True-life
I’ll spend my life keeping Mu’s killer locked up
I lifted my bucket off the last sandcastle turret, and we stood back to admire our masterpiece. ‘Great job, girls!’ my mum Wendy, then 27, said. ‘Now, who wants a treat before a donkey ride?’ ‘Me!’ I cried, scurrying toward the ice-cream stall, with my little sister, 4.
It was summer 1970, I was 5 and, as usual, Mum and Dad had taken us on holiday to Scarborough.
Mum played with us on the beach and took us to visit the novelist Anne Bronte’s grave.
She made everything into an adventure.
Back home in Wakefield, she juggled several jobs to put food on the table.
When my parents split in 1980, Dad moved out and Mum rolled her sleeves up.
She did everything from cooking to mowing the lawn. She wasn’t interested in meeting a new bloke.
‘I’m an independent 6 woman,’ she’d say. I moved out at 18, but we stayed inseparable, enjoying shopping and nights out.
In 1992, I moved to Essex with my fiancé Richard.
It was a wrench leaving Mum, but she got the train down to help wedding plans, and in July 1993 walked me down the aisle before giving a hilarious speech.
‘I’ve outdone the Queen Mother with all my pearls!’ she said, to raucous cheers. Mum didn’t miss any of my big moments.
So when I told her Richard and I planned to start a family, she wanted to be there.
‘I’m selling the house,’ she said on the phone in March 1994. ‘Moving closer to you.’
‘Oh Mum, thank you!’ I gushed, Tracey Millington-Jones, 59, Essex picturing her giving tips on nappies and naps.
On 14 March I called Mum, then 51, on my lunch break.
We chatted about our evening plans – I was having pizza at a friend’s while Mum was excited to watch the film Dead Calm on TV.
‘Love you, see you later,’ she said.
I said the same.
Our usual goodbye. Next morning, Mum’s boss rang me at work. ‘She hasn’t turned up,’ she said to me.
Mum would never dream of skipping work.
I called her, and when she didn’t answer I rang my sister, who still lived locally. ‘I’ll check on her,’ she said. I tried not to panic. Maybe the bus had broken down? Richard came to my workplace as I kept trying Mum, until shortly after lunchtime, when a man picked up. ‘Who’s that?’
I asked. ‘I’m detective sergeant…’
Before he finished, I dropped the handset and screamed.
Richard took the phone, and seconds later he broke down too. Mum was dead. My head spun as we drove four hours through the snow to Wakefield.
At the police station an officer gave us details that I’d never forget.
Mum��
