Every time Darrell Clarke returns to his roots in Mansfield, where he grew up on the Ladybrook estate, he walks into a world of pain. He visits his uncle, Russ, and elder brother, Wayne, who still live in the town, but it is also there, in the cemetery off Nottingham Road, where his grandmother, Sheila, his mother, Doreen, and eldest daughter, Ellie, are buried within yards of each other.
He last went a few weeks ago. His gran brought him up after his mum died in a car crash when he was two. His grandfather was a turnstile steward at Mansfield’s Field Mill. His father was an alcoholic.
