break for your next piece of music, uh disc number three.

Nicola Horlick11:43

Yes, I've chosen this because it reminds me of my years at Oxford. I used to spend quite a lot of time going into the various chapels and various colleges and listening to the whole array of music that there is there. And Foray's Requiem was something that was often performed, particularly in Christchurch and New College, and P. A. Yazu is the piece that I've chosen.

Presenter13:01

Victoria de Los Angeles, singing Piezu from Forays Requiem. So after Oxford then, Nicola Horlick, you went to the city. It was Warburg's that caught your attention. Now, apart from the buildings and the salaries, to most people who have nothing directly to do with the city it can seem rather opaque. Can you describe to us what it was like in those early days working? I mean, is it actually an exciting, pulsating environment where you can almost feel the cash running through your fingers? Or in the early days, was it all rather day-to-day admin stuff that you were loaded down with?

Nicola Horlick13:34

No, a lot of it was research into companies. When you're doing investment management, which is what I do, investing money on behalf of pension funds and private individuals, you don't just say I like the look of this stock. You have to do a lot of background work and research. And we're in a very privileged situation because we can see the top management of pretty much any company that we want. And that means the chairman, the chief executive, the finance director. And I was very lucky. I was given a huge amount of responsibility very early on. I had a fantastic boss who was like, you know, the iconic fund manager in the city of his generation. So I was really lucky to get that start.

Presenter14:11

So you had married young in your early twenties. You were in what was the beginnings of a a very serious, proper job in the city, and at twenty five you had your first child, Georgia. I mean, a lot a lot of things were happening very quickly. Were you conscious of this almost impatience in your life?

Nicola Horlick14:29

I don't know really. I think it just seemed natural to me to have a baby because we'd been married for two years and it seemed like the most normal thing in the world. As it turns out, of course everybody else seemed to wait till they were much older. But you know, I loved being a m a mummy, so it was it was fine.

Presenter14:43

I mean, these of course, let's remind ourselves, were the high powered eighties. How did you manage to fit in being a mother? You had help at home, but how did you psychologically manage? I mean, a lot of women do find it very difficult. They find it almost that they have a a split life and a split personality, where they go to work and they pretend they're not a mother, and then they go home and pretend they don't have a job.

Nicola Horlick15:02

Well, I think actually you need to be able to make that division in your mind. You need to think about work when you're at work and and home when you're at home. And if you can't do that, if the two are merging together the whole time, it becomes really difficult to do it. But you know, I always kept an open mind. I was never adamant. I never said, I will go back to work come what may. I always said, well, we'll see how it goes and if it's okay and if the baby's okay and if the children are okay and if the nanny's the right nanny and if you know everybody's happy, then I will go on doing it. Otherwise I will not.

Presenter15:30

A couple of years after you had Georgie, then you had Alice, your second child, and you were by the time you were thirty, what was your position in in banking? What was your title?

Nicola Horlick15:39

When I was thirty, I was in charge of Morgan Granfeld's pension fund business and its UK private client business. How much money would that be?

Nicola Horlick15:47

Well, the reason I was employed by them was to sort out their business, which had been.

Nicola Horlick15:52

Declining at a very rapid rate, so it was at a very, very low ebb. So it was only managing about four and a half billion pounds. And it was a bit like trying to catch a falling knife. It was a horrendous experience. But I had a fantastic team of people, and the business then turned around and grew very rapidly. So it was a very exciting, actually, probably the most exciting bit of my career. You caught the knife and didn't get cut. Let's take.

Presenter16:16

Uh

Nicola Horlick16:16

Yeah.

Presenter16:16

Uh

Nicola Horlick16:16

Click there and tell me about your next Yeah, my next piece of music, Mazorski's Pictures at an Exhibition. My brother is a professional musician. He's a conductor, but he's also a very good pianist. And so this actually is very useful at family events because when you need music in a church, my brother is there to help me, A, choose the piece, and B actually

Nicola Horlick16:37

participate in producing it. So when it came to Georgie's christening, he played the organ and a friend of his played the trumpet. This is an orchestral version of it.

Presenter17:42

The opening of Mazorgsky's Pictures at an exhibition. It appeared then, aged thirty, approaching thirty, that you were having at all that terrible phrase. You had two beautiful young daughters, you had a husband, you had this extraordinary high-flying career. When did you first realise that Georgie was becoming unwell? What were the first indications?

Nicola Horlick18:03

Well, by this stage it was 1989. So actually I was 28 and Georgie was two and I just felt that she didn't look very well and she kept getting all these sort of coughs and colds and just wasn't very well. So I took her to the doctor who said it was just some unspecified virus and it was fine. And this rumbled on distorted in sort of April 1989 and we got to September and I was absolutely at my wits end. Eventually I went back to the same doctor's surgery and demanded to see the doctor and I said look at my child. She's just in a terrible state. So he said you must go and have a blood test immediately. She was absolutely white as a sheet. She could barely breathe. She could barely walk. She was in a desperate state. So we were admitted to hospital that evening.

Nicola Horlick18:50

And then she started chemotherapy pretty much the next day, had a line put in, and clearly it was absolutely devastating'cause we suddenly found ourselves with a child with leukemia.

Presenter18:59

The rates for curing childhood leukemia these days are very, very high. At the time, your worst fears, of course, would have been that she wasn't going to recover. I mean, what was rushing through your head as you had to deal with those immediate days and weeks of her being treated in hospital?

Nicola Horlick19:15

Well, I knew nothing about medicine. I don't come from a medical background, nor do any of my family. And it's remarkable how resilient people are in these situations. When you're thrown into it, your first thought is, you know, it's all doom and gloom and disaster, and you can't stop crying. And then you find an inner strength, and suddenly it's you know, almost I can feel it physically happening. I just sit up straight and think, Right, that's it, we're going to fight this and we're going to win. And I, you know, I felt this real surge of energy. And then we went forward and did do our best to fight it.

Presenter19:50

Given that Georgie was only two when she was diagnosed, what sort of sense was she able to make over those coming months and years of what was happening to her? You know, that that is an incredible change in her life from being secure at home and playing with her toys and crawling around the kitchen and bumping into the and doing all the things two-year-olds do to suddenly be uh laying in a hospital bed and have doctors constantly uh administering potions and lotions and sticking tubes in her nose and all that stuff.

Nicola Horlick20:14

Yes, and I think initially she battled uh against it. Um, you know, the medicines all tasted horrible, she had to have cannulas in her hand. But actually one thing I find quite sad about very sick children is that they become very accepting of it quite quickly and it becomes a routine for them and they just accept it. And in some ways that's really sad, that they're just accepting this.

Presenter20:34

And at the time, in those early days of dealing with this appalling situation, you had another baby, you had Serena.

Presenter20:41

Was it a difficult decision to decide to have another baby in those circumstances?

Nicola Horlick20:46

No, I think it's probably a natural thing. I mean, I don't think I would have had six children if it hadn't been for Georgie's illness. And yeah, I've talked to other mothers in Great Ormond Street who say the same thing. This sort of

Nicola Horlick20:57

Primeval instinct comes out when you're threatened with having a child taken away, which just gives you this desperate urge to have another baby.

Nicola Horlick21:05

So we did.

Presenter21:06

And at the same time you decided to take on the challenge of another job, is that right?

Nicola Horlick21:10

Um yeah, well what happened was that Georgia was diagnosed in nineteen eighty nine. In fact, her first sort of treatment was relatively quick. On the whole, life got back to normal reasonably quickly. So then we got into um nineteen ninety and I got pregnant with Serena and she was born. And then the following year, nineteen ninety one, was when I actually went to Morgan Granville, so that by that stage I was thirty.

Nicola Horlick21:32

Nicola

Presenter21:32

It it's an intriguing thing to to talk to you about all these happenings because you have a very matter-of-fact way of describing it all. But these are extraordinary circumstances that you're living through. Y your daughter has a a life-threatening illness, you decide to have another baby, you take on a huge job that for most people without any children would be a very big deal, and yet there you were doing it all at once. Were you ever conscious that it was either too much or that you were incredibly untypical?

Nicola Horlick21:59

Well again, it may well be. I mean, the problem is I don't know, because that's the way my life panned out. Um I don't know what would have happened if Georgie hadn't been ill, but I sort of suspect that part of the frenetic sort of building of the career was an escape from having to sort of deal with all the horrors of this of this terrible illness. So who knows what would have happened if Georgie hadn't had leukemia? All I know is that that's what happened and that was the result.

Presenter22:24

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Nicola Horlick22:26

The next piece of music is from Don Giovanni, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and When Giorgi Was Born.

Nicola Horlick22:33

Uh she was born at one thirty in the morning and they took her away to the nursery and told me I must sleep, but I was completely euphoric and I couldn't sleep. And I remember listening to Don Giovanni, I listened to the whole thing, trying to get to sleep, but I just couldn't because uh I was so excited and this is my favourite, the bit when the commendatory um comes back and says Don Giovanni in a very dramatic way.

Speaker 423:23

I swore by wooing.

Speaker 423:38

And it's all we toss.

Presenter23:55

Acena Techo from the final act of Mozart's Don Giovanni. You are, clearly, from all that you've said, Nicola, a very self possessed person. How difficult was it for you in in various periods to be out of control? Did you find, as a person who was used to being in control and and being in charge, that it was tricky to handle?

Nicola Horlick24:13

But I think anybody would find it difficult in that situation when things go wrong. And when Georgie was eight, when she relapsed for the first time, she had a horrendous reaction to a drug and she ended up with something called necrotising fasciitis, which is that flesh eating disease that you sometimes read about in the newspapers.

Nicola Horlick24:30

And she very, very nearly died. I mean, literally was seconds away from death and somehow managed to pull round. But, you know, at moments like that.

Nicola Horlick24:39

I mean, it's nothing to do with control or you know, you just you are in the hands of God, you know, in fate, and there there is no way that you can influence the situation. You just have to pray in whatever way you can. And on that occasion it worked, and she did pull through, but it was touch and go. And there's nothing you can do. You can't control something like that. There's no way you can control something like that. So you just have to accept it.

Nicola Horlick25:04

What sort of a girl was she and what sort of personality did she have? Georgie was a an incredibly brave person, and the doctors would come in in the morning and she probably would have had a horrendous night and have been terribly unwell.

Nicola Horlick25:17

And they'd say, How are you? And Georgia would beam at them and say, I'm really well, thank you. And I'd say, well, actually, she's not, you know, this has happened, and that's happened, and the other's happened. And she had this.

Nicola Horlick25:26

Just amazing smile that everybody will always remember. And as I said earlier, it's very humbling to watch a child fighting for life. I mean, it's just the most dreadful thing as a parent. But for anybody, it affects the doctors, the nurses, anybody who's in contact with that child. And Georgie will always be remembered by all of those people because she was so brave.

Presenter25:48

It was November nineteen ninety eight when she contracted a lung infection and became very ill. It it was very important to you at that time to make sure that you gathered the the family around to be with Georgie. Why was that so important?

Nicola Horlick26:02

Well, I just felt it was the right thing to do. We were lucky to an extent that Great Orm Street were very understanding and they

Nicola Horlick26:08

It didn't force us to turn off the life support machine instantly. We were given a couple of days to come to terms with it, which allowed me to gather people around us.

Nicola Horlick26:17

So ultimately, actually, when the machine was turned off, there were fourteen people in the room, which included some of Georgie's godparents, Tim's brothers, my brother, my mother, my grannie, Georgie's best friend's mother.

Nicola Horlick26:30

Cousin, you know, and one of our children, Serena, who was only eight. Alice didn't want to be there.

Nicola Horlick26:36

And we just all sort of hug it was like sort of one a group hug with me sort of hugging Georgie.

Nicola Horlick26:43

And I think it is a time when you need to have people around you, if people are brave enough to be there, because it's a big ask actually to ask somebody to be there when your child's life support machine is being turned off.

Nicola Horlick26:55

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Nicola Horlick26:57

My next piece of music is um the snowman song, as we call it, Walking in the Air.

Nicola Horlick27:03

And the reason that I've chosen this is because Alice, who as I said, is the next child down from Georgie and our family, so my second child.

Nicola Horlick27:11

When Georgie died she was ten.

Nicola Horlick27:13

She did the bravest thing I think I've ever seen anybody do ever in my life, which was to stand up at Georgie's funeral in front of eight hundred people, and she sang this

Speaker 427:28

We're walking in the air.

Speaker 427:33

We're floating in the moonlit sky

Speaker 427:41

The people far below are sleeping as we fly.

Presenter27:49

Peter Orty singing Walking in the Air from the Snowman, which was sung by your daughter Alice at George's funeral. Um I've read that you say that you believe very strongly that people have a life and it's a complete life. It can be ninety-eight years long or it can be twelve years long and that George's life happened to be twelve years. It's a very um uh profound thing to be able to say about a child's short life.

Nicola Horlick28:13

I think the only way you can deal with premature death is to accept that that is the case. And Georgie did have a profound effect on an awful lot of people around her during those twelve years. No one that knew Georgie will ever forget her. So I think

Nicola Horlick28:30

I I knew that Georgie didn't want to be alive any more. She had said that to me two weeks before she died. And I knew, therefore, that crying about it, which obviously I was doing a lot of crying about it, was very, very selfish.

Nicola Horlick28:42

And I had to face it in a very philosophical way in order to be able to deal with it. I think the only way you can accept something like that is to say it was meant to be.

Nicola Horlick28:52

But, you know, we are very much of the opinion that we should still talk about Georgie. It keeps Georgie's memory alive, and therefore I like talking about her. I want positively to talk about her. Now, obviously, it makes me sad to talk about her, and there are certain times of the year when I find it unbearable, particularly her birthday, because Georgie loved her birthday and used to spend a lot of time planning what she was going to do for her party and so on. It was such a major thing in Georgie's life, having her birthday party, that it is the day that really, really upsets me.

Presenter29:22

Was there any comfort for you in in religion or the church? Or was it really your family that saw you through? I mean I mean, almost in fact impossible to make sense of it, but in accepting that it is a reality. Was there any point at which you thought this is making it a little better?

Nicola Horlick29:40

I am christened and confirmed in the Church of England, but I'm not an avid church goer. I think the one thing that I didn't necessarily believe in before Georgie died, which I do believe in now, is life after death. Partly because of some things that happened after Georgie died, you know, things falling off walls and things flying across rooms and you know, it was as if Georgie was trying to say to me, Don't worry, Mummy, I'm still around. You know, I don't know, who knows? We don't know. But I do very strongly believe that I will see Georgie again one day. Do you talk to her? Do you have conversations with her still?

Presenter30:14

Uh

Nicola Horlick30:14

Yes, I do. It was quite um amusing. Uh well, not not amusing. I got mugged a couple of years ago, or a year and a half ago, and after that

Nicola Horlick30:26

I remember saying to Georgie, Please make sure that if I ever come home at night.

Nicola Horlick30:30

and I need a car parking space right outside our front door, please make sure there always is one there for me. And now, whenever I go home late at night on my own, which fortunately isn't very often, there is always a parking space right outside the door for me.

Nicola Horlick30:45

Tell me about your next piece of music. Sort of rather inevitably I suppose, having been through what we went through with Georgie, my marriage to Tim broke up, which was very, very sad and difficult for all of us. But I've been very fortunate in that I met somebody else and got married again.

Nicola Horlick31:05

and my new husband is called Martin Baker.

Nicola Horlick31:09

And before we got married we went to this Brian Addams concert, and this song means a lot to me, it's called Heaven.

Speaker 431:26

Yeah.

Speaker 431:30

Lovers all that I need.

Speaker 431:33

I found it there in your heart.

Speaker 431:37

God see

Speaker 431:40

We're in heaven.

Presenter31:45

Brian Adams and Heaven. We were talking during that about the impact that Georgie's death had, of course, on your other five children. Well, five children now. It wasn't five children then, four children at the time she died. Of course, you as a mother would be dealing with their grief too. How did you manage to make sense of it for then?

Nicola Horlick32:04

It was very, very difficult, and particularly difficult in the last year of Georgie's life, because I ended up being there literally for the whole year. I mean, Great Almond Street is a fantastic institution, and they're really good at dealing with this type of situation. And so, the children got a lot of support from Great Almond Street. I used to take them to see one of the psychologists, and they were given books to read about grief and loss and death, and so on and so forth. Really, we were very, very lucky to have that support. I get actually pretty angry when I hear people criticising the NHS. It's very, very difficult when you have a health system that is paid for by the state, and there will inevitably be wastage and bureaucracy. But I think we're very, very lucky that when someone gets hit in the raid, it doesn't matter who they are, where they come from, they will be taken to a hospital and treated. And we shouldn't underestimate the benefit of that.

Presenter32:53

Yeah.

Nicola Horlick32:53

The long-term impact.

Presenter32:54

impact on the children? Are you able to assess that? Do

Nicola Horlick32:57

I think it's really difficult, but I think for Alice and Serena, their childhoods were seriously blighted by all of this, but you know, by the tension and the ups and downs of having to deal with a very serious illness like that, by Georgie's eventual death, by having then to deal with their own grief, by then the divorce. I mean, it's been very, very hard for them. And yeah, I think for Alice it's been who's the next one down. She's now eighteen. Georgie would have been twenty now, twenty one in October. For Alice it's been really, really difficult because she was obviously the closest to Georgie in age and the closest just emotionally. And yeah, I don't think, like me, that Alice will ever really recover it from it.

Presenter33:39

A moment ago you paid great tribute to Great Ormond Street and indeed to the NHS in general.

Presenter33:45

I wonder if it's ever occurred to you that you might like to roll up your sleeves and use your considerable skills to to get involved in the NHS or to get involved in in politics that might help you sort out the NHS. Has it ever occurred to you?

Nicola Horlick34:00

Yes, on many occasions. I don't think I'd want to get involved in politics as such, but certainly doing something to try and help with the NHS is something that I would like to do. I would like to try and A give something back, but B I know a lot about the NHS as a result of having been a major user of it with Georgie and her illness. And I'm sure in the longer term there must be something that I could do to help.

Presenter34:23

Tell me about your final choice.

Nicola Horlick34:24

My final choice is um a Mozart sonata for piano and violin, and I've chosen this because my brother played this at my wedding to Martin, which was last September, so clearly it means a lot to me.

Presenter35:38

The opening of the first movement of Mozart's sonata for piano and violin. So on this island, then, Nicola, we give you the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere. You can take one other book. What might it be?

Presenter35:49

Yeah.

Nicola Horlick35:49

Well, my husband, Martin, is a writer, and he's written a thriller which is going to be published in January. So I would very much like to take that. On the other hand, that doesn't seem quite fair, because no one can relate to that, because it's not published yet, but I highly recommend it. It's very loyal of you.

Nicola Horlick36:04

So if I have to take a published book, then I think I would take um Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist.

Presenter36:11

and as a luxury to make life on this island a little more bearable.

Nicola Horlick36:15

I can't go to sleep unless I've had a bath at night, and that means even if we come home at three o'clock in the morning, I have to have a bath, otherwise I can't sleep, so I'd have to take a bathtub.

Presenter36:25

With a supply of fresh running water. We won't make you bathed in salt water. And which piece of music, if you had to choose just one, which would it be?

Nicola Horlick36:27

Can you bathe in salt water?

Nicola Horlick36:32

That is such a difficult question. I think I'd take Don Giovanni just because it's long and there's lots to listen to.

Presenter36:38

Nicola Horlick, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter36:48

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.