Half a year has now gone by since Rachel walked into the night, never to return. Those six months seem to have flown past without us noticing but now we are marking time until October. It will be here before we know it.
It is hard to recall that, when this nightmare began, it was darkest winter. We have seen spring come and go and now summer is upon us. The glorious weather is meaningless, since one day is much the same as another, one week no different to the last. There is no pleasure in anything at all for me nor, I suspect, for any of us.
During the early part of this month, we hold a memorial service for Rachel. We had decided we wanted to do this after a contingent of her neighbours arrived at our house, bearing a book of condolence and some money they had collected locally. Their wish was that we use this donation to erect some form of plaque in Rachel’s memory. We thought this a lovely gesture on their part.
Having considered all options, we came to the conclusion that any sort of plaque would be at risk of vandalism if it was in a public place, sad though that sounds. Thus we came up with the idea of asking Rachel’s local priest, Father Wood, if we could put it in the foyer of his church and, at the same time, allow us to hold some sort of memorial service there. He was happy to do this and also agreed that a fellow priest and friend of ours, Father Pat Day, could lead the service for us. We then called upon John Murray, a good friend who is an excellent musician, to direct the whole affair.
After the traumatic events of May – the plea and directions hearing and all that entailed – planning the memorial is a form of respite for us. To begin with, I am as keen as Ray for this service to take place but, as the day draws nearer, I am becoming more and more apprehensive about the whole thing. There is a great deal of organisation involved and each of us has our own ideas about what Rachel would have liked. This causes some friction at times, but, if the truth be known, none of us apart from Mark really knew her tastes in music and verse. He is getting somewhat uptight about it all, feels it is too soon after her funeral for a memorial service, and that he is being pushed out of the arrangements. I can understand his feelings as I am starting to feel the same way myself.
Ray is becoming obsessed with it, spending hours worrying about how it will come across, poring over books and articles (religious and other) so that it will be just right on the night. He has said from the start that he intends to speak during the service and, although I am a little taken aback by this, I decide not to interfere. It will be enough for me to organise the buffet, which we will have afterwards in the club adjoining the church. Vanda has managed to get a group of Rachel and Mark’s friends to do the entertainment for this. We are expecting a good turn-out and the event is well publicised.
Ray is spending a lot of time working on the eulogy for Rachel and getting into quite a state about it. We eventually decide on the hymns and readings, though not easily, with a lot of help from our musical director. Above all, it should be light-hearted and not at all like the funeral. It is meant to be a happy occasion but for me it is becoming fraught with doubt and trepidation because Ray is so het up over it. I am losing interest now and feel surplus to requirements. This is his show and so let him get on with it. With his help, I cater for around 150 people and that’s enough to keep my mind off other things. Everything is falling into place and we need only to deliver the food etc. to the club and present ourselves at the church for the service.
I don’t know what Ray’s eulogy contains but ask only one thing of him: whatever he intends to say, we – her family – are included in his musings and it is not just his own personal memories of Rachel. He colours up slightly and replies, ‘Of course not.’ I begin to wonder, but do not press the issue.
The church is almost full, although the very people for whom we initially thought up this service – the neighbours who made the collection – do not appear. Nor, to my disappointment, do any of Rachel’s school friends, most of whom will have known about it. The press and television are in attendance, together with a small police presence.
I find it all very, very stressful and wish I were anywhere other than in this place right now. That is not to say it doesn’t go down well, as Father Pat and John Murray are both so experienced in such matters that they do us proud. The readers, including Father White, our own priest and friend, are all we could hope for. The only heart-stopping moment comes when Vanda, on leaving the altar, misses her footing and almost falls the rest of the way. In my nervous and apprehensive state, I want to burst into hysterical laughter, but Vanda is very shaken by this incident.
The television cameras are very near us and I am embarrassed by this. I feel that they are watching me in the hope that I might break down but I am too keyed up for that to happen, nor would I shed my tears in public.
Now comes the time for Ray to approach the lectern to deliver his eulogy. I know he is extremely nervous, so I give his arm a squeeze of encouragement and wonder what is about to be said. To say I am shocked is an understatement and, should Ray read this, he may be surprised to know it. Did I make a mistake in thinking he would be the voice for all of us, that he would speak of the love we all had for Rachel and how hard it will be for us to go through life without her?
His words, though beautiful and eloquent, speak only of his own love for her, of his own memories and his own sorrow. I find that I can’t even look at him while he is speaking, and each word is like a body blow as he continues. Am I being selfish and unreasonable in thinking that this eulogy would include all of us or is that what a eulogy is, a very personal thing?
My heart turns over when Ray says that he was ‘mad about Rachel’ and I realise, not for the first time, the depth of his feeling for her. In my distressed state, I feel that nothing else now is of any importance to him – not I, nor any of our other three children. That my own love for Rachel, my own sorrow at her loss, is as nothing compared to his. I don’t know how I’ll get through the ordeal of the buffet and entertainment.
Another disappointment awaits in the club afterwards, when not many people adjourn there after the service. The music, though excellent, is far too loud in a half-empty hall, so any conversation is impossible. The entertainers, including Mark, are in good voice and enjoy themselves, but for me the poignancy is almost too much to bear. Rachel should be part of this, she should be here amongst us, but, if she were, it would not be taking place anyway. It is very hard to keep smiling.
I feel shattered when we reach home and very withdrawn from everything. Ray, I am sure, has noticed my demeanour, and may even suspect why I am so quiet but we have little to say to each other. Feeling so drained and exhausted is good enough reason to skirt around issues which should be tackled, is my own thought, even though I know it would be far better to bring things out into the open, to sit down together and speak rationally of our individual feelings. I sense that Ray is deeply disappointed in my failure to congratulate him on his eulogy, which most people have deemed marvellous. If I were to begin to discuss it with him, I would be afraid of saying the wrong thing, of upsetting him or hurting his feelings, of kicking him when he is down. The whole situation is so very, very sad and he himself so destroyed that I could never add to that. Nor do I want to run the risk of confrontation, which could so easily happen.
This has been such a traumatic happening. It is beyond anyone’s imagination and it is not something that one is taught how to handle, so we don’t know how. Inconsequential things, like not being included in Ray’s eulogy, are becoming like personal slurs to me, along with other inane occurrences which would be laughable under other circumstances.
I am feeling more and more misunderstood; maybe that is my own fault. I keep my feelings so well hidden that few people know them, whereas Ray is open with his. His grief is there for all to see, while mine is not, but it is no different. I feel that I am punishing myself by keeping quiet, even harming myself both physically and mentally, and wonder if this is normal behaviour. Do all those who suffer a loss such as this feel the same despair, the same anger and resentment? Do they too want to hit out at their nearest and dearest in order to assuage their own sorrow? I only know that I am beyond consolation and, at the moment, feel like I am walking a tightrope.
I get up each morning and go through the motions, yet it feels like I am watching a film in which I play no part. How can life go on all around me as if everything is normal, when the world has gone mad? How can it act as if things are the same as they were on 31 December, when they will never ever be the same again? Each day it becomes harder – harder to pretend I am coping, when my every thought is of Rachel, only of Rachel. Terrible images tear me apart, both day and night. Trying always to conjure up her face in my mind and failing to do so. The horror of what happened to my defenceless, youngest child, how she must have suffered, and the overwhelming desire for answers. Not the precise details of how she died, but the need to know the circumstances surrounding her death – how that monster was able to overpower her and get her up into his hovel. It is all-consuming. My mind will never rest until I know that much, at least.
I can see this family becoming more fragmented with every passing day, yet I feel there is nothing I can do about it. Despite my outward demeanour of calmness, I am totally destroyed inside. It is as if something is squeezing the very life out of my body and I am unable to fight against it. If I were to do so, I fear that I would lose control completely and I cannot let that happen. I must keep going, at least until the trial, for Rachel’s sake, until her name is cleared and she is exonerated of all blame. She must be seen, by everyone, as the innocent girl she was in all this. The world must know it and I owe it to her that the truth be told. So I must try to keep my head, stay calm and, above all, not dwell on the forthcoming trial.
I have been informed that I am to be called as the only family witness but that does not worry me. I am not afraid for myself, nor of facing once more the evil creature who snuffed out Rachel’s life so cruelly. I am not afraid of standing up to the barrister who is defending him, but I am very much afraid of letting Rachel down. Of saying the wrong thing and of having to listen to the pack of blatant lies Little will undoubtedly resort to in order to blacken my daughter’s character so she becomes the one to blame and her cowardly murderer the victim.
I feel very much alone now and unable to voice my innermost thoughts and fears, even to my husband of 40 years. It is as if a wedge has been driven between the two of us, and our only son, who remains at home with us, is caught in the middle of it all. We three are living together – yet apart – in the same house. We seem to have separate lives at the moment, each of us inhabiting different rooms and rarely coming together.
We all dwell on Rachel’s fate but none of us wants to voice those thoughts aloud. Certainly we don’t discuss our doubts and fears. It is too painful. Each of us has our own theory about what happened and they don’t always tie in with the other’s, so there have been some heated moments and probably more to come. Therefore, it is better that we say nothing, rather than say things that we will regret in the future.
To those outside our little circle, this must seem strange behaviour. One would likely imagine that we would draw closer together and take strength from each other but this is just not happening. I know that Kerry finds this very hard to understand but she does not live among us, nor has she experienced the atmosphere that prevails from day to day in our once happy home. In the absence of family and close friends near by, we have only each other now, and it seems familiarity is beginning to breed contempt. The police visits dried up long ago, apart from the odd times when they need to impart some snippet of news to us. We, Rachel’s family, are no better informed than the general public as to what exactly befell her on that night, though we do know the cause of her death.
Naturally, we have our own theories, but we have been told nothing concrete concerning the case. It is understandable that we cannot be given inside information at random, nor would we want the responsibility of knowing everything that the police know. Indeed, it is vital to us that nothing is said beforehand that might jeopardise the trial, so we must wait until October to hear the facts.
Even so, the frustration is unbearable – wanting to know and yet not wanting to know the ordeal that Rachel had to suffer. Imagining every scenario and going over, again and again, the whys, the wherefores, the ifs, the buts. Driving ourselves mad, dealing with the bits of definite information we have been given. It just does not bear thinking about. I can get to the point where Rachel was accosted, however that may have happened, but when I think of the terror that must have ensued, my mind shuts down. After all this time, I have yet to break down and grieve for Rachel’s loss and I never cease to wonder how this can be.
She was my youngest child and I dearly loved and cherished her. Her loss is indescribable, so why am I unable to shed bitter tears, knowing that she is never going to come back again? In the deep of the night, when sleep eludes me, I try to analyse my bizarre behaviour and the only answer I can come up with is that I am still in deep shock – I am not yet ready to accept that this terrible thing has happened. Not to Rachel, and not to us, an ordinary family living everyday lives. It does not seem possible that a stranger could kill my child, almost on her own doorstep, in an area where I grew up. This is the stuff of Stephen King books and horror movies – not the kind of thing that happens to people like us. I still haven’t faced up to the fact that it has happened, and it worries me greatly that I never will.