Pure Evil - How Tracie Andrews murdered my son, decieved the nation and sentenced me to a life of pain and misery. Maureen Harvey

One of the funniest things I remember was when Lee had been for a curry with the lads the night before an early shift. He’d been at work for a while when, all of a sudden, I heard a key in the front door and someone running upstairs – it was Lee. When he came down, I asked him if he wanted a cuppa but he said that he couldn’t stop because he was working. He’d been so desperate to go to the toilet that he’d parked the bus, locked the twirlies on it and run through the gully home! He used to call the pensioners ‘twirlies’ because they would always try to use their passes on the bus before 9.30, asking, ‘Am I too early, driver?’ All the old girls who were on his route loved him and used to say, ‘If only I was a few years younger…’

      Typically, he and Tracie seeing more of each other only served to fan the flames and, not long afterwards, I’d had a call from Irene one night asking me to come and get Lee. When I turned up at the flat, Tracie was hysterical saying that Lee had punched her and thrown hi-fi equipment at her. I knew she was lying. Lee might have lost it and started chucking stuff around but he’d never hit her.

      ‘Just get him out of here,’ Irene shouted at me, as Lee started picking up some of his things. ‘I can’t cope with any more of this.’

      ‘It’s OK, we’re going,’ I yelled at Tracie. ‘And, this time, make sure you bloody well stay away from Lee. Don’t even think about stalking him and phoning the house like you usually do. It’s finished. Just stay away from him.’

      Outside the flat, I told Lee to get in the car but he just ignored me and walked off. A few yards down the road, I found him sitting on a wall with his head in his hands and stopped the car. ‘You don’t want to know me, do you?’ he asked.

      He looked terrible. I wanted to take him in my arms and tell him everything was going to be all right. ‘How many more times are you going to let Tracie treat you like this?’ I asked him.

      Lee shrugged his shoulders and got into the passenger seat next to me. ‘It’s over this time, Mum,’ he said. ‘Take me home.’ ‘And he still went back after all that?’ Brian asked.

      I nodded. The rest was history, I told him. Ray and I had begged him to stay at home and have nothing more to do with Tracie. ‘If only he’d listened to us, none of this would have happened,’ I told him. ‘Lee wouldn’t be lying in a morgue… he’d have been sitting here with us today.’

      Later that same day, Michelle and I went back to Cooper’s Hill. It was something we knew neither of us could do alone but together it just seemed right. And, although neither of us mentioned it until we got into the car, we wanted to have a look round and see if we could find the knife.

      It sounds mad when I think about it now. The idea that the two of us could find the murder weapon after a load of forensics officers had been scouring the area looking for it since the night of Lee’s death. I guess you do some strange things when you’re trying to cope with shock and grief. We just wanted to feel that we were doing something to help.

      The police had cut back all the hedgerows and bushes at the side of the lane where Lee had stopped his car. The white tent that had covered the area where he’d been found had gone. Michelle and I poked around in the roadside ditches and in the hedges for the best part of an hour looking for the knife. There was no one else about but we were on such a mission that I don’t think we’d have noticed anyway.

      We both had a cry as we stood overlooking the fields from the lane. The two of us standing side by side, lost in thought as we remembered how much Lee had loved the weeks leading up the Christmas. The present buying, the parties, going out with his mates, putting up the decorations with Danielle at our house. It was definitely a favourite time of year in the Harvey household.

      ‘I think Christmas is cancelled this year, eh, Mum?’ Michelle sighed as we walked back to her car.

      It was another heartbreaking reminder of how all our lives had been changed. We’d lost Lee and yet we still had two little girls, Paige and Danielle, who now, more than any other time, needed to know that Christmas was still a magical time.