I thought I’d sleep like a log on the night after the verdict, but I was actually pretty restless. Coral didn’t get much rest either and we both got up early. There were so many thoughts running through our heads that it was hard to switch off. Above all, we both wondered how we’d readjust to normal life now the trial was over. For eight months our sole purpose had been to get justice for April. Now we had achieved that, all we were left with was our overpowering grief.
It was a beautiful morning, so we had breakfast outside our little cottage before packing our things into Dai’s van. On the way home, I noticed that the newspaper billboards outside every newsagent and convenience store bore April’s name. Even though we’d been in the media spotlight for almost a year, it was still strange seeing our daughter’s name plastered everywhere and our faces on the front pages of the newspapers. Thankfully, the Sun article was sensitively written and we were both happy with the end result.
We got back to Machynlleth by mid-afternoon. Harley was away for the weekend with a friend’s family and Jazmin had gone out for a few hours with my mum and Dai, so the house was deathly quiet. Both Coral and I were fighting back tears as we stepped over the threshold and the dogs ran to greet us.
The lack of sleep had begun to catch up with Coral, so she went for a nap while I walked the dogs along the riverside. Enjoying the sunlight on my face, it felt good to be outdoors again. It hadn’t felt natural to me being cooped up inside all day.
As ever, my thoughts turned to April. The next thing Coral and I would have to consider was our little girl’s funeral, but we didn’t know when her remains would be released to us. Even when they were, all we’d have would be a few tiny bone fragments. Coral had told the Sun that she feared going to her grave without knowing where April was, just like Winnie Johnson, the mother of the Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett. I’d begun to accept that this was a strong possibility.
Coral and I had also begun to discuss the idea of a campaign against child pornography. Although we’d been warned about the indecent images before the court case, we’d had no idea of the extent of Bridger’s vile obsession until we’d attended the trial. Quite frankly we were horrified at how readily available such depraved material was online. We were left in no doubt that the disgusting content Bridger had accessed in the lead-up to April’s abduction had fuelled his sick fantasies.
We were bemused that his online activity hadn’t been picked up before April was taken, as he’d viewed so many illegal pictures, but not as bemused as we were about the fact he’d managed to access these images in the first place. We had no idea why the major search engines, such as Google and Bing, which was owned by Microsoft, didn’t have proper safeguards in place to automatically filter such disgusting content, to ensure it didn’t appear in search results.
We didn’t buy the idea that they weren’t capable of this – these were some of the biggest corporations in the world, with billions of pounds and scores of experts at their disposal. If they didn’t clean up their act, Coral and I believed we needed to get tough with them and hit them where it really hurt – in the pocket. We saw no reason why the law couldn’t be changed to ensure they’d be liable for huge fines if they didn’t do enough to stop paedophiles successfully searching for illegal images.
We weren’t naive; we knew that ridding the internet of child pornography wouldn’t be enough to stamp out paedophilia completely, but we hoped it could go some way to addressing the problem. We mentioned this to Ryan and Emma from the Sun and they agreed to help arrange a meeting with Dr Sara Payne, a high-profile campaigner against child abuse who wrote a regular column for the newspaper.
Like most parents, we were horrified when Sara’s eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted in the summer of 2000, while she played near her grandparents’ house in Kingston Gorse, West Sussex. Sarah and her brother Lee had been playing hide and seek but, after a short while, Sarah fell over and hurt herself. She decided she wanted to go back to see her grandmother, Les, who had stayed at home, as she was tired after cooking a large family meal. Lee tried to run after her and had only taken his eyes off her for a second when she disappeared.
After seventeen tortuous days, Sarah’s little body was found in a field around fifteen miles from where she was last seen alive. The story was on the front page of newspapers for weeks and was the leading item on all the television news bulletins. I’d just moved in with Coral and, along with the rest of the nation, we watched in horror, unable to imagine the agony of this poor girl’s family. We never dreamed that one day we’d understand their pain more than anyone ever should.
Following a large-scale police investigation, a paedophile called Roy Whiting was charged and later convicted of Sarah’s murder. In an excruciating twist, it transpired that Sarah’s brother Lee had seen Whiting waiting in a white van yards from the beach just moments after he’d lost sight of his sister. Whiting had grinned at Lee, who had no idea that Sarah was inside, then waved as he drove off to abuse and kill her.
After the trial, it emerged that Whiting had been sentenced to four years in prison for sexually assaulting another eight-year-old girl five years previously. Shortly after he arrived in jail in 1995, he was assessed by a psychiatrist, who deemed him likely to reoffend. Despite the fact Whiting refused to attend a sex offenders’ rehabilitation course, he was released after serving just over half of his sentence – meaning he was free to abduct and murder Sarah.
When Sara discovered this, she was naturally distraught and decided she had to act. With the help of the now-defunct tabloid newspaper, the News of the World, she began to campaign for a law that would give parents and guardians controlled access to the Sex Offenders’ Register. At the discretion of the relevant authorities, this would allow adults involved in the care of a young person to check whether individuals who came into contact with the child had any record of sexually abusing young people. This was partly modelled on the Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act in the USA, more commonly known as Megan’s Law. It was informally named after a seven-year-old girl, Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered in 1994 by a neighbour with previous convictions for sexually assaulting children.
In 2011, after a decade-long fight, Sarah’s Law – known officially as the Child Sex Offender Disclosure scheme – was finally introduced in the UK, by which point Sara had become one of the most respected campaigners in the country. She was awarded an MBE for her work in 2008, which was followed by an honorary doctorate from the Open University in 2012. She has also served as an adviser to the UK government.
When we met Sara in London on 4 June, Sarah’s Law had already helped concerned adults identify hundreds of convicted paedophiles who had access to children close to them. Sara had been absolutely unwavering in her determination to have the law changed, and we knew her advice would be very useful if we wanted to drive through our own changes.
Ryan and Emma arrived in Machynlleth in the early afternoon of the Monday following the trial. They had asked us if we’d like to bring Jazmin and Harley to London with us and we agreed this would be a good idea. We’d spent so much time apart from them over the last month that we decided it would be nice to do something as a family. We also thought the change of scenery would benefit us all.
Jazmin and I travelled with Ryan in one car, while Coral and Harley went with Emma in another. The journey took over four hours and this gave both Coral and me a chance to speak to the reporters about the campaign. We arrived at our hotel around 6.30 p.m. and, shortly afterwards, we were taken out for a meal.
Over the course of various discussions throughout the day, Coral and I had told Ryan and Emma that we’d like to start a petition against the child pornography that seemed so readily available on the internet. The Sun quickly agreed to give us its backing and we agreed on a few key objectives.
There was one thing on which we were absolutely clear: we wanted it to be made illegal for search engines to return links to content which depicted any kind of child sex abuse, and we wanted the companies involved to be liable for substantial fines if they didn’t comply with the legislation we proposed. Very quickly, we began to refer to this as April’s Law.
We decided that we also wanted to make it compulsory for internet companies to help fund policing of the web, and we wanted the government to dedicate greater financial resources to clamping down on illegal images of children online.
In our view, the combined funds would allow them to employ technical experts to identify abusive images and people searching for child pornography. We also wanted on-screen warnings for people who viewed this content, to make browsers aware of the nature of such websites before they entered them. Coral suggested that if a person was caught trying to access the same illegal website on a second occasion, the police should be notified immediately and an investigation launched.
We met Sara in a coffee shop across from our hotel early the next morning. I was slightly surprised to discover she was on crutches. She greeted us warmly and was very open about her health problems, telling us she’d been paralysed down her left side after suffering a stroke several years previously. As we sat down and ordered drinks, we learned just how much she had been through since Sarah’s death. Sara and Mike had been childhood sweethearts but the grief of losing their much-loved daughter had torn their marriage apart. However, while they were in the process of separating, Sara discovered she was pregnant with their fifth child, Ellie, who was now nine. Despite all of the obstacles she’d faced, Sara had flatly refused to give up and remained wholeheartedly committed to campaigning against the sexual abuse of children. This only cemented our admiration for her.
When the conversation turned to the campaign, however, I took a bit of a back seat. It was important for Coral to talk to Sara as much as she could, mother to mother.
Coral recalls:
Although Sara immediately struck me as friendly and sympathetic, my overriding memory of her is of her fire. I was in awe of her determination and resilience. We immediately felt her presence when we walked into the room. It was clear she was no softly spoken shrinking violet. Life had dealt her so many cruel blows, but every time she had come back fighting.
When she began to tell me about the first, dreadful months after Sarah was taken, I saw so much of myself in her. Like me, she’d been a normal mum from a humble background. She’d never craved the limelight, or the finer things in life. She and Mike didn’t have a big, fancy house or a flashy car in the driveway. What they did have was the love of their beautiful children, whom they would have laid down their lives for – and they wouldn’t have had it any other way.
But, like me, Sara’s world was turned upside down in the blink of an eye when she made what seems like the most mundane of decisions – allowing her daughter to play outside.
Another Sun reporter, Antonella Lazzeri, had been sent to cover the meeting but I almost forgot my words were being recorded as I spoke candidly to Sara.
‘Does the pain ever go away?’ I asked. My hands had started to shake and I could barely hold my coffee cup.
Sara put a supportive hand on my arm. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’d like to tell you it does, but it really doesn’t. It does lessen with time and you get a lot more good days than bad.’
I told Sara all about the months before the trial: how I was often unable to get out of bed and how, some days, I’d survive on a few tiny mouthfuls of Ready Brek. She nodded sympathetically; she too had been barely able to function in the aftermath of Sarah’s death. She and Mike had frequently rowed, as she’d spend hours staring mindlessly at the television while he was at work, barely attempting to do the chores or cook dinner for the children. She’d pull herself together to give newspaper interviews or make television appearances to speak about Sarah’s Law, but privately her life was in disarray.
We then began to talk about the campaign. I asked her a bit about Sarah’s Law, before we moved on to talking about child pornography. It still made my stomach lurch to think of the images I’d seen in court, but I knew I had to do it for April.
‘Paul and I would love to work with you,’ I told her. ‘There’s no reason for these sites to be there. If you’re looking at a paedophile site, there has to be something wrong with you.’
Sara nodded in agreement.
‘I didn’t want to look at those pictures in court, but I had to,’ I said. ‘They were just horrible. Why should they be on the internet?’
Sara squeezed my hand, shaking her head in disgust. ‘I know, Coral,’ she replied.
‘I believe in a warning flashing up when you go looking for those sites,’ I went on. ‘One time, you might have made a mistake, but a second? You should be warned and reported to the police. If that had happened to Mark Bridger, it might have stopped him. This campaign will give me something to focus on. I fear if I stop, I’ll crack.’
‘You won’t,’ Sara replied, firmly. ‘You’re stronger than you think.’
We then had some photographs taken, before we recorded a video for the Sun’s website. Being filmed was a curious experience, as chatting to Sara was as natural as talking to an old friend. Speaking about the campaign, I felt animated and passionate, but when we moved on to April, tears sprang to my eyes.
‘I was the one who said she could go out,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘So I feel guilty.’
‘But every child should have that right,’ Sara replied. ‘Every child has the right to play, to go on their bikes. Surely that’s what childhood is about?’
I sighed and nodded. It was all just so cruel. Since April had been taken, I’d been tempted to wrap Harley and Jazmin in cotton wool and never let them out of my sight. But I knew this wasn’t healthy or normal and that I had to let them develop into young adults without constant scrutiny.
Soon the camera stopped rolling and it was time to say our goodbyes. Sara said she’d like to keep in touch.
‘Coral, you didn’t do anything wrong that day,’ she told me. ‘You wanted to give your daughter a treat because she’d done well at school. Why shouldn’t she have had a treat?’
‘I said it was OK, as long as it was just for a little while,’ I replied. ‘I just thought, I’ll give her fifteen minutes extra. It wasn’t even dark.’
‘I drove myself mad with the “if onlys”,’ Sara admitted. ‘But you can’t keep beating yourself up. What could you have done, locked her in her bedroom? You can’t keep blaming yourself. It will kill you.’
I couldn’t quite bring myself to accept that I’d ever get over the guilt I felt for letting April out that night, but I was grateful to Sara for trying her best to convince me I hadn’t been in the wrong.
She then gave me a big hug and handed me a piece of paper with her mobile number on it. I knew we wouldn’t have the time to speak as regularly as we’d like – we were both busy mums with families to attend to – but it was comforting to know she was at the other end of the phone whenever I needed a chat.
Coral seemed buoyed by the meeting with Sara. As we made our way back to the hotel, I could almost sense some of her old vibrancy returning.
‘Hopefully we can make some changes,’ she said. ‘The internet definitely had a lot to do with April’s death.’
‘I know,’ I said, sadly, wondering for what seemed like the hundredth time if Bridger’s desire to abuse children would have got so out of hand if he hadn’t had access to such horrible websites.
‘If I can save just one more child, I’ll be happy,’ she went on. ‘This is for all families, Paul. Not just for us.’
‘I’m really proud of you for doing this,’ I told her. ‘Let’s hope we can make a difference.’
To take our mind off things, the Sun had arranged a trip that afternoon for us and the children to go on the London Eye. We all enjoyed the experience and Coral and I were even treated to champagne. We were then whisked off to an Italian restaurant for dinner, where we had a lovely meal.
As we ate, I felt like I was being torn in two different directions. It was so nice be able to treat Harley and Jazmin after everything they’d been through, and we’d never have been able to afford such a lavish day out in London if we’d had to pay for it ourselves. But, on the other hand, we were under no illusions that none of us would have been sitting there if we hadn’t lost April. London was exciting, but it was also busy and bustling and a little bit out of our comfort zone. Coral and I would have happily never taken another trip or had another meal out again if it could have brought April back to us.
We got back to the hotel around 8 p.m. and I wrote in my diary while Coral, Jazmin and Harley watched a bit of television.
‘Today has been a good day,’ I wrote. ‘I can see a difference in Coral. With something to fight for, she’s more herself. I hope this will make her stronger and help her on the road to recovery.
‘Coral and Sara got on very well. They talked about their suffering and how between them they could maybe get some of these pornographic sites taken down. Both of them felt this would make a serious difference, as surely these sites can only fuel sexual predators.
‘As for me, I struggle for a cause, but perhaps just being there for Coral, Jazz and Harley is enough. Hopefully this will help me on my road to recovery. It’s nice to be able to spoil the kids but I feel very tired and tearful when we’re out together, enjoying ourselves without April. It still makes me feel sad and low.
‘I love you, April. Dad xxx.’
The next morning, we were woken by our alarms at 6.30 a.m. We’d agreed to do our first proper television interview since the trial, with the ITV programme This Morning. We had a quick breakfast before the taxi picked us up at 8 a.m. and we travelled to the studios.
Coral and I would be interviewed by presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, where we would have the chance to speak about our campaign and how we hoped to change the law in April’s name. Phillip Schofield in particular had taken an interest in April’s case from the very start, appealing for information on Twitter just the day after she vanished, so we hoped he’d be sympathetic to our plight. Emma, Jazmin and Harley came along too. They were allowed to watch our interview from behind the camera.
Phillip and Holly are national icons and we wondered what they would be like off camera. Rumours often abound about how well-known celebrities can be demanding and dismissive in real life, when faced with the prospect of interacting with the general public. This certainly wasn’t true of Phillip and Holly. They couldn’t have been kinder to us and truly lived up to their reputations. They spent a few minutes coaching us on the interview before we went on air and telling us how they would prompt us when they wanted us to speak.
Appearing on a show like This Morning is very different to watching it at home, where everything looks so effortless and natural. In reality, it can only be described as organised chaos. As well as Phillip and Holly onscreen, there were some thirty people buzzing around in the background, running around with clipboards and cameras or doing make-up. The team was obviously very talented and we were in awe of how they managed to make the programme look so slick as it was being broadcast.
We were told we’d probably be on air for around six minutes but, in the end, the interview lasted twice as long. We barely noticed – we had so much to say on April and the campaign that we weren’t sure how it could have been cut down.
‘These indecent images should be removed,’ I said, when we were asked about child pornography on the internet.
‘I’d like to do something in April’s name,’ Coral agreed. ‘If I can save just one person, it’s better than none.’
Afterwards, Phillip and Holly chatted to the children and signed some autographs for them. I also got a signed photograph of Holly for one of my friends, who was a big fan of hers. Needless to say, he was delighted.
In the afternoon, Coral and Jazmin went to have their hair done, while Harley and I did a bit of clothes shopping. We had a nice late lunch with Ryan and Emma, before we said goodbye to them and caught a taxi to Euston Station to begin the long train journey back to Machynlleth.
On the way home, Coral had a chance to catch up with her emails and Facebook messages and, already, lots of people had contacted her to say they wanted to support our campaign. But, as we knew all too well, a few good days are almost always followed by several bad ones. We got home around 9 p.m. that evening after catching our connection at Birmingham and Coral was so drained she went straight to bed. I took the dogs for a short walk and I found myself crying.
‘Now I’m home, a sadness comes over me,’ I wrote in my diary when I got back in. ‘I look around and, knowing there’s no April, I find so many things that trigger me. It all comes back to me and I feel so sad and down. It’s an awful feeling, so hard to explain.
‘I wish I could see your face and hear your voice, April. I find it impossible to believe I’ll never hear or see you again. I miss you and it’s so tough and unfair. I find myself thinking of you a lot. I don’t cry as much but I still feel low. I have to carry on but at forty-four years old, I shouldn’t be living my life without you.
‘I love you, April Sue-Lyn Jones.
‘Your very sad and sorry Dad xxx.’
On the Friday of our first week back at home, Dave popped round for a visit. It was the longest we’d gone without seeing him since April was taken. We’d only spent a week apart from our FLOs, but it was like walking without our crutches. We were so used to them pointing us in the right direction and explaining everything.
Nonetheless, it was great to see Dave and to catch up. He stayed for over an hour and we told him about our week over a cup of tea.
On the Saturday, we did an interview with Woman’s Own magazine, which seemed to go OK. Coral had a chat on the phone with one of the writers in London before they sent a photographer to do some pictures. He suggested we go to Borth beach on the Ceredigion coast, as we’d often taken April there after school if the weather was nice. It was only a half-hour car journey and we agreed, as he promised it wouldn’t take long. However, we were starting to discover that photoshoots often had the habit of overrunning and we spent several hours posing on the sand. This wiped Coral out, so she went to bed as soon as we got home around 5 p.m.
I didn’t feel like resting, so I took Autumn and Storm down to the river, where I collected some stones for the memorial we’d been slowly building for April on the communal green area outside our home. We’d decided to call it April’s Garden, or Gardd April in Welsh. Lots of the neighbours had helped and it now looked beautiful.
Of course, almost everything we were given for the garden was in April’s favourite colour. There were pink bows, pink soft toys and even a pink doll’s house. Someone had built us a bench and a local business had donated garden furniture. Children had played happily on Bryn-y-Gog for decades before April was taken but in the months since her disappearance many parents had, understandably, been reluctant to let their kids out of their sight, even for a few minutes. We hoped that April’s Garden would be a symbol of hope, reminding them that the children had a right to play on the estate without fear.
The garden had been attracting a lot of visitors from outside the town. On that day, a lady from Welshpool, a town that lay forty miles away on the English border, had brought her daughter to the garden to lay a teddy in memory of April. The little girl was five years old and she bore an uncanny resemblance to my daughter. She had the same mousy brown hair, slight frame and impish smile. It almost stopped me in my tracks.
‘She’s very like April, isn’t she?’ I said to her mum.
‘Many people have said that,’ she replied.
We chatted for around twenty minutes and the girl’s mum told me that they often visited Machynlleth, as they had a caravan nearby. She’d always found the locals so welcoming and had never for a second doubted that her little girl would be safe here. Naturally she was deeply distressed when she’d heard about April’s abduction. It was a poignant moment and I had to bite my lip to stop myself from crying but it was lovely to see this little girl enjoying the garden in the sunshine.
I then took a walk up Penrach, where April and I had spent so many happy afternoons picking flowers and eating fruit. I’d been told that a few local women – we are still not sure of their identities – had erected their own memorial to our daughter on her favourite hill. They’d knitted lots of little pink squares and covered one of the trees in them. It had affectionately become known as the hugging tree.
I’d been putting off visiting the hugging tree, as walking up Penrach was very painful. Not only did it hold so many cherished memories of April, it was where I’d walked with Autumn and Storm on the morning of the day she disappeared, unaware of the nightmare that was about to unfold. However, both Coral and I were deeply touched that people could take the time to fashion such an elaborate tribute to our little girl and I decided the time had come for me to see it for myself.
The hugging tree was near the summit of the hill, where I’d often carried April on my shoulders when her legs grew tired. I’d managed to hold back the tears as I chatted to the little girl from Welshpool and her mum but now I couldn’t stop them as the tree slowly came into focus in a blaze of pink. All of the branches were adorned with intricately crafted squares of wool, each in different shades of my daughter’s favourite colour. There were also Hello Kitty toys and ribbons, which she would have loved. Not a spot of the tree had been missed. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much work had gone into making it look so lovely. It must have taken days, if not weeks, but these people had never drawn any attention to themselves, or asked for any thanks or recognition for their efforts. It was truly humbling.
I thought of April and how much she would have liked it. Now I was alone, I sobbed with abandon. As I looked down on Machynlleth and the white terraced houses of Bryn-y-Gog, I was crying so much I had to stop and catch my breath. I leaned against the hugging tree as the hot, salty tears streamed down my face. Even with Bridger locked away in jail, the agony would never truly be over.
I thought of the children who’d climb Penrach in the coming years, hand in hand with their parents. Perhaps they would sit at the top like April and I had, eating fruit and making up stories. I hoped the hugging tree would still be there to greet them – a symbol of love and hope in a town which in the eyes of the world was now overshadowed by evil and suffering.
As I walked down the hill and back into Machynlleth, I got upset again. The town looked so bare without the pink bows. When we had received the original letter saying that the council planned to remove them, the police had managed to persuade the councillors to leave them up until the end of the trial. But almost as soon as the verdict had been announced, they’d been taken down. Coral and I understood that Machynlleth had to move on and the town couldn’t remain in a permanent state of mourning – but given how much April’s disappearance had affected so many people, we felt that the councillors could have given us a few weeks’ grace. The bows had been a symbol of hope for April and now it looked like she’d been forgotten. We knew that the vast majority of people in the town would have had no objection if the council had waited a little while before removing them. What hurt the most was that no one from the council seemed able to explain the decision to us personally. Coral played bingo with some of the councillors, yet they acted like nothing had happened.
‘Give them an hour in my shoes and they’d feel differently,’ she’d sobbed to me a few nights previously.
Eventually, we managed to come to a compromise and one large pink bow was allowed to remain by the town clock. In time, a metal bow will be galvanised in pink on the clock tower itself and a plaque will be erected in April’s name. The bows provided such comfort to us during the most terrible time of our lives. We’re glad they will never disappear completely from the town.
To add to our distress, I came home to find Coral in tears again. She’d received an anonymous letter which blamed us for April’s disappearance. Her hands shaking, she handed it to me. My eye condition means I can only read with the aid of a special magnifying glass and it’s generally a long, laboured process. But as I slowly picked over the words, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
‘It’s your own fault your daughter was taken,’ it read. ‘She should have been bathed and in her bed but she was out playing on the streets. It is disgusting. A little girl with cerebral palsy should have been watched 24/7. You don’t deserve the children you have.’
Coral and I had received literally thousands of letters from members of the public and I can probably count on one hand those which were anything less than completely sympathetic to our distress. Yet no matter how many people contacted us wishing to express their condolences for the loss of April, it was always letters like these that stuck in our heads.
Countless people – our families, friends, the police, our counsellors and other bereaved parents like Sara Payne – had continually told us that we weren’t to blame for what had happened. April was taken because she came into contact with an evil and depraved man, they reminded us, not because we were bad parents. Still, it was hard not to let cruel words like these get to us and leave us wondering if we’d really done everything in our power to protect our little girl. With the benefit of hindsight, we’ve realised that these letter-writers are cowards with empty lives. None of them seem brave enough to put their names to their vitriol and anyone who finds time to needlessly goad a grieving family has to take a long, hard look at themselves before dishing out accusations.
‘My emotions are everywhere today,’ I wrote that evening. ‘I just find myself wanting to cry all day. I’m so lost. I don’t know what to do and I have no goal in life now April is gone and I feel useless because of my eyesight. I’m just running on my love for April and hers for me, as well as my love for Coral, Jazmin and Harley. But I wonder, is love enough? I’m buckling and twisting under the pressure. I’m crying at the smallest things again. I’m just depressed and I want my girl back. I want to hear her sing, to give her a cuddle and look into those two, lovely brown eyes.
‘I love you, April. Dad xxx.’
My mood was lifted the next day when the Sunday edition of the Sun released a link to our petition, along with a big article about the campaign. It featured coverage of Coral’s meeting with Sara and they’d also included a link to the video they’d recorded on the website. I hoped it would encourage more people to take notice of what we were trying to do.
I thought it would be a good idea for us all to get out for a bit, so Coral, Jazmin and I went to New Quay to visit my mum and Dai, while Harley stayed at home and played with his friends. It was nice to get out and enjoy the good weather and we went for a coffee and a sandwich. I suggested we all go to the beach but Coral quickly vetoed the idea. It was a different beach from the one we’d visited the previous day with the photographer but we’d had so many happy afternoons there with April that she just found it too painful.
I noticed that Coral had thrown herself into the campaign and seemed permanently glued to her phone or the laptop. I worried that she may be doing too much too soon, but she insisted she was fine and, in a way, it was good for her to have a focus.
The next day we went shopping in the town and were stopped numerous times. It was the first time many people had seen us since the trial and they all wanted to hug and kiss us. While we appreciated the gestures, it was a little unnerving for Coral, who had become extremely claustrophobic. My mind flashed back to the day we went Christmas shopping in Aberystwyth and how panicked she had been when a stranger wanted to hug her. Thankfully these were all people we recognised and she coped well considering. We then took Harley to the cinema to see Too Fast Too Furious 6, which he loved.
‘It’s good to get out and try and be a normal family,’ I wrote that night. ‘But deep down, we will never be normal again. Sometimes I find myself staring at April’s school photo or a small photo of her we have in the kitchen, which I like, and I just cry for a while. I’m lost and I don’t really know quite why I’m crying but the tears just overflow and pour down my face.
‘April, your mum is keeping to her word and trying to help others, keeping your name out there for a good cause. I’m trying my best to help your mum and look after her, Jazz, Harley, Autumn and Storm, as I promised. I love you, beautiful, and miss you so much. Driven by love, I can’t fail.
‘Love, Dad xxx.’