Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years. Jacqui Kirby
door, separated by a trellis which gave way to my hallowed vegetable patch. The soil was dark and rich and harboured carrot and runner bean plants. I also had a series of fruit trees, including raspberries and blackcurrants, and nestled right in the middle were my beloved strawberry plants. I lovingly tended them, watering them religiously day and night. The children would look on but I wouldn’t let them taste the fruit until it was ready to pick.
One day, all the ripened strawberries were missing when I went to pick them. It was a mystery. After that, it kept happening. When asked, Mark and Colette denied eating them, yet every time the plants were due to ripen, the berries would mysteriously disappear. I began to think that we had a poacher sneaking into the garden at nightfall. It was a complete mystery until one afternoon when the children caught the culprit red-handed – a shame-faced Brandy, tucking into the crop straight from the plants. The brown and white fur around his mouth was stained bright red with sweet, sticky strawberry juice!
As the children became more independent, I decided that I would take a part-time job to make life easier and help pay towards a few luxuries such as school trips and holidays abroad. I also wanted to be a good mum and be there for them. So I planned my working day accordingly. I would work in a local hairdressing salon three days a week until 3.30pm, but I’d always be there when Mark and Colette came home from school at 4pm.
With less of me around, Mark and Colette got their heads together again and hatched a plan to go horse riding. It wasn’t cheap but I was steamrollered into letting them go.
‘I’ll speak to Dad,’ I promised, but they already knew that they’d won me over.
Tony agreed, and soon they were going for their first lesson. They took to it like ducks to water.
‘Look at them,’ I commented to Tony, as we stood proudly watching them. ‘You wouldn’t get me up there in a month of Sundays, but they look so comfortable – they’re naturals.’
And it was true, they were. Soon the children looked forward to their Saturday-morning horse-riding lessons. I wanted to give them a perfect childhood filled with lots of happy memories, as far removed from my own as I could get.
On the way home in the car, Mark and Colette would compare notes and chat about the lesson. Listening to their excited chatter and looking at the joy on their little faces made my heart swell with pride.
Soon the children were experts at riding. At that time the stable owner, Bob Humphries, had decided to introduce jousting. The children were too young to take part but we would all go as a family to watch the instructors dressed in their heavy and cumbersome chain armour suits, a look of determination on their faces as they tried to knock their opponents from the rival horse.
We now seemed to be eating, sleeping and breathing horse riding. But, like all good things, it came to an end. One Saturday morning we took them along and we were told that they were ready to start competing at show jumping.
‘Soon, they’ll be able to compete in gymkhanas,’ the instructor enthused.
I heard Mark sigh heavily behind me. He wasn’t keen. ‘I just want to ride, Mum,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do any competitions.’
He was worried that he would be forced to do something that he really didn’t want to do, and, by the end of the lesson, his mind was made up. Mark decided he didn’t want to go riding any more, and told me so in the car on the way home.
I glanced over at Colette, who was unusually quiet. ‘And what do you want to do, love?’ I asked.
‘Er, I’ll try it and see how I get on,’ she said, but it was obvious that, without her big brother at her side, the magic had gone.
Colette did return the following Saturday, but without Mark it wasn’t the same and she decided that she didn’t want to go back.
When Mark was 12, the children’s beloved dog Brandy passed away. They missed him, especially Colette, who was broken-hearted. In the end, the following Christmas, we decided to buy her a little Yorkshire terrier, which she called Mitzy. Soon she and Mitzy were inseparable and went everywhere together.
From the age of ten, Colette followed in my footsteps quite literally and took up ballroom dancing along with ballet and tap. Soon she was entering competitions in outfits made by my mother, who was such a talented dressmaker. Over the years, thanks to Mum’s dazzling outfits and her own talents, Colette won several medals and diplomas, all of which took pride of place on our mantelpiece at home.
During the long, warm summer holidays, we would pack up the car, drive to the east coast with Mitzy in tow and stay in my mother’s bungalow in Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. By this time, Mum had remarried, to a man called Ron Twells. It was good to see her happy once more. When Tony and I had to return to work, my mum and stepfather would look after the kids at the bungalow so they could enjoy the rest of their school break.
Despite the fact that my mum and dad had divorced years earlier, we were still on good terms with his sister, my aunt May. She and her husband Ken lived in London and we would travel down as a family to stay with them for long weekends. Ken and May were childless and so looked upon Mark and Colette as the closest thing they had to a family of their own. They adored the children and would spoil them with gifts. Colette and Mark loved to stay with them in London, and it wasn’t long before they soon made friends with other children in that neighbourhood. To them, it was home from home and they never got tired or bored of going down to visit.
Eventually, May and Ken sold their bungalow in London, and decided to move up north to be closer to us. They found a lovely property in Keyworth, Nottingham, just a stone’s throw from where we lived at the time. We were delighted.
‘This way we can see more of the children,’ May told me.
I was thrilled to have them close by and they soon became very important in all our lives.
The children would nag me to go on school trips and, providing the money was there, I let them. Although money was often tight, Tony and I always tried to give them as much as we could afford. We also had a strict rule – we would never give to one without giving to the other. Everything was fair and equal, as it should be.
‘There’s no price on a life of happy memories,’ I insisted.
It was true; I wanted my children to experience all the wonderful places in the world that I could only dream of going to.
Both children went on exchange trips to France and then, in return, the children they had visited would come and stay with us in England, which was always an experience.
Once Mark had a French pen pal called Eric come to stay during the summer months. Eric was tall and slender with a nest of tight curly blond hair. He was a nice, polite boy but he also had very peculiar eating habits.
One Sunday, we sat down to a full roast dinner with all the trimmings. Yorkshire puddings, mashed potato, beef and roast potatoes all jostled for position on the plates and everything was covered in rich dark gravy.
But Eric wasn’t happy. ‘Do you have any mayonnaise?’ he asked politely.
I looked at him blankly. ‘Um, yes, somewhere,’ I replied. ‘Why?’
‘Because I always have mayonnaise with my dinner,’ he explained.
The children sat open-mouthed as I went to the kitchen cupboard and retrieved a jar of mayonnaise from the back. We all watched as Eric pulled out a huge spoonful and proceeded to coat his entire dinner with the stuff.
I gave Colette a stern look across the table. She was pulling a face of disgust but I could also see that she was about to collapse into a fit of giggles at any moment. She saw me and looked back towards her own plate and kept quiet.
After that, Eric demanded mayonnaise with every meal – it didn’t matter if the food was already covered in thick gravy or tomato sauce, he just had to have it. In the end, I got so fed up of fetching the darn thing from the kitchen that I left the jar permanently on the dining table.