I think I loved him: how David Cassidy, my first crush, helped me grow up 

And they were really, really good. The Partridge Family sang catchy, hummable pop tunes with tight harmonies and unending optimism; even the sad songs seemed to reassure me everything was Gonna Be Fine. And at the group’s centre was this lean limbed, floppy haired boy/man who seemed to be singing at me, for me, when he crooned, “And all at once I wake up/From something that keeps knocking at my brain/I Think I Love You.”

Something had come knocking and it was David, banging on the door of a room in a house - a mansion of loose-limbed longing - inside my little girl’s body that I hadn’t even known was there. I saw myself from the outside in, with David by my side, hand outstretched to walk me from my childhood into new unchartered territory.

I know now that this is always the pattern for everyone’s first crush; they are your bridge between the child and the adolescent, the cosy practice run for the real life relationships you will hopefully navigate in your future. What I didn’t know was that when I whispered “I think I love you” back to David, all over the world, millions of other girls were screaming exactly the same thing.

Cassidymania was a real phenomenon: The Partridge Family was his launch pad and he went stratospheric. Between 1970 and 1974 David Cassidy concerts attracted scenes of screaming fan-mania not seen since the Beatles. And the hit songs kept coming: How Can I Be Sure, Daydreamer, Could It Be Forever, Cherish.

All great pop songs with hooks that snagged your heart, all sung in his distinctive breathy style - the boy next door with a naughty edge, the kind of boy you could introduce to your mother but who also had a streak of rebellion to keep him on the right side of cool. He wore a necklace, for Pete’s sake - an actual necklace.

I still remember that detail in my double page pull out from Jackie magazine, stuck to my bedroom door, the beaded surfer-boy circle around his neck peeking out of his wide lapelled shirt. David didn’t bend his gender as far as over as Marc Bolan, and he didn’t have the funky soul of the Jackson 5 or the polished showbiz appeal of the Osmonds, all of whom I went on to follow in various ways later on. But I didn’t love any of them enough to commit a crime. Which is exactly what I did for DC.

I blame Jackie magazine for carrying an advertisement for a David Cassidy T shirt, available in five cool colours! I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to attend any of his concerts, but wearing this T shirt, having his face emblazoned across my chest, would be proof enough of my adoration. And make me the envy of all my friends. Five pounds, including postage and packing, and that was an awful lot in those days - especially when you didn’t have any money of your own.

So I stole it from my mother’s purse. Heck knows why I didn’t think she would notice; that was probably our weekly food bill, and I’m now ashamed that I didn’t care anyway. I tore out the form, stuffed the note inside and sent it off. Hours later I was found out and confessed. There were tears, genuine at the time, and then more tears of joy when the T shirt arrived a week later. It was bright pink, and at least a size too small.

In those four years between discovering David and stealing for him, I had grown, mostly sideways and most certainly frontways. When I wore the T shirt, David’s beautiful face was horribly distorted - he looked like he was in agonising pain from recent root canal surgery. Plus it was, in a very real sense, a garment of shame: each time I wore it was a painful reminder to myself and my mother, of the criminal act I’d undertaken to acquire it.

And yet I wore the DC hair shirt constantly, embracing the complicated uncomfortable feelings it aroused. Just another one of the many that rampaged around my body, now I was a proper teenager. I’d done it for David and was learning that sometimes, love made you do bad and stupid things.

Then in 1974, at the height of his fame, David quit the Partridge Family and touring. This followed the tragic death of a teenage girl, Bernadette Whelan, at a London concert in 1974 during a crowd crush which also injured 800 other fans. Understandably, this profoundly affected him. He was quoted as saying this would haunt him for the rest of his life.

David went on to juggle a successful singing, recording and acting career but as he moved on, matured and grew older, so did I. He was never quite off my radar; you never forget your first love, however many others follow. I even used one of his songs in the BBC film of my novel Anita And Me. When my central character, the 10-year-old British Indian girl, Meena, first meets the older bad wench of the village, Anita, whom she idolises despite the fact she breaks her heart, the song you hear playing is How Can I Be Sure.  

As time passed, news of David’s albums and Las Vegas stints evoked happy nostalgia. Later news of his stints in rehab and battles with addiction and bankruptcy aroused huge empathy. Beneath the cliché of a former superstar’s fall from grace was still the sweet boy/man who had helped me grow up, now tempered with my adult understanding of what that fame must have cost him.

Only this year David announced that he was suffering from dementia, the same disease with which his mother, Evelyn Ward, struggled for years before her death in 2012. Having a close family member who is also living with this awful disease, my connection with David completed its circle.

The poignancy continued as he passed away from organ failure on November 21, the same day back in 1970 that I Think I Love You reached number one in the US charts. “Another part of my childhood gone,” was one of the many responses on Twitter. A phrase I suspect I will be using fairly regularly in the years to come. Gone, DC, but not forgotten.  Never.