For the Love of Julie: A nightmare come true. A mother’s courage. A desperate fight for justice.. Ann Ming

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СКАЧАТЬ think any of the other girls would be taking their mothers. ‘I don’t want to go on my own.’

      She never liked to do things on her own and I never complained about being included because she was always a laugh to be with and I enjoyed her company. It was great to be invited to be such a big part of my grandson’s early life.

      Charlie and I were always very happy with Andrew as a son-in-law and to start with the marriage appeared to go well, especially once they had Kevin to look after. They were both so proud of him and so anxious to do the right things. But becoming a mother seemed to bring Julie a bit more out of her shell and after a couple of years things began to go wrong between them. I think it was mostly down to them both being so young and immature – she was just eighteen and he was only twenty when they married. Julie couldn’t cook at all; the first time she put a chicken in the oven she left the plastic bag of giblets inside it. It’s hard to sustain a marriage when neither of you know anything about life. I think they both thought it was all going to be a bed of roses, which it never is once you’ve got a small child. I was young too when I married and started having babies (and I couldn’t cook either), but life was different then, people didn’t have the same expectations, and at least Charlie was older and more experienced.

      Andrew liked to go out playing football and snooker, like any young lad. That would make our Julie get all possessive and grumpy and they would end up arguing about stupid things. They were each just as bad as the other. There was one time when Andrew was obsessed with getting his car mended. Julie and I had been out shopping at Asda and when we got back we found he’d swapped their microwave for a particular engine part that he needed. She was furious, but she could be just as daft herself sometimes. She’d bought a lemon and grey striped pushchair for Kevin and one time she said she wasn’t able to come out with me because his matching lemon suit wasn’t dry from the wash and his others wouldn’t have matched the pushchair’s upholstery! They were both still just a couple of kids themselves really.

      Andrew had been doing some work at a pizza place in Station Road in Billingham. Bizarrely, the shop, called ‘Mr Macaroni’, was owned by an Iranian family. Some time around 1987, Julie started working there as well, driving a pizza delivery van in the evenings to earn some extra money. Looking back, I suppose she and Andrew had less time together then and they started drifting apart.

      Things must have been worse between them than Charlie and I realized because in 1989, when he got the chance of a job down in London with his uncle, Andrew decided to take it. They both seemed to see it as the first step in a separation. Charlie and I were very sad about it, but at least we were close by to help her with Kevin and we never felt that Andrew was to blame any more than she was for the fact that they were drifting apart. It was just one of those things that happen in families and you have to adjust and move on.

      It looked as if Julie was going to be able to cope quite well on her own, with us in the background to help her. On the nights she was working late she would leave Kevin to sleep over with us. It was a good arrangement for all of us because Charlie and I liked having a child around the house and we liked feeling we were helping her. Julie would often work from about five in the afternoon until midnight. She enjoyed working with the Iranians, but I was told she never let them push her around. One friend told me she was in the queue in ‘Mr Macaroni’ one day when one of the owners was trying to boss Julie about.

      ‘She just picked up the dough and dumped it on his head,’ my friend told me.

      They must have valued her as an employee because they didn’t sack her, even then. I could just imagine her doing that and I liked the idea that she would stick up for herself.

      Charlie and I had been thinking about what we should do now that the children were growing up. Once Gary and Julie had both moved out, and Angela was getting close to leaving, we decided we didn’t need a house as big as Mam’s old bungalow any more and we put it up for sale. It went really fast, selling before we’d had time to find anything else to buy, so we moved into a rented property while we sorted ourselves out and worked out where we would like to go next.

      As the autumn of 1989 arrived I fancied a break. I’ve always liked going to Blackpool for holidays but Charlie doesn’t much like the place, so I asked Julie if she would like to come with me for a few days away. We always had a laugh when we were together. Andrew said he would mind Kevin (he hadn’t left for London by then) and we set off for some mother and daughter time. We hadn’t even booked anything – you didn’t have to at that time of year; we just turned up and found ourselves a bed and breakfast before setting out to enjoy the sights. Julie had always liked the fairgrounds, riding on the big dippers and all the rest, and I was happy to watch her, just as I had when they were all small children.

      ‘I think I’ll have me fortune told,’ she said as we walked past a gypsy’s stall in a shopping arcade. ‘Do you want to come?’

      ‘Oh, I’m not wasting my money,’ I said. ‘You go ahead.’

      I wandered off, leaving her to it. She reappeared a few minutes later.

      ‘That cost me five pounds,’ she complained. ‘She said I have a son who’s going to be musical, but we all know Kevin’s tone deaf, and after that she said she couldn’t tell me anything else. It was like I didn’t have any future.’

      That Blackpool clairvoyant will never know how right she was with her predictions that day.

       Chapter Five

       Our Julie Goes Missing

      On Thursday 16 November 1989, two months after our trip to Blackpool together and about a month after Andrew had gone down to London to work with his uncle, Julie was due to go to court in nearby Stockton to apply for a legal separation. I agreed to go with her, partly because we always did things like that together and partly because I thought she might need a bit of moral support. These sorts of legal procedures are always more emotional than you might expect them to be and I didn’t like the idea of her having to face it on her own. At times like that I knew Julie preferred to have me around; it was just the way we did things.

      ‘Andrew and me are not going to get back together, our Mam,’ she told me when I asked if she was absolutely sure this was the route she wanted to follow. ‘I’ve been to see a solicitor and he says it’s best we make it official.’

      Realizing she had made up her mind and there was nothing I could do but be supportive, I didn’t say any more. She said she was going to be working the night before.

      On the 15th, the afternoon before we were due to go to the court, I went down to her house to pick up Kevin just as I normally did when she was working late, making deliveries in the pizza van. She was double-checking all the arrangements as usual. She always got anxious about things like that.

      ‘You won’t forget to call me in the morning, will you, our Mam?’ she said as Kevin and I were leaving the house. ‘I have to be in court at ten, so we’ll need to set out around nine. Ring me about half seven to make sure I’m awake.’

      ‘Why don’t you come and stay at home tonight?’ I suggested. ‘Then you can take your time in the morning.’

      ‘No, I want to stay in my own house,’ she said casually. ‘Just don’t forget to call me at seven-thirty.’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I СКАЧАТЬ