HAVING survived a terror attack that claimed the lives of 38 people, including 30 Brits, Sharon Simes wondered what else life could possibly throw at her.
The – at a Tunisian beach resort nearly a decade ago – saw the biggest loss of British life to since the .
But today – having been diagnosed with a rare form of after already fighting off the disease once before – Sharon, now 53, says that, far from leaving her defeated, she has found even more resilience to move on with life.
“I just kept thinking, ‘If I can get through a terror attack, I can get through cancer.’ When I got cancer again, two years ago, I thought the same again,”;; she exclusively tells The Sun.
“I see myself as lucky because I’m still here.”;;
Sharon’s ordeal began on Friday, June 26th in 2015, while on holiday at the five-star Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba – a luxury beach resort near the city of Sousse in Tunisia.
She was there with husband Dave, daughter Krystal, then 17, and Krystal’s friend Chelsea.
Lounging beside Dave on a sunbed, glass of wine in hand, Sharon was reading her book when her peace was shattered by what sounded like fireworks.
But it wasn’t fireworks – it was gunfire.
The attacker, 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui, disguised as a tourist, had smuggled a Kalashnikov rifle inside a parasol.
He stormed the beach and hotel grounds, executing holidaymakers in what would become one of the bloodiest terror attacks on Britons abroad.
In an upcoming Prime Video documentary – Surviving The Tunisia Beach Attack – which hears from survivors and retells the horrors of that day using real-time video footage from the resort, Sharon recounts the moment she first realised what was happening.
She says: “Out of the corner of my eye I saw a super bright flash of light – like lightning. I just turned to it and it was the terrorist.
“Dave and I both went down at the same time on the sand and the terrorist was firing at people and he was standing there right in front of all the sunbeds.
“The sand was just jumping around because of the bullets.
“It was chaos. I just thought I was going to die any second.”;;
Krystal, meanwhile, had been in a different part of the complex, poolside with Chelsea.
In the chaos, she and her friend ran into the hotel and hid in an office – the very same one Rezgui stormed next, hurling grenades and spraying bullets.
Unaware of her daughter’s whereabouts or fate, Sharon and Dave sprinted from the beach to safety. But she’d left her phone behind, and couldn’t recall Krystal’s number when another holidaymaker offered to help.
Miraculously, Sharon, Dave, Krystal and Chelsea all escaped alive.
When the family was reunited, the relief was overwhelming. But the emotional scars lingered.
Sharon admits: “If I had got the seat I wanted – on the front row of sunbeds – we wouldn’t be here because I intended to sit where another family who died were.”;;
That family was John and Janet Stocker, from Crawley, , who tragically left behind five children and ten grandchildren.
Lasting impact
Back home Sharon was diagnosed with , general anxiety disorder and mild depression.
“I’ve not been able to go to a big resort like the one in Tunisia again,”;; she says. “Even hearing sirens from a police car brought it back.”;;
She attended various counselling and psychotherapy sessions, including two support groups organised by tour operator TUI.
She says: “It gave me an outlet to talk about what had happened outside my daughter and partner and it taught coping mechanisms that I’ve used since, when I’m not feeling too brave, but it’s not a magic wand – it’s never going to take what happened away.”;;
Krystal opted to stay close to home, studying locally in .
Sharon says: “I changed a lot as a person. We used to go away every year. I’d take Krystal and a niece on holiday.
“I could not do that anymore. I felt I couldn’t physically be responsible for another person on holiday again. It really impacted my family life.”;;
Then, in 2019, life dealt another devastating blow.
“I was laying in the bath and, completely by chance, I saw a dent in my top left breast because the bubbles were going into it in a funny shape,”;; Sharon recalls.
“I Googled what I’d noticed when I got out and found another woman who discovered she had breast cancer in similar circumstances, but I thought breast cancer was a lump. I didn’t realise it could be a dent.
“I looked in the mirror and just thought, ‘Oh my God’.”;;
Her GP urgently referred her for a scan, and she was placed on the two-week cancer pathway.
In April 2019, Sharon was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ in both breasts with invasive ductal carcinoma in the left breast – the most common type of breast cancer that occurs when abnormal cells form in the lining of the milk ducts and then invade surrounding breast tissue beyond the ducts themselves.
She underwent a double mastectomy, followed by breast reconstruction using tissue from her stomach, and was prescribed hormone therapy for five years to suppress recurrence.
Silver lining
Yet even amid the trauma, Sharon saw the silver lining.
She says: “I felt lucky because some people didn’t make it in Tunisia, and some people don’t make it with cancer.
“I’ve got to be there to see Krystal become a paediatric nurse and to enjoy other milestones I might not otherwise have.”;;
That May, just before surgery, she even managed a trip abroad.
She says: “The only time I have ever plucked up the courage to go on a plane since Tunisia was to L’Escala in that May – the month before my mastectomy.
“I said to the surgeon, ‘It’s taken me all these years to pluck up the courage to go, so I need to do it, even more so, now.’
“I think my overall attitude was, and still is, ‘Do what you like to me, but leave my daughter alone!’ I also wanted to make the most of every moment I could.”;;
By 2021, two years into her recovery, a lump appeared in one of her reconstructed breasts.
Tests revealed fat necrosis – a benign condition where tissue dies due to lack of blood supply, often following surgery.
But Sharon, who works as an administrator for the NHS, remained uneasy.
When she moved to the in 2023, she was passed to a new breast care team and brought up her concern with a new consultant.
She says: “Again the scan revealed fat necrosis. But the radiologist said there was just a niggle that something was not right because there was blood fluid underneath the fat necrosis.
“They thought it could be a haematoma. So they agreed to a biopsy this time, even though it looked fine.”;;
The biopsy revealed a second cancer; HER-2-positive invasive lobular carcinoma, a far rarer and more aggressive type of breast cancer that develops in the glands that produce breast milk.
Unlike ductal cancer, which forms lumps, lobular cancer spreads in sheets and is notoriously harder to detect.
HER-2-positive means the cancer cells carry a protein that promotes growth, making the disease faster-spreading.
She says: “It was tough because the cancer was back and I was thinking, ‘How is this even possible after a double mastectomy?’
“Also, I was on hormone therapy which is supposed to stop it from coming back, but then I was told it was a different type. It was just so confusing to hear.”;;
Sharon underwent a lumpectomy in July 2023, followed by six rounds of chemotherapy, spaced three weeks apart.
She also began 18 rounds of immunotherapy — a targeted treatment for HER-2-positive cancer — and underwent a course of radiotherapy.
Finally, in May 2024, an MRI scan showed no remaining signs of the disease.
She now requires annual scans and lives with a hole in one eye – a possible lasting side-effect from her treatment.
‘Protector’
Through it all she has drawn strength from a curious source – butterflies.
To this day Krystal believes her mum has a spiritual protector. On the day of the Tunisia attack, Sharon wore a bikini covered in butterflies.
Since then they have appeared at key emotional moments – always bringing a sense of peace.
Krystal feels they are so significant that she has had several tattooed on her body.
Sharon reflects: “I definitely believe in something watching over me I guess.
“Whenever I’m in a situation where I’m feeling uncomfortable, I ask myself, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ and it already has, so I know I’ll be OK.
“I guess I’m still in survival mode because I’ve done so much research into cancer to try to keep alive these past few years.
“I guess, in a sense, I’ve been in survival mode for nearly ten years now.
“But I hope that, by sharing my story, I can encourage others who’ve gone through any kind of trauma to know that there is hope, and to gain something positive from my journey.”;;
Surviving The Tunisia Beach Attack, produced by Yeti Television, is on Prime Video From Sunday May 25th.
