Time is a healer. That’s what I’ve been told by people over the years, but in my experience, time doesn’t heal your pain, it simply enables you to find a way to manage and live with it.
‘It would take two minutes to get home’
And my pain, that of a mother losing a child, is arguably the worst any human being can suffer, because my daughter died in the most heinous and cruellest of ways – something that more than 30 years on still gives me nightmares.
My daughter Nikki was the second oldest of my four girls and was by far the clingiest. She was my shadow and would follow me everywhere with a huge toothy grin, asking what I was doing and could she help too.
It was no different on 7 October 1992, when Nikki, seven, asked me what I was looking for as I rooted through the kitchen cupboards. I had a sore throat and wanted some painkillers, but with none at home, I told my oldest
