When the production team on Dirty Business first got in touch with Julie Maughan, she wasn’t interested in speaking to them for the Channel 4 docudrama, which would focus on water companies illegally dumping raw sewage in our rivers and seas.
It had been over two decades since Julie and her husband Mark took their daughters Heather and Suzanne on holiday to the Devon coast. There, eight-year-old Heather contracted the most aggressive strain of E.coli after playing on a Dawlish beach. Two weeks later, she died.
The cause of the E.coli outbreak was never officially identified and an inquest ruled death by misadventure, but viewers will no doubt draw their own conclusions from Channel 4’s retelling.
Creator Joe Bullman wasn’t aware of Heather’s case when he first embarked on two years of researching and writing for the new three-parter. Once he had, through the campaigners at Surfers Against Sewage, Julie agreed to be involved with a second ask.
‘That’s when I learned that they were trying to do something significant,’ Julie tells Metro after the episodes have aired to high praise from critics and fury from viewers. ‘I felt listened to and that was the biggest thing.’
Having kept all her files from that horrible time, Julie brought them down from the loft for Joe and his team to pore over. She had never returned to them in the years since. ‘There’s her autopsy report in there,’ says Julie. ‘I can’t open that file. I’m just tentatively starting now, trying to get the strength to do it.’
The premiere episode, which follows the family’s trip to Dawlish and concludes with Heather’s heartbreaking death, was screened for Julie privately.
‘It was like watching word for word what I said,’ says Julie, a waver in her voice. ‘It was very important to me that they got across how Heather suffered and how fast things happened.
‘How the nurses, even they were shocked,’ she recalls, detailing how the intensive care staff had advised Julie and Mark take photos of Heather, to show her what had happened while she was on life support.
‘I’ve got horrendous photos of her in an intensive care bed.’
I’m done raising awareness. What has to happen now is change.
The scene where Heather’s life support is switched off, as she lies in the cradled arms of her parents, is without a doubt the most moving moment of the piece. As Julie tells it, it is incredibly close to her experience of her daughter’s final moments.
‘We held her till she passed away,’ says Julie, detailing the ‘disbelief’ after Heather was carried off. ‘We just didn’t know what to do. That’s it, then isn’t it? They absolutely got it. You just leave without her. I said, don’t hold back on that. People need to see that.’
Julie describes the ‘horrendous’ flashbacks she still suffers, recalling the Dirty Business viewing experience as the flashback ‘being played out to me’.
She and her daughter Suzanne have been in constant contact with the actors who play the Preen family – Tom McKay and Posy Sterling – even with the show now wrapped.
‘I think testimony to it is how much they’ve engaged with the campaign and the actual problem itself. They feel as passionately as we do,’ says Julie.
While promoting the show, she has spoken about how Tom McKay’s performance as her husband Mark helped her come to terms with his suicide years after they lost Heather and had separated.
‘I was angry at Mark,’ she says. ‘I’m sure that’s not unnatural, to feel that way. It helped me realise Mark protected me and he took the brunt of a lot. Watching Tom portray Mark, no wonder. He had a really bad time and he lost his little baby.’
The other half of Dirty Business follows retirees turned citizen journalists Peter Hammond (Jason Watkins) and Ashley Smith (David Thewlis), who questioned why their local river had turned brown and kept at it. Julie whoops ‘Heroes!’ when I bring them up.
But they were also not aware of Heather’s death before working on the show. Sadly, Julie wasn’t surprised.
She describes watching the Boat Race debacle over E.coli in the Thames last year and thinking, ‘anything that could have been learned from her case has gone, it’s been forgotten.’
She adds: ‘[Peter and Ash] not knowing just confirmed that. I’m Heather’s mum, so yes, I don’t want Heather to be forgotten. But what happened to Heather must not be forgotten. That’s the most important thing, because that’s where the learning is.’
Julie is impassioned when she brings up the government’s recent white paper on the water industry, which has been criticised for its vagueness.
‘These people need to sit next to somebody in an intensive care bed and proofread that document while they’re on life support,’ she says. ‘There seems to be an acceptance of risk I’m just baffled by.’
Julie’s one wish with Dirty Business is that she hasn’t opened herself up again for nothing. Given that systemic change to the water industry will take time, she suggests that the recommendations made at Heather’s inquest (disinfection of local sewage, signage at sewage outlets) might be a starting place.
‘I’m done raising awareness. I did that back then. You can raise awareness until you’re blue in the face. What has to happen now is change,’ she says, impassioned.
‘I think it may slightly destroy me if, say in a month’s time, we’re back to raising awareness again.’
Dirty Business is available to stream on Channel 4.
Need support?
For emotional support, you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website.
Their HOPELINE247 is open every day of the year, 24 hours a day. You can call 0800 068 4141, text 88247 or email: pat@papyrus-uk.org.
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