The tenderness with which Tina Malone’s husband expressed his unconditional love for her and their daughter Flame was breathtaking.
Here was a man who had witnessed untold horrors in the decade he served with the 22nd Regiment of the Cheshires in bloody conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, he addressed his partner with such softness, as "Tina, my amazing wife." He continued: “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.”
The tragedy was that Tina first saw this message to her and 10-year-old Flame on March 13, police officers were in the front room of her Liverpool home. Blue lights were flashing outside and she had just heard that her husband, Paul Chase, 41, who hadn’t come home that night, was dead.
No longer able to cope with the PTSD his experiences in combat had left him with, he had taken his own life. Tina says: “It’s the first time I’ve said it and confirmed it. Paul did commit suicide.”
Tina has chosen to publicly reveal how Paul died in an emotional interview with The Mirror. Speaking exclusively, she says: “His last 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.”
Tina Malone, 60, says she looks 40 after quitting booze and losing 12 stone
Tina wed husband Paul Chase in 2010In his last ever text to Tina and Flame, who were about to leave for the school run when the police arrived, he told his little girl: “I am sorry I left you, you lit up my life every time I saw you. I’m sorry.”
And he implored his wife: “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”
Finding fame first in Brookside playing Mo McGee, then as the wonderfully foul-mouthed and ebullient Mimi Maguire in Shameless, as she talks through crippling grief, Tina is determined to channel the feistiness she gives her characters into fighting for those in need.
For she is marking Paul’s birthday on May 28 by launching a charitable foundation, Paul’s Flame. She says: “It’s a very different charity with a board of 12 and it’s going to shine the light on people in poverty, in crisis, in need, who need cold, hard, cash. It’s the hardest time of my life, but I have to bring some positivity out of this.”
But being positive is not easy. She admits: “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. I’m not ashamed of what Paul did. I will always be proud of the man I married.
Tina with her 10-year-old daughter Flame (Tim Merry/Mirror Express)“We have to talk more about suicide - that’s why I am speaking out now. 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. But I don’t want Flame to be defined as the daughter of a man who took his own life, but as the daughter of a wonderful dad and a man who served his country.”
Nicknamed ‘Chevy’ by Army pals thanks to his surname Chase, Tina lights up when she remembers how she met Paul 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 8 hour walk. “He was teasing me with Jelly Babies,” she laughs. “We chatted about his Army service, particularly Iraq.”
He didn’t recognise her, even though she’d just been in Celebrity Big Brother, but they bonded, had their first date soon after and moved in together 13 days later. They had 600 guests at their Manchester wedding and went on to have Flame, thanks to IVF treatment, when Tina was 50.
I might be 60 but I now look 40 after losing 12st, says Tina Malone
Their 21 year age gap raised eyebrows and she hilariously warned him that she was “morbidly and clinically obese and bipolar. I’m self obsessed, self absorbed, opinionated, loud and brassy.” But he was still game.
And when the consultant warned her against IVF on health grounds and warned Paul how emotional and highly strung the treatment would make her, neither of them were fazed. Tickled by Paul’s inability to be starstruck, Tina laughs: “He wasn’t impressed by anyone or anything. We would go to George Michael’s aftershow party and he’d say ‘lovely do George, but I’m getting off to watch the boxing on the telly’.
Tina speaks about her life with Paul (Tim Merry/Mirror Express)“I remember once - we had not long had Flame - we were staying in a hotel and Meryl Streep was in the next room. We bumped into her and Paul just said: ‘here, hold the baby while I take the pictures.’ To Meryl Streep! And she did! I guess the bigger the star the less grandiose they are. But that was Paul - people recognised there was no side to him. He was just lovely and gentle and kind.”
A devout Catholic, Tina - who has overcome a drink problem and depression - recalls him as an “incredible” dad to Flame. She says: “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.”
Sadly, though, Paul’s inner demons began to emerge and he self-medicated with drink, drugs and even smoking - which he’d never done before. Diagnosed with PTSD three years ago, Tina blames the horrors of war, saying: “If you’ve been at war and you can’t count how many people you killed. How do you come back from that? He loved the Army but it left him scarred.”
He had been working with a community care programme for troubled teens, but that dried up. He stopped going to the gym and she says he “went from a one glass of red wine sort of bloke to drinking bottles of anything.”
Flame has helped Tina soldier on (Tim Merry/Mirror Express)Taking anything from prescription drugs to cocaine, borrowing money and lying, he became so difficult to live with that they briefly split up - but soon reconciled, as Tina says “the love was always still there.” As he hit rock bottom, Paul made attempts on his life and was admitted to psychiatric hospital, but Tina says bed pressures saw him transferred to a community mental health facility that was under pressure.
He also received help for veterans battling addiction and worked with The Block, a community interest group which helps armed forces veterans. Sadly, it wasn’t enough.
According to figures for suicide rates among armed forces veterans, compiled by the Office for National Statistics, in 2021 (the most recent year) deaths by suicide among male veterans aged 35 to 44 - Paul’s age group - per 100,000 were higher than those in the general population - with 33.5 deaths, compared to 18.8 among non-veterans.
Sounding exasperated, Tina says: “Years ago, if you tried to commit suicide, whether you were in prison or on the street, they’d take you in, put you in a cell with a strait jacket on. They did everything to stop you from committing suicide. Nowadays they don’t. I wonder why that is. I wonder why no one stops you.”
Sadly, Tina and Paul argued the day before his death, although, as usual, they made up. He’d been concerned about being a drain on her. But he made a meal for Flame that night and kissed Tina, saying “see you later” before he left. “Hours later he was dead,” she says.
Many of his former army colleagues attended Paul’s funeral, his military dress hat was placed on the flag-draped coffin and the last post was played. At home, his toothbrush remains in the bathroom, his coats are still hanging up and his gym bag remains in the hall.
But Tina is acutely aware that the man she loved, who wrote those final texts with such tenderness, is never coming back. She says: “I miss him touching me, I miss his dancing, kissing me in the living room to make Flame go ‘eugh!’ I don’t think I will ever stop crying and I will never ever love or be loved like that again. But we had more in 15 years than some people get in a lifetime together. I cling on to that.”
To find out about mental health support for veterans go to Icarus or for urgent help call the Samaritans’ 24 hour helpline on 116123.
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