She cried cancer to steal our money
Delia and Kim happy together
Saturday 26th May 2007
By the look on her face, I could tell something awful had happened. I'd just arrived home from my job as a nurse to find my partner, Kim Collins, 39, sitting at the table, looking dumbstruck.
'What's wrong?' I asked her.
'I've been diagnosed with bowel cancer,' she said tearfully.
'What?' I shrieked.
I had no idea she'd been feeling ill.
'I just didn't want to worry you,' she shrugged.
Kim and I'd been together for 11 years. I was a nurse. Why hadn't she turned to me? Was it because we hadn't been getting on recently?
After divorcing my husband of 17 years, I'd met Kim through a friend in London. A bubbly, charismatic girl 20 years my junior, I'd fallen for her. She'd moved to Southend-on-Sea, Essex, to be with me. At first we were so happy. We went on holidays to Turkey and enjoyed going clubbing together. My daughter, Jane, 19, and son, Tom, 16, really liked her, too. Jane even got Kim a job on the tills with her in the Costcutter shop in Eastwood.
But recently, there had been more bad times than good. At first, we'd argued over silly little things. But now, we'd become so distant, I worried we were losing our bond for good. Right now, though, it was time to put all that aside. With Kim ill, our rocky relationship was the
least of my problems.
'What treatment will you have to have?' I asked her.
'Chemotherapy,' she replied.
'That's odd,' I said. 'Doctors usually remove the tumour first.'
But what did I know? After all, I was a mobility nurse, not a cancer specialist.
'When does it start?' I asked.
'January,' she replied.
But it was October now. Why the three-month delay?
'I don't want to have treatment over Christmas,' she snapped.
I tried to be strong for her, but behind closed doors, I sobbed my heart out. I still loved Kim and I desperately wanted to help.
'I'll take Mondays off to drive you to hospital,' I said.
'I'll go alone,' she told me.
Why was she shutting me out?
She was taking the news much better than I was. In fact, I never saw her get upset.
'Perhaps the bombshell hasn't sunk in,' I said to Jane.
I was right. A few weeks later, at my grandson Harry's birthday party, I noticed Kim was missing. Stepping into the back garden, I spotted her sobbing.
'Kim?' I gasped.
She couldn't speak she was crying so hard. She'd obviously been bottling everything up.
But that was the first and last time Kim let me see her fear. Christmas passed and she started her treatment at Southend University Hospital.
'Don't worry about paying your part of the mortgage,' I insisted. 'And don't lift a finger round the house.'
'Thanks,' she said weakly.
But, to my dismay, Kim was still heading off to work every Tuesday and she went from 15st to a skinny 11st in just three months. Usually, though, chemotherapy makes you gain weight. I couldn't understand it. After 14 weeks, the chemo was over. But Kim needed an operation to remove the shrunken tumour.
'I've had an idea,' she told me. 'I'm going to do a sponsored head shave to raise money for the hospital. Would you like to get involved?'
'I'd love to,' I said.
Kim's colleagues at Costcutter had put donation buckets on the tills and The Oakwood Pub in Eastwood was hosting an event the following week.
'You can be in charge of donations if you want,' she said.
I agreed, relieved Kim was including me for once.
As we arrived at the pub, we were greeted by Costcutter staff.
'She's been so gutsy,' they sighed when Kim was out of earshot.
Kim took a seat in the middle of the pub and one of the girls plugged in the hair clippers. As Kim's dark brown locks tumbled to the floor, I was cheering loudest. Within minutes, everyone in the pub was stuffing notes into my donations bag.
Back home, I counted the cash.
'How much is there?' Kim asked.
'£259!' I grinned.
'Add that to the money already raised at the shop, and we've got over £800,' she gasped.
'That's amazing,' I smiled.
Kim decided to split the money between the Elizabeth Lowry Ward at Southend University Hospital, where she'd had her chemotherapy, and Macmillan Cancer Support.
But there was no ceremony to hand over the cheques. In fact, Kim wouldn't even
have mentioned it if I hadn't asked her about it a month later.
'Did they appreciate your fundraising?' I probed.
'Yes,' she mumbled.
So modest.
I'd hoped the fundraising would bring us closer, but Kim still wouldn't even give me the date
of her operation. Then she started staying out most nights, rolling in during the early hours. Was she seeing someone else? Or just being brave again?
In July 2005, three months after the fundraiser, we went on holiday to Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Three days into the holiday, Kim dropped the second bombshell of our relationship.
'I'm leaving you,' she announced.
'Fine,' I answered numbly, but inside, my heart was breaking.
It didn't help that Kim kept calling round to tell me her news.
'I'm seeing someone else now,' she said. 'Her name's Trina Ball.'
Why was she doing this?
'I'm having the operation on Wednesday,' she told me later.
'Good luck,' I sighed.
I imagined her new partner, Trina, helping her through her recovery, and it hurt.
After that, though, I didn't hear from Kim again. As the months passed, I often wondered how she was doing. Was she free of the cancer? Just over a year later, the phone rang. It was a policeman.
'We need to talk to you about Kim Collins,' he began. 'She's been charged with obtaining property by deception.'
'What?' I gasped.
Suddenly, it all spilled out. The year before, her Costcutter colleagues had grown worried when they couldn't get hold of Kim to find out how her operation went. So a member of staff had called the hospital. There was no record of Kim being treated for bowel cancer. Neither of the charities Kim said she'd donated her money to had received a penny.
'That's when they called us,' the officer said. 'It turns out Miss Collins kept the money
for herself. She never had cancer.'
'What?' I shrieked.
In retrospect, everything was so obvious. You'd think if she was going to pull off such a huge scam, she would have researched the treatment, but she obviously didn't. She must have gone on a crash diet to lose all that weight, too. Sick. Never mind Kim's bowels, it was her head that needed examining. Why had she done it? For the money, the attention? I had no idea.
Five months later, I read in our local paper that Kim had pleaded guilty to fraud at Southend Magistrates' Court. Her lawyer reckoned she'd showed genuine remorse.
'The defendant was seeking some attention,' he said. 'She found a way to create an interest
in her personally and started a ball rolling that she was unable to stop.'
Ridiculous. I always gave her more than enough attention.
She was jailed for 10 weeks and ordered to repay £110 to known donors. Local people have been outraged at the light sentence. Me? I'm outraged that someone I shared 11 years of my life with could betray me so cruelly.
Read stories of other conwomen from the Pick Me Up archives:
Jailed for faking her own rape
The conwoman preying on lonely hearts