April

by Paul

  We didn’t want the Monday to be dominated by Bridger’s court appearance – we had to make it about April. There is a scene in Tangled where two of the characters are singing to each other on a boat when the sky suddenly fills with Chinese lanterns. April loved this part and she was in awe of the lanterns. As this was the last film she watched, it was hard for us to remember it without becoming tearful. But the thought of sitting in the house, waiting for the clock to strike seven and replaying the previous week’s events was agonising, so Coral had the idea of releasing some of our own lanterns for April.

  ‘If she’s still out there somewhere, they’ll guide her home,’ she said, hopefully, though both of us knew the hope was gone.

  Friends and family helped us source as many lanterns as possible and soon there were none left in either Machynlleth or Aberystwyth. Others also came with balloons. By early evening, the grass outside our house was packed with family, friends and neighbours, whose lives had been touched by April. At 7 p.m., we released them and, for a few minutes, they gave the dusky October sky a beautiful orange glow. It was a bittersweet moment.

  Now Bridger had been charged, all we could do was wait for the trial, but it was impossible for us to return to any sort of normality. A few weeks later, the local council agreed to light up the clock tower in pink as a tribute to April, and Dave and Hayley offered to take us out to see it. As we were preparing to leave, I suddenly remembered what day it was – 22 October, my 44th birthday. Without April, the day was meaningless. Even now, I’m not convinced I’ll ever feel like celebrating my birthday again.

  In those first few weeks, Coral and I developed very different ways of coping. I began exercising to the point where it was almost excessive, regularly running for five or six miles or spending hours in the gym. I’d barely go a day without trekking up the hill Dave and Hayley had taken us to the day Bridger was charged, my pockets full of pink ribbons. Some days, I’d find myself climbing it twice. Once, I got to the top and realised I’d forgotten the ribbons so I went straight home to get some and climbed the hill again. Punishing myself physically felt like a release, but even then I had a terrible sense of guilt at having almost enjoyed something. With Autumn and Storm at my side, I’d sit on a rock and look down on the town below, which had once held so many happy memories for me. Lost in my tears, I’d sometimes be oblivious to the fact hours had passed.

  One afternoon, I was walking alone with the dogs when I turned round to see two people following me. They looked familiar and I soon realised I recognised them – they were news reporters who’d camped out on Bryn-y-Gog when April first went missing. I wasn’t sure what publication they worked for, but I didn’t care. While I’d never have suggested that the press shouldn’t report on April’s story, my walks up the hill were one of the few things that provided me with any comfort and I was enraged that these private moments should be violated. My family had never asked to be in the news and I didn’t want to become public property. I turned round and shot the reporters a look and, without a word, they turned and left. I worried that they might try and follow me every day after that, but they never attempted it again.

  Coral, on the other hand, was broken. For someone who’d once been so active, spending her days volunteering in the school, baking cakes with the children and driving everyone around, she became like a shell. Overnight the feisty woman I’d fallen in love with had gone from living life to the full to merely existing. Weight began to drop off her and soon she’d lost over two stone. She lost interest in eating, and some days she’d survive on a couple of mouthfuls of Ready Brek. In the first week or so, she’d barely been able to sleep at all and was relying on tablets from the doctor to get some rest. But as the weeks wore on, the tables turned completely and she began staying in bed for sixteen hours a day. Often, she’d come downstairs and lie on the couch for a few hours in the afternoon before going straight back upstairs. It seemed that the only way she could cope with the massive burden of grief was to draw the curtains and shut out the outside world.

  It was around this time that Hayley suggested I begin keeping a diary. Not only would this help keep track of important details, she also thought it might be cathartic to write about my feelings. I was a little unsure at first. As well as my poor eyesight, I suffer from dyslexia, so writing can be a bit of a challenge. But as soon as I started putting my thoughts down on paper, I felt some kind of release. Tears filled my eyes as I started to think of what I’d say to April if she could hear me.

  ‘April, you leave a hole so big in me it may never be fixed,’ I wrote. ‘I’m only glad I had as much time with you as I did. It looked like it may have been less when you were born. Five and a half years of so much love. I can’t explain to anyone what it means to me.

  ‘Love you, Dad xxx.’

  When I’d finished these first few sentences, the tears had spilled out of my eyes and down my cheeks. From then on, I vowed to write in the diary every day.

  But as I began to collect my thoughts, some of them became dark. I imagined April’s little body lying in a ditch or a shallow grave, or dumped down a mineshaft as if she were an animal. I was so tortured by the images in my head that I thought about writing to Bridger and begging him to tell us where she was, but I couldn’t bring myself to waste my words on him when I could devote them all to April.

  One thing that did bring us some comfort was the beautiful pink bows which adorned Machynlleth, a reminder that April was still in everyone’s hearts. However, both Coral and I knew that there would come a day when they would be taken down so the town could move on.

  It was then we had the idea of having pink bows tattooed on our hands as a tribute to April. We liked the idea of making the bows permanent in some way and having them on our hands would make us feel like she was always with us.

  We booked an appointment at El Diablo Tattoos in Machynlleth. The tattoo artist was a friendly and professional man who called himself Rambo. It was obvious he recognised us straight away but he treated us very sensitively and he was careful not to pry.

  We both blinked back tears as he got to work on us. I’d decided to have the words ‘love you’ inked next to my pink bow and Coral chose ‘gobaith’, the Welsh word for hope. The sitting took a few hours, but we were delighted with the results. It was a bittersweet moment as the tattoos were beautiful but, of course, we wished we’d never had to have them done in the first place.

  April had been gone for around a month when Coral decided she needed to drive again. She’d spent so long in bed that she didn’t have time to go out, and she hadn’t been in the car since she and Tim had been out searching. Naturally she’d been avoiding it, as it now held such painful memories, but Coral’s car was a lifeline. Because of her knee problems, she could never walk far, but like April and her bike, she loved the independence it gave her.

  ‘If I don’t get back in the car now, I never will,’ she said.

  There was just one thing we had to do first. April’s car seat and buggy were still in the back of the car.

  ‘Paul, please put them in the attic,’ Coral choked. We couldn’t contemplate throwing them out, but neither could we live with such painful reminders of the perfect life we had before the nightmare had begun.

  As soon as I caught sight of my daughter’s things lying undisturbed, I couldn’t stop the tears. How could she be gone? We had hoped that one day soon her legs would be strong enough that she wouldn’t need her buggy. Now I couldn’t bear to think of never having the chance to wheel her around in it again.

  I carried the buggy and the car seat into the kitchen and Coral immediately broke down. I thought her heart might break in that moment. As I held her to me, I realised my own tears had turned into choking, guttural sobs. In the end, neither of us had the strength to open the attic, so Jazmin volunteered to do it, though it was easy to see the huge tears glistening in her eyes, too. After we’d carefully placed April’s things inside, we closed the door and virtually collapsed with grief. None of u
s was able to do anything else for the rest of the day.

  Dave and Hayley had promised to keep us in the loop as far as possible and they stuck to their word. We were soon told that Bridger’s trial would be likely to take place in February and that it would last around a month. At first I was adamant I could never sit through it. At that stage we had almost no idea what had happened to April, or what we were likely to hear. From early on in the case, it became obvious that the police we working on the assumption that she’d been sexually abused before she died. I expected I’d have to sit for weeks on end, listening to details of all the horrible, sick things that monster did to my little girl and I convinced myself I’d never cope.

  However, Coral was adamant she wanted to face our daughter’s abductor in court and I knew I couldn’t let her do it alone. Given what we’d have to go through in the coming months, statistically the odds were already stacked against our marriage, and Dave emphasised how important it was for us to do things together if we wanted to do what was best for our relationship. Life without each other was unimaginable – we had to take his advice.

  Dave and Hayley also told us that, as far as they were able, the police would share the evidence with us before the trial, so we could process it in our own time before we had to face Bridger in court. This reassured me slightly, but it didn’t stop the familiar feeling of dread when, around a month after April’s disappearance, we were summoned to the sanctuary for a meeting with Andy John. Dave and Hayley drove us there and the mood was bleak.

  ‘We have some more information from the forensic teams,’ Andy said. We knew this wasn’t going to be positive.

  ‘What have they found?’ I asked, taking Coral’s hand in mine.

  ‘They discovered there were traces of a substantial puddle of April’s blood on Mark Bridger’s living room floor. There were also spots of blood in the hall and in the bathroom.’

  ‘What do you think this means?’ I asked Dave.

  ‘I’m afraid if you’d lost that amount of blood, I don’t think you’d get up again,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry, Paul.’

  It was confirmation of what we already knew, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear.

  That night, I went upstairs and shut myself in Harley’s room, where I cried solidly for six hours. I didn’t think it was possible, but I shed so many tears I was in physical pain and my eyes, cheeks and jawbone ached. I don’t think the awful reality – that April was gone forever – had sunk in until now. As the evidence against Bridger mounted up, the situation was becoming unbearable.

  Coral and I have always been very much in tune with each other’s feelings, to the extent we can almost tell what the other is thinking. I think this is why, even in the darkest moments, we rarely broke down at the same time. Perhaps we knew that one of us always had to try and stay strong for the children. The next day, however, was a different story for Coral. The new information hit her like a ton of bricks and she spent most of the day crying in bed, while I looked after the children.

  It didn’t help that everything we did reminded us of April. As she’d needed a little more support than her brother and sister, we hadn’t realised how much our lives revolved around her. For me, evening times were the worst. Not only was this the time that she was taken, it was the time when we shared our most precious moments as I put her to bed. Harley and Jazmin were too old to be tucked in or to listen to my fairy stories. In an attempt to fill the massive void, I’d spend the evenings writing in my diary instead.

  ‘Her bed is now made up with quilts and blankets,’ I wrote. ‘Pillows and teddies all round – just no April. We’ve known for a long time that she will never fill that bed again. I’d give my life for one more goodnight.’

  While some days we wanted to do nothing more than lock ourselves in the house with our grief, there were so many things to do from a practical point of view. We were advised by the police that the trial would take place at the Crown Court in either Mold or Caernarfon. Both were around an hour and a half from Machynlleth by car and the judge decided, in the circumstances, that he’d let Coral and me decide which building we’d prefer. Dave and Hayley arranged to take us to see both courts at the start of November to help us make a decision.

  We immediately felt uneasy in Caernarfon. As soon as we arrived, the security guard insisted on thoroughly searching us both. He went through every individual item in Coral’s bag, which made her very distressed, and made no apology when he saw how upset we got. We understood that these checks were important, but for two very fragile people the manner in which they were carried out was humiliating and made us feel like criminals and not victims. Dave had some very stern words with the security guard and we can only hope he has now learned to be more sensitive with grieving families.

  To add to this, the courtroom made Coral feel claustrophobic, as it was very cramped. Since April had been taken she’d become extremely anxious when faced with big crowds. If we chose to have the trial there, we’d have to walk through the whole court to get to our seats at the front. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was a daunting prospect as we knew there would be hundreds of people packed into the small room, including dozens of reporters. We also wouldn’t have been able to see Bridger from where we were seated. This was especially important to Coral as she wanted to look him in the eye and force him to see the pain on our faces.

  We were then driven to Mold, which was around an hour away. Although we were searched going in, it was nothing like our experience in Caernarfon and the staff were much more sympathetic. We were also told they could arrange for us to have our own private room in another wing of the court, and there was a side entrance which would allow us to go straight to our seats without walking through the whole courtroom. It wasn’t a hard decision to make and we told Dave and Hayley almost straight away that we preferred Mold.

  Dave and Hayley took us to McDonald’s for lunch. Coral and I were both a bit withdrawn before I explained that we’d taken April here a few months previously, on our last visit to Holyhead. They were very apologetic and said we could go somewhere else if we liked, but we told them not to worry. It just seemed that everywhere we turned there was a reminder of April. As we drove home, we passed through lots of estates like ours in lots of different towns, with children like ours playing on the streets. I couldn’t help but wonder, why us? I’d never have wished the pain we were feeling on my worst enemy, but it seemed so unfair that this burden had somehow landed on our shoulders. What were the odds of our April being taken? It must have been thousands, if not millions, to one.

  Things got even worse as Christmas edged closer. Jazmin and Harley were remarkably resilient but we knew the whole situation was taking its toll on them and we wanted to at least have some kind of Christmas for them.

  Coral recalls:

  I’d always been good at budgeting for Christmas – buying things throughout the year so I could spread the cost, so I already had quite a lot of gifts for the children. Knowing that April’s presents would lie unwrapped in the cupboard was tearing me apart.

  In late November, I made the decision to go shopping in Aberystwyth to get the last of what I needed. Paul and I could have happily forgotten about the festive season but that wouldn’t have been fair on Jazmin and Harley.

  For someone who used to be very independent, I now couldn’t face being on my own and I literally wouldn’t leave the house without someone I trusted by my side. My life had completely changed in the space of a few short weeks. Some of our friends and neighbours had been wonderfully supportive but, as the dust settled, others distanced themselves. On the rare occasions I did venture out, I’d often see people I’d known for years cross the street to avoid me. I suppose they were so scared of saying the wrong thing that they chose to say nothing at all. It was incredibly hurtful.

  Paul agreed to come shopping with me. I’d spent so long locked away in my room, only leaving when I absolutely had to, that I had no idea what going to a busy shopping centre woul
d be like.

  I immediately felt out of my depth and we were both tearful. Paul was trying his best to hold it together for my sake, but I could tell he was struggling. This would be the first of many Christmases without April and it was so unfair.

  Even though it was a weekday, the shops were packed with people. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see people nudging each other and pointing to us. It’s astonishing how people can think they are being discreet when they’re so blatantly talking about you.

  Others didn’t attempt to be subtle, approaching us directly as if they’d known us their whole lives. I lost count of the number of people who called my name.

  ‘Mrs Jones!’ one woman exclaimed, rushing towards me as we walked along the main street. ‘Mrs Jones! You’re April’s mum!’

  She was around my age and I began to wonder if I knew her, but I didn’t recognise her face. I gripped Paul’s hand tightly but, before I knew it, she launched herself at me and wrapped her arms around me, enveloping me into a hug. I’d been caught completely off guard and I felt trapped. My hands were sweaty and my heart was hammering. Instead of feeling comforted, I felt suffocated, to the point where I was on the verge of a panic attack. Even when I broke free from her, shaking and barely able to breathe, she was undeterred.