Mary Austin revealed how late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury would tell her he ‘didn’t have much time’ left frequently after his AIDS diagnosis, via Express.
She is typically depicted as the rock who stood by his side through thick and thin, but Mary said even she didn’t realise how much it went both ways until she had lost him.
She said; “I always had Freddie to turn to and he always had me to turn to if need be. Suddenly, there wasn’t anyone to help me. It made me realise that I wasn’t as self-sufficient as I would have liked to have been. As much as I’d been a friend to him, I realised how much a friend he’d been to me – the fact of just knowing that he was there.
“He was always very protective of me. I only realised after he died, quite how protective he’d been. If something happened he’d say, ‘Oh darling, don’t worry we’ll get over that.’ He was uplifting.
“At other times, when he was aware he had AIDS and only had a limited time to live, there’d be the odd serious conversation when he’d say to me, ‘Let’s go and sit, we don’t know how long we have.'”
“I lost somebody who I thought was my eternal love. When he died I felt we’d had a marriage. We’d lived our vows. We’d done it for better for worse, for richer for poorer. In sickness and in health. You could never have let go of Freddie unless he died. Even then it was difficult.
“I’d rather it happened the other way round. I should have gone first – I’d rather he miss me than I miss him.”
