The past year has been a difficult one for Atomic Kitten’s Liz McClarnon. She was on a promotional tour in New York on September 11 when the World Trade Center was attacked and soon afterwards she experienced a painful split with her first love. Then three months ago, she says in a new book, her world was torn apart when her 18-year-old stepbrother was killed in a tragic car crash.
“Mark and I were close… I knew I could always count on him,” she says in Atomic Kitten: So Good So Far. “When he was killed it was like having the heart torn out of me.” Liz, who was “already going through a very emotionally disturbing time”, says that the death was a terrible blow. “I thought I was losing it,” she reveals. “I felt really messed up.”
The tragic loss came at a time when Liz’s life was already in turmoil. The break-up with her fiancé of three years, Tommy – “The only man I’d ever been intimate with,” she says – came in the weeks following the US terror attacks. “September 11 freaked me out… It made me realise that I was still a very young woman, that there was life out there to be lived,” she explains. “It made me think twice about everything I’d always taken for granted.”
Liz, who lives with her family in Liverpool, found comfort after she had a heart-felt talk with her mum. “I broke down one day and everything came pouring out,” she says. “It was the best thing, because mum put her arms around me and said, ‘You’re not weak, you’re not messed up. Everyone feels the same way in these circumstances.’”
Aged just 21, she says, “I’ve still got a way to go… but I have recognised a change in me, I am beginning to learn about me and who I am. All I want is to be the best person I can be.”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
