Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years

by Kirby, Jacqui

  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. It remained there throughout his fortnight’s stay.

  Colette had a particularly lovely pen pal called Therese and the two became great friends. They wrote to each other for years and remained very close long after their exchange trips.

  When the kids weren’t at school, they would play with friends at their houses or in our back garden. It was the unwritten rule that I always knew where they were – I didn’t want my children roaming the streets. I always liked to know that they were happy and safe.

  Besides dancing, my other great passion was cooking. I’d often be found in the kitchen surrounded by children baking cakes and buns, with flour and icing sugar spilled over the floor and every available kitchen surface. Colette and Mark loved to cook too, so I would often hold baking sessions in the kitchen. My friend Sue Copley lived two doors away. Sue didn’t like to bake, so I’d invite her two children Melanie and Jason to come over too. Jason and Mark would stand on one side with Colette and Melanie on the other. It would be girls versus boys in the bake-off stakes and, after watching my demonstration, they couldn’t wait to get stuck in themselves. Colette’s cakes were always the best of the group – she just had a natural talent.

  After a while, the other children tired of cooking, but not Colette. She kept it up and would bake for Tony, Mark and me. When I was younger, my father refused to eat anything that I’d cooked, so it was important to me to recognise and give encouragement when the children made us things. I would insist that we would all sit down as a family to taste whatever Colette had made that day. Sometimes the food wasn’t very appetising – particularly when she tried to experiment with different herbs and spices – but whatever Colette made, be it a cake, a tart or a simple hot pan of fresh soup, we’d always praise her for her efforts. It also made her happy to see the pleasure in other people’s faces as they tucked into something she’d lovingly prepared.

  Sometimes I’d catch myself in this happy family scene. I was living in a perfect bubble in the middle of my dream. I was blessed with a lovely family and an adoring husband – what more could anyone want? We had so much fun together – they were the happiest days of my life, if only I could turn the clock back to those precious moments, rewind and live through them just one more time.

  The years flew by and soon the children had grown into teenagers. Before long, it was time for Mark and then Colette to sit their exams.

  Mark had always wanted to work with electrics. He worked hard and was lucky to secure an apprenticeship at Blackburn and Starling, a local electrician firm.

  Colette had it in her mind to become a nurse. She was such a caring girl so it was a natural progression for her to want to do such a worthy job. She spoke to her teacher at school and was sent on work experience at Saxondale Hospital, just outside Nottingham. In those days, it was a mixed hospital but it also had a psychiatric unit, which treated people who had suffered nervous breakdowns. I worried about her safety but Colette gently reminded me that this would be exactly the environment that she would be asked to work in when she became a nurse. However, when she returned home after her first day, she seemed somewhat down in the mouth.

  ‘What’s the matter, love? Didn’t you enjoy it?’ I asked.

  Colette shook her head sadly. ‘No it’s not that, Mum, I loved it, but I’ve been told that I can’t study to become a nurse until I’m at least 18.’

  Colette was 15 years old and three more years seemed like a lifetime away to her. She was heartbroken but she also didn’t want to wait.

  ‘If I can’t be a nurse, then I’ll try my second option,’ she announced.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘A hairdresser, like you, Mum.’

  I had mixed feelings about Colette following in my footsteps. Hairdressing wasn’t all glamour; it was long hours, standing on your feet all day. But I also didn’t want to discourage her from doing something that she really wanted to do.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she grinned, wrapping her arms around my neck and giving me a hug.

  We lived in Keyworth, Nottingham, and in the middle of the village was a parade of shops – one was a hairdresser called Salvatore. It was run by a wonderful, flamboyant Italian of the same name. Salvatore took to Colette immediately and offered her an apprenticeship starting the following year, when she had finished her school exams. I have never seen my daughter more thrilled. What’s more, she’d won it entirely on her own merits.

  That September in 1982, Tony and I decided to go to the South of France for a two-week break. Mark was almost 17 years old by then and decided that he was far too grown up to go on holiday with his parents.

  ‘No way!’ were his exact words. He stayed at home and my mum, aunt May and uncle Ken popped in every day to check that he was OK.

  In the meantime, we enjoyed our fortnight’s holiday with Colette and her school friend Amanda. We had no idea at the time, but it would be the last holiday we wou
ld ever share with our treasured Colette. For two weeks, we were blissfully happy, unaware of the horrors that were yet to come.

  We stayed in an apartment in Cap d’Agde, then a new and up-and-coming resort, a five-hour train ride from Paris and just a few miles from Montpellier. It boasted its own beautiful manmade marina, which moored some of the biggest yachts I’d ever seen. We would walk along there most evenings to have our dinner at one of the little restaurants situated on the waterfront, close to the harbour.

  During the day, Tony and I would laze on the beach while the girls went off to explore. On one of the first days, Colette and Amanda ran back along the beach with something to tell us, but they collapsed with a fit of giggles and couldn’t talk straight away. After a while, they calmed down enough to tell us what was so funny.

  ‘You’re never going to believe it,’ exclaimed Colette, ‘but there are loads of people down there a bit further along the beach and they’ve got no clothes on – not a stitch!’

  Amanda looked at me and nodded in confirmation.

  ‘What!’ I gasped.

  ‘It’s true, Mum. There are men along there playing badminton but they’re not wearing any clothes – everything is just … well, it’s just bobbing about!’

  With that, she started laughing again, unable to control herself. Amanda joined in, and the two of them had tears rolling down their cheeks.

  ‘Never!’ I said, covering my open mouth with my hand.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, then come and have a look for yourself,’ Colette insisted.

  We walked along the beach for a few minutes until we wandered deep into the group of naturists. Sure enough, they were all naked. Most were men and they were all playing badminton!

  ‘See,’ Colette whispered. ‘Now do you believe me?’

  At that moment, a man walked towards us with his little dog. Colette covered her mouth and buried her head deep into my shoulder to stifle her laughter. The man had the brightest carrot-ginger hair I’d ever seen. He was thin, with a puny physique and he was naked – his bluey-white skin almost glowed in the bright sunshine. He stood out like a sore thumb against the other bronzed naturists. The man was completely starkers apart from a pair of sad-looking sandals that flapped against his feet. A thin brown lead fell limply from his hand and was attached to a little yappy dog with white and ginger fur.

  ‘Look,’ said Colette through snorts of laughter, ‘they match!’

  Soon Amanda, Colette and I were laughing so much that some of the naturists had put down their badminton racquets and had begun to look over at us. We turned and beat a hasty retreat along the shoreline and back to the safety of Tony and the sun loungers.

  Lying in the sun wasn’t enough for the girls, and they wanted to try their hand at windsurfing. One day, Tony and I paid for them to have a go. I can still picture Colette as she tried to stand up on the board, laughing so much that she would send herself slipping off it and into the sea. Then, despite herself, she would haul herself up and try once more – most of the time she couldn’t get back on to the board for laughing. We were in hysterics just watching her from the comfort of our sun loungers.

  Colette saw us and ran back on to the beach. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she said, flopping down on a nearby towel, baked warm and dry from the hot midday sun.

  ‘You’re quite the expert,’ I teased.

  Colette rolled her eyes and laughed. Once she was dry, she ran back into the sea towards Amanda with her board to have another go.

  She spent more time in the water than the windsurfing board itself. It still makes me smile to think of her happy in the sunshine, free from cares and worries – two weeks of bliss, never wanting to return home.

  But return home we did, and Colette was due to start her final year at school before she embarked on her new and chosen career.

  A few months later, in January, the phone rang. It was Salvatore, who wanted Colette to go and see him at the salon. We were puzzled as she wasn’t due to start her apprenticeship until the summer.

  Less than an hour later, Colette walked in through the front door. She was in floods of tears and was inconsolable.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ I asked, holding her in my arms. I’d never seen her so upset.

  It took a few minutes for Colette to compose herself. Her chest was heaving with big heavy sobs, as through her tears she began to explain that Salvatore had decided that he was going to sell the hairdressing salon.

  ‘So there’s going to be no apprenticeship, no position and no hairdressing job for me,’ she sobbed.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ I soothed.

  But Colette’s heart was broken. To her this was the end of the world, and she fled to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. But hours later, despite my assurances that something would come up, I could still hear her crying.

  The following morning at breakfast, I tried to speak to her. ‘Colette, you’ve got a while before you finish school – at least six months, something else will come up.’

  But she was barely listening; she was devastated. First the nursing and now this. I didn’t know what to do to make it better.

  Later that day, Colette went to visit May and Ken in a bid to cheer herself up. She told them what had happened at the salon and how Salvatore was selling up. She was still feeling fed up when she came home a few hours later.

  A few days later, I dropped by to see Ken and May. We were discussing Colette’s predicament and I told them how upset she had been. ‘I’ve never seen her like this – it’s as though the wind has been stolen from her sails,’ I sighed.

  Aunt May thought for a while. ‘How about we buy the salon and then Colette can have her apprenticeship?’ she suggested.

  I looked at her in astonishment. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You can’t do that – it’s too much, it’ll cost a fortune.’

  But May was adamant and so was Ken. Colette and Mark were the closest thing they had to children of their own, so why not let them help out and keep it in the family? As it turned out, they’d already decided and had made the necessary enquiries. They had it all worked out.

  ‘I could manage it,’ May explained, ‘Ken can do the maintenance on the shop, you can work there and Colette can have her apprenticeship after all. It’s perfect. Then, when she’s fully trained, we could give her the salon – it would secure her future.’

  Ken nodded in agreement. ‘We’ve been looking for an investment,’ he said, ‘and this is it.’

  And so it was decided. All we had to do now was tell Colette.

  That teatime, when I returned back home, Colette was mooching around the house – she’d been like that since she’d received the news about the job.

  ‘Aunt May and Uncle Ken are popping by to see you later,’ I called to her.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. They want to see you about something,’ I said, trying not to give too much away in my voice. It was Ken and May’s job to deliver the exciting news.

  Shortly afterwards, there was a knock at the door. It was my aunt and uncle. We called Colette down and she glumly walked into the front room. Her face was still crushed with the disappointment of the week before.

  ‘Aunt May and Uncle Ken have something to tell you,’ I began.

  Colette looked at them quizzically.

  ‘We’re buying you the salon; that way you can have your apprenticeship and eventually run the shop!’ May told her.

  Colette’s mouth fell open in disbelief. She gasped and clasped her hand over her mouth. Her brown eyes lit up with excitement, as she looked from Ken and May to me.

  I nodded. ‘It’s true, what do you think?’ I said.

  ‘Really? That’s brilliant!’ Colette gasped, running over to hug them. Her eyes were full of tears but this time they were tears of joy.

  ‘I just can’t believe it. Thank you. Thank you so much,’ Colette said again and again.

  At last, my daughter’s future was secure, or so we thought. After that mom
ent, Colette was back to her old self. She was excited and was looking forward to starting her new career.

  Salvatore sanctioned the sale and, as part of the deal with May and Ken, it was agreed that Colette would help out after school and on Saturdays. She began her training. She did everything from taking phone calls to making tea and coffee. If she wasn’t sweeping up hair from the floor, she’d be at the sink shampooing customers. She loved every minute and relished every moment in her new role.

  One of the benefits of being a teenage girl working in a hairdressers was that Colette also got to try out all the new hairstyles for free. One day, she returned home from work and shot past me quickly in the hallway. She had her head bowed and I was immediately suspicious.

  ‘Wait a minute, young lady,’ I said. ‘What’s that at the front of your hair?’

  As Colette turned to face me, I gasped. The front of her beautiful dark glossy hair had been bleached within an inch of its life. In its place was an awful custard-coloured yellow fringe the texture of frazzled straw!

  ‘Oh, Colette,’ I sighed, ‘What have you done?’

  But Colette remained defiant. ‘I like it,’ she sniffed.

  I shook my head. It looked awful. ‘Colette, it looks horrible, like a line across the front of your head. You’ve got lovely hair – you don’t need to do that to it.’

  But Colette insisted that the custard-coloured fringe was here to stay. ‘It’s fashion, Mum,’ she said.

  ‘Well, if that’s fashion, you can keep it.’ I retorted. ‘It looks, well, really cheap – and you’re not cheap, Colette. Please dye it back again.’

  I was begging her but she was already halfway up the stairs.

  ‘I’m in hairdressing, Mum,’ she said crossly. ‘What do you expect?’ With that she slammed her bedroom door.

  In April, we celebrated Mark’s 19th birthday. Most people gave him money because boys that age are hard to choose presents for. Mark decided to buy a dog with his cash. He was working by now, so I reasoned he could afford to keep his own dog. He went to some kennels nearby and soon returned with a gorgeous Old English sheepdog.