Best friends Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway popped out to play before tea late one early October afternoon.
Nicola, a happy, cheeky and plucky dark-haired cherub of a girl, was the apple of her father’s eye. She made friends easily and was well-liked at school and in her neighbourhood. The precocious exuberance the outside world saw belied the cuddly home-loving girl she really was though. She knew her own mind, and the boundaries. Her mother, Susan, recalled that after rows Nicola would pack her little bag and storm off, saying she was running away. Moments later she would return. When asked what had happened to her plans, she would solemnly remind her parents that she could not go very far, as she was not allowed to cross the road alone.
Barrie Fellows, Nicola’s dad, had a tough-guy image which hid the soft-hearted devotion of a family man who lived for his children. An in-your-face Londoner, he moved to Brighton in the 1960s where his brash ways were not everyone’s cup of tea. His rugged good looks and stocky frame were well known around the estate and he enjoyed his standing as one of the go-to fixers. None of this could prevent his life being ripped apart that day, when he was just thirty-seven.
He and Susan had been married for sixteen years and they lived with Nicola, her brother Jonathan and Susan’s mother in Newick Road, a run of houses that sits back from the main Lewes Road but just in view of Wild Park. Susan was meeker than Barrie and loved nothing more than being surrounded by her family, of all generations.
Both speak fondly of Nicola’s steadfast ambition to become a nurse. Hers was often the first face Barrie saw when he came round from an epileptic fit. When Susan was in hospital, she remembers Nicola grilling the nurses on all that their job entailed, cheekily trying their hats on for size. Susan hoped that one day Nicola would go to university, but worried about the cost.
In my uniform days responding to 999 calls, I was often called to Newick Road. One of the city’s most prolific car thieves lived there and he never served tea and biscuits when we came knocking. Aside from him, the road seemed to have more wanted criminals and domestic incidents than any other in Brighton. But I was never dispatched to the Fellows or Hadaway households..
Barrie’s close friend was Dougie Judd, a much younger man, who shared Barrie’s passion for Citizens Band – or CB – radio, the social media of the day. CB radio ‘hams’ would spend hours at home or in their cars parked in remote locations, willowy aerials swaying from their roofs, chatting inanely to total strangers under pseudonyms, or ‘handles’, that gave no clue as to their real identity. One of Judd’s handles was ‘Pain Killer’ and Fellows went by the name of ‘Basil Brush’. Looking back, it is strange to think how we regarded this new-fangled communication craze as such a threat to our operations. It was unthinkable that people could now organize themselves without land-line telephones and chats in the pub. Life was so much simpler then.
Dougie had fallen out with his mother, not uncommon for a twenty-one-year-old living at home, prompting him to beg a room from Barrie. When he moved in, a year before the girls went missing, the already-cramped three-bedroomed household became even more congested. Nicola was forced to double up with her grandmother, freeing the downstairs room for Dougie.
His and Barrie’s close friendship would soon come under the spotlight and would vex the police throughout the next thirty years.
Karen, like Nicola, was absolutely cherished by her parents. She had a beautiful, beaming smile and fair hair and freckles. She shared a love for life and adventure – providing it was within the rules. By their own admission, her mother and father slightly over-protected her. They drummed in to her time and time again the hidden dangers lurking on the streets around them, warning her never to go off with strangers. She flourished and, as far as her parents were aware, never broke their rules.
Michelle and Lee Hadaway’s early married life saw them forever moving around Brighton through a string of poor council and other social houses and flats. It was not until Karen was born in 1977 that they finally settled in Moulsecoomb.
By October 1986, the Hadaways’ house, like the Fellows’, was bursting at the seams. Not only were there the parents and three children, but Michelle’s recently widowed mother had also moved in and Michelle was pregnant with her fourth child. Aside from the diminishing floor space, this suited the Hadaways to a tee, especially Karen, who was particularly attached to her siblings. This kind of overcrowding was commonplace in these tiny three- and four-bedroom houses, but in those days families were close and liked to stay close, even if that meant turning every spare corner into a sleeping space.
Lee and Michelle lived for their children. Lee’s job as a builders’ labourer took him away from home so much that, in 1985, he quit. With three children and one on the way, that made life a struggle. He was forced to take casual work where he could find it – but only if that meant not leaving his family for too long. He made great efforts to set up a window-cleaning round and would sometimes act as driver’s mate to Dougie Judd’s brother, Stephen. It was this job that led him to be miles away and helpless on the day his and Michelle’s quiet life changed forever.