Becky

by Darren Galsworthy

  ‘Since we set eyes on each other we knew we were destined to be together,’ I said. ‘I only blame the people who do things. Anjie isn’t guilty of anything – she has no control over what Nathan does. He’s a grown man. We’ve just got to take it day by day – that’s the only way we can do it. Every day is a struggle. Even getting up in the mornings has become almost impossible.’

  They asked Anjie whether she would like to visit Nathan in prison, and she hesitated before saying, ‘Eventually.’ One day, when she is strong enough, she wants to ask him why he did what he did to our family.

  ‘Unfortunately, he got up in the witness box and just lied all the way through it,’ I interjected. ‘All we want is the truth, and we weren’t given it.’

  We weren’t the only ones who felt that we had not yet heard the truth from Nathan and Shauna. The senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Mike Courtiour, told the press that his officers were frustrated that they could not be sure of the sequence of events. He said, ‘Nobody actually knows precisely what happened. We have had an account from Nathan Matthews, an explanation of what he said happened. Nobody knows the precise events. It remains a frustration to the police, the prosecution and the family.’

  I have loads of questions myself. I think Nathan and Shauna owe it to us to give a full and truthful account of my daughter’s final moments of life. It would be incredibly hard to hear, but the facts couldn’t be any worse than the images I have in my imagination. One day, perhaps, one or other of them will do us that courtesy.

  The morning after the sentencing, I woke up feeling horrendous. It wasn’t just a hangover; it was a feeling of overpowering grief. For the past nine months, our sole purpose in life had been to get justice for Becky. Now we had achieved that, all we were left with was our sorrow and heartache.

  When I got up I saw Marley standing in the hallway. He looked up at me and meowed loudly. Something about the way he looked at me, and the fact that he was Becky’s cat, made everything I had bottled up during the trial suddenly come flooding out, and I completely broke down. I cried for the rest of that day – big, heart-wrenching sobs which made my chest heave and my eyes turn red raw. Absolutely nothing and no one could console me.

  All the way through the trial, I had tried my hardest to keep my cool, to remain composed so that Nathan would never see me cry. I had kept my eyes locked on him all the way through the proceedings, but he had never glanced in my direction. That just showed what a coward he was. His absurd story about ‘teaching Becky a lesson’ hadn’t washed with anyone, and I think even he knew it. That’s why he didn’t dare look across at me and his mother in the courtroom. I think he knows that whatever he was planning to do to Becky that day, it would always have ended with her death. There’s no way I would have let him get away with kidnapping my daughter, dragging her to some woods and subjecting her to any sort of torture or terror campaign. I would have been furious, and I would have made his life a misery for hurting my girl. I would have also reported him to the police. He knew that – which is why he had no choice but to kill her.

  The days after the sentencing were like the aftershock of a nuclear bomb. The slightest thing would set me off, and it was hard to calm down again. The information we had heard in court circled in my mind over and over again. The images of Nathan suffocating my poor girl, then cutting her up like dog food were too much to bear, but at the same time I couldn’t stop thinking about them, wondering what thoughts were in Becky’s head during those last moments, hoping she did not suffer for long.

  It was then that I reached the lowest point of all. I struggled to leave the house and couldn’t talk to Anjie any more because I couldn’t put into words the agony I was suffering. Suddenly, Anjie’s and my roles were reversed as she began taking care of me, her completely broken man.

  The shock of finding out what Nathan and Shauna were really like knocked me for six. I swung manically from feeling complete anguish and despair one moment, to wanting to kill the pair of them the next. I was utterly bewildered about the person Nathan had become. How could he do something so violent and brutal to a member of his own family for no apparent reason at all? What on earth had happened to him?

  It crossed my mind that he might have decided to get rid of Becky because he wanted to inherit the house. He had become lazy since getting together with Shauna, acting as if the world owed him a living, but to get the house he would have had to do away with Danny as well. My mind did somersaults, searching for a clear answer that made sense of why he did what he did.

  I’d had no idea about his perverse schoolgirl fantasies, and it made me ill to think that Becky could have been caught up in one of his sick, twisted games. My mind flashed back to the time he brought those underage girls to my house in his car. I really believed that he was just joking about, but Shauna had been very young when he first started seeing her too. I knew Nathan didn’t fancy Becky – the idea made me shudder – but the judge seemed to think her murder was ‘sexually motivated’. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand what was going through Nathan’s head.

  Alongside my grief, I also had an awful feeling of guilt, which ate away at me every day. Why wasn’t I there to protect my little girl? Why didn’t I pick up the signs as to who Nathan really was? I should have trusted my gut instinct before I let Shauna set foot in my house. I truly believe they were a toxic pair, and if they had got away with Becky’s death, they would have struck again. In my eyes, they could have been the new Fred and Rose West – the depraved couple who tortured and murdered ten young women together.

  When Fred, who was known to have killed at least twelve women, was first arrested in 1994 for the murder of his own daughter, Heather, he confessed to the crime but claimed Rose was not involved. More bodies were then found, dismembered and buried at their home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester. Unlike Fred, Rose never confessed to the killings. She continuously professed ignorance of her husband’s murderous activities, but the circumstantial evidence was considered sufficient to prosecute her for ten murders. Fred killed himself in jail before standing trial, but Rose went on trial in October 1995, nine months after her husband’s suicide. She was found guilty the following month, and sentenced to life in prison. It was recommended that she never be released. I wish Shauna had got life, I really do.

  Sarah tells me there was nothing I could have done, because Nathan and Shauna were always going to carry out a sickening attack like this. She believes that if it wasn’t Becky, it would have been some other poor girl. As a family, we take some comfort from the fact that they are now locked away, unable to hurt anyone else.

  I’d had nightmares about how Becky was killed before, but they got a lot worse after I heard the gory details during the trial. I went to my doctor, who prescribed some incredibly powerful sleeping tablets, but I still needed a strong drink or two to help me drown out the noise inside my head. All the days started merging into one, and I completely lost track of them. I once tried to phone my boss at the office, only to realise it was a Sunday afternoon.

  By gritting my teeth, I had managed to get through the trial, but it hadn’t brought me much relief. Even when I knew that Nathan and Shauna were rotting in prison where they belonged, I still felt hopelessly depressed to the extent that I started to have suicidal thoughts. That’s when I knew I had to get help. My family were endlessly supportive, but I obviously needed more than that, so our assigned victim support officer, Chrissy, referred me for trauma therapy.

  In my first session, the therapist encouraged me to talk about my feelings and to express my anger. I was worried when she asked me to do that; I wasn’t sure that she understood just how much anger was inside me – more than I’d ever felt in my life. I’m usually not the type of person to hold a grudge against anyone, but I just couldn’t let go of my red-hot, overwhelming fury. Gradually, as time went on, I found that talking to the therapist about my feelings was helpful, and I plan to continue the treatment over the next year. Writi
ng this book also helped, and I’m now planning on returning to work – part-time at first, in order to ease myself back in gently. I’m moving forwards, taking baby steps, trying not to put too much pressure on myself for now.

  On 21 November 2015, Anjie turned fifty. Despite my own torment, I wanted to do something nice for my wife. She had supported me all the way through our devastating year, so I wanted to make her birthday extra special. I enlisted Sarah to help organise a big party, and we decided to ask the guests to wear fancy dress. Anjie loved the idea, and she and I went along dressed as Antony and Cleopatra. We invited the whole family and booked the Labour Club in St George – the place where we’d held Becky’s birthday party. It was becoming a bit of a tradition to hold our birthday bashes there.

  We hadn’t made it clear that we had already organised a cake, so we ended up with five – not that I minded, of course. One cake, brought by our supporters Joanne and Michelle, had a beautiful picture of Becky on top, which Anjie loved. We kept the icing as a special memento.

  Becky’s friends Courtney, Teela, Adam and, of course, Luke also showed up for Anjie’s party, which was a nice surprise. Adam dressed up as a pimp from the 1970s, in a white zoot suit with lots of gold chains, oversized sunglasses and a white hat with a massive feather stuck in it. It was hilarious, and I almost choked on my drink when I saw him. We would have forgiven those four for getting on with their own lives now that Becky was no longer around, but they always made the effort to socialise with my family whenever they could, and we really appreciated that. They are lovely kids, and Becky was lucky to have them as friends.

  I was delighted that Anjie had a good time that evening. She deserved to have a smile on her face again after all she had been through. She had put years of her life into caring for me and my family, only to have her own son destroy everything we had created. I spent a lot of time that night gazing at her while she laughed with her friends, thanking my lucky stars that we were still together after all the bad luck we had been dealt.

  As Christmas approached, Anjie and I knew that we couldn’t face spending it at home. In the past, Christmas would have been one of our annual family highlights. Becky particularly loved Christmas. Even at the age of sixteen, her last Christmas, she still woke Anjie and me at 7 a.m. and insisted we got up to open presents. Nathan and Shauna brought their little one over, and we all spent a lovely day as a family. We still had Danny, of course, but he had moved in with his girlfriend the previous September, just before the trial, and we saw less of him than before. It was likely to be just Anjie and me on our first Christmas Day without Becky, and the idea filled me with dread. Although we had multiple invitations from family and friends, we decided instead to go away for a week, just the two of us. We bought Christmas presents for our nieces and nephews early, and decided to go to Butlin’s again. We had never been there for Christmas before, and we hoped that it would be a jollier occasion than the last time we went, just after Becky’s funeral. We left on Wednesday, 23 December, and I told my whole family that we would see them at New Year.

  All in all, it was a good trip. This time, we dealt with our emotions in a more positive way, choosing to cherish our memories of Becky having fun there rather than be haunted by them. I think it helped that her killers were behind bars and we didn’t have an upcoming trial hanging over us. Our only fight now was to try to heal enough so that we could carry on with our lives.

  On Christmas Eve, both of us deliberately drank a little too much. Anjie isn’t a big drinker, so it was unusual for her. I think we wanted to make sure we slept in late on Christmas Day, rather than opening our eyes at 7 a.m. and wondering why Becky wasn’t there to burst into the room. We also missed our grandchild terribly – we’d only seen the little one a few times since everything had happened – and I know there was probably a part of Anjie that missed seeing Nathan over Christmas too, although she didn’t admit it. As much as I struggled with it in the early days, I could eventually understand: Nathan was her son, and you can’t cut that biological bond, no matter how hard you try.

  We had Christmas dinner and watched some live entertainment, and somehow we managed to forget our misery for a few hours. We even managed to reminisce about previous Christmas Days, and we chuckled when we remembered Becky bouncing off the walls with excitement every year.

  ‘No matter what has happened, we can always say that we did everything we could for our children,’ Anjie said to me as we sat with a drink. ‘That alone is worth celebrating.’

  I nodded and smiled. My world had always revolved around my kids; they were the centre of my universe, and it was the same for Anjie. As much as it was tempting to blame ourselves for the way things had turned out, we knew that we couldn’t have done more for our family. That consoled me for a while at least.

  Sarah also phoned us with some news that made me smile. She had been up to Speedwell to hang Christmas decorations on Becky’s memorial tree, and she said that, despite the wintry weather, it had grown quickly and was now the largest of the five planted there a few months earlier.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ I said grinning.

  We returned home in time for New Year’s Eve – my birthday. Once again, the Galsworthys decided it was time for a party. If there had ever been a moment to let our hair down and celebrate, it was now, after such a traumatic eleven months. Sarah and Anjie booked the Labour Club again, and we all got together to see in the New Year and to celebrate me turning fifty-two.

  I personally couldn’t wait to welcome in 2016. I hoped that this year would bring better health to Anjie, and some peace for me and everyone else in my family. I hoped that the pain would gradually ease and that we would be able to move on with our lives, although I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We were over the moon when Danny announced that he and his girlfriend, Sarah, were getting engaged; it seemed like a good omen. As we counted down to midnight, I glanced at all the people around us on whom I had leaned so heavily during 2015. I couldn’t have been more grateful for my family’s support than I was at that moment, as I got ready to raise my glass to the future. It was a future without Becky, Nathan and Shauna, but it was a future which would hopefully heal our hearts and help us to gain the strength to carry on.

  In January 2016, the police told me that I could collect some of the items of ours which Nathan had hoarded at his house over the years. I had never known about this hoarding habit, because Nathan and Shauna always came to our house and, although I gave them many lifts back and forth, I hardly ever set foot in theirs.

  I wanted to visit their house to see the bathroom where Nathan had dismembered Becky’s body. I know it sounds morbid, but I thought that seeing it for myself would help me come to terms with things. However, I never got the opportunity. Instead, I was told to visit a nearby police station, where I was handed a bag of our possessions, which the police had collected on our behalf. There was some camping stuff Nathan had borrowed, some electric cables, and a television set. I was disappointed, but eventually I decided that it was probably for the best.

  Friday, 19 February 2016, marked one year since Becky was cruelly taken from us. Instead of feeling angry and bitter, we chose to spend that day reflecting on all the things we adored about her: her laugh, her wicked sense of humour, her creativity and her sense of style. She may have spent most of her short life as a wallflower as far as the outside world was concerned, but in our world she was a force to be reckoned with. Her love and fierce loyalty towards her friends and family shone out of her, and she made me proud in so many ways. She would have hated all this attention if she was still here, but I’m glad to have the opportunity to tell the world just how amazing my beautiful Bex was. To me, she was everything, and there will always be a huge part of me missing now that she’s not with us any more.

  The pain is still very raw, but we are trying to pick up the pieces of our broken lives as best we can. Our fantastic family liaison officer Ziggy is still in touch with us regularly, as Jo has now retired. We remain c
ompletely bewildered over Nathan’s motive for killing Becky, and we still want some answers. As soon as she feels ready, Anjie will request to visit Nathan in prison. She needs to ask him outright why he took Becky away from us. She needs closure. We both do.

  I can’t face seeing Nathan in person as my anger is far too strong, but I fully support Anjie visiting her son. Despite our confusion about his motives, it’s clear to me that as well as his deep hatred for Becky, Nathan must have hated me to take the life of the person who meant the world to me. He must have realised the suffering it would cause me. Maybe his hatred grew over the years because he thought I had stolen the affections of his mother. Perhaps he had long harboured resentment towards me for moving into his life and bringing two kids of my own into the mix.

  Everything I did for him, the many times I told him I was proud of him and thought of him as a son, must have meant nothing to Nathan. Sometimes, that is the hardest pill to swallow. The boy I knew, the one who used to enjoy painting his Warhammer fantasy figures and riding about on his moped, is dead to me now. I loved Nathan. It might not have been obvious to him as his mind became more warped and twisted, but it was obvious to everyone else. I gave him everything I could – guidance, financial assistance and, most importantly, love – but he threw it all away for a completely inexplicable reason.

  As for what he has done to his own mother, I can never forgive him for that. Nathan always claimed that he adored his mum, but her health has deteriorated drastically due to the stress of the past year. He wouldn’t look at her once during the court case, but it was revealed after the trial that he wrote her a letter when he was in custody awaiting trial – shortly after she had asked to see him and been refused. It was a scrawled, barely literate note that didn’t contain a word of apology. He wrote:

  Hello Mum, I was told you wanted to ask me a question of ‘why’ and I know you are going to be very confused amongst other things. Sorry but I have been advised not to talk about my case at the moment as what I say can be misinterpreted but I hope you can find some, even if it is a miniscule [sic] amount of resolution/help by me explaining to you that what has happened was not meant to. Love you X