I lost all sense of time and reality in the moments that I spent with him that first time. It was shocking and, looking back, I don’t think I’d have coped as well as I did if I hadn’t seen my mum and dad after they died.
Ray’s dad had died when he was only eight months old, but, when his mum died of cancer at the age of 63, he didn’t want to go and see her. I made him go because I thought he’d regret it. And I’d seen my cousin (my dad’s sister Beatrice’s son). He’d died, aged 17, with his 16-year-old girlfriend in a motorbike accident and, although I’d been quite young at the time of the funeral, I remembered my dad taking me to my auntie Queen’s house to see him in his coffin. I was frightened but Auntie Queen had put her arm around me. ‘The dead won’t hurt you, Maureen,’ she’d said. ‘It’s nice to kiss their head or their hand. If you kiss them goodbye, they never come back to haunt you.’
Auntie Queen was the psychic in our family. Maybe it was losing her son, but she definitely had what you’d call a second sight. She’d turned around when Lee had only been about three or four and said, ‘You’ve got to watch your boys.’
It was a strange thing to say but I’ve never forgotten it. There were five boys in our family. Auntie Queen’s son Christopher died when he was 17; Alan and Babs had lost Spencer; and Ray’s brother and his sister had both lost their sons – Raymond, 20, and Alan, who was only 29.
Now we’d lost Lee. On a Sunday – the same day that all the other boys, except Spencer, had died.
I must have stayed with him that first time for about 15 minutes. The shock was still all-consuming but, after the first few minutes, I felt an extraordinary sense of calm and peace. Of course, I knew he was dead but it didn’t stop me wishing, hoping even, that he’d open his eyes and smile at me.
What in God’s name was I going to say to Michelle? How I was going to tell her that the brother she loved had been murdered? I just wanted her to come home so that I could hold her in my arms. She’d only married Steve seven months earlier in May 1996 and they were expecting a little brother or sister for Paige. The thought of how suddenly being caught up in this nightmare might affect Michelle’s pregnancy was heartbreaking.
The female mortuary attendant was lovely. So kind and calm. She asked me if I was feeling OK.
‘I can’t stop crying,’ I said.
The physical pain of seeing Lee was by now making me clutch my chest and fight to steady my breathing. I felt sick to the stomach. It seemed unreal that I would never see him. Hold him in my arms or breathe in the fragrance of his freshly washed hair. Watch him scoop up Danielle in his arms and swing her round. One of my last memories of Lee had been of him dancing to loud music as he was trying to shave and eat a sandwich at the same time. There never seemed to be enough time in the day for him. Perhaps he’d known he didn’t have long in this life.
Lost in grief, images of Lee flashing through my mind, I flinched as the attendant put her arm around me. ‘It’s natural to cry,’ she said. ‘Have the police told you anything about his injuries?’
‘Just that he’d been stabbed,’ I said, unable to take my eyes from Lee’s body.
‘He has 42 stab wounds,’ she said. ‘There are about 30 wounds around his neck and chest. And there’s one in his back. The small cuts on his fingers would suggest he’s tried to defend himself. The fatal wound was the one that severed his carotid artery in his neck. He would have lost a great deal of blood.’
I was shaking from head to toe as I listened to her. Whoever had done this to Lee had used the knife in such a frenzy that he hadn’t stood a chance. And, if he’d been stabbed in the back, had he been walking away from whoever had attacked him, not realising perhaps they had a knife?
Still shaking, I nodded when she asked me if I’d like to take a break and let her lead me back into the corridor where Ray was sitting.
‘I’m sorry, Maureen,’ he sobbed. ‘I couldn’t stay in there. I just can’t do this.’
Sitting next to Ray, I couldn’t find the words to tell him that I understood or that it was all right. I just couldn’t believe this was happening to us, let alone take in the reality that Lee was lying dead in the next room.
I didn’t want to leave the hospital. I just wanted to be with Lee. After a few minutes, I asked if I could go in and see him again on my own.
Back in the mortuary, I touched his face again, still surprised by how cold he felt. And then I lifted up the sheet that was covering him. I wanted to see what had happened to him but he was swathed up to the neck in white bandage. Probably from the post mortem. I couldn’t bear the thought that he’d had to go through that. I wanted to hold his hand but placed the sheet gently back over him. I was thinking, You can’t go there, he deserves his dignity.
I could have stayed there, just looking at him and talking to him. Looking back, as I so often do, it was probably the closest I’d felt to Lee since being told about his death. The physical pain of just wanting to take him in my arms and breathe the life back into him was overwhelming. Those who have gone through this will know how unbelievably shocking it is to sit with your child who you have known, loved and cared for since the day they were born and try to comprehend the idea that they are never coming back. I think that, no matter how long you sit there, it’s never long enough. You just don’t want to leave them.
‘I can’t leave him here alone,’ I whispered to the attendant. ‘He needs his mum. I love him so much. Please let me stay here with him.’
The attendant nodded and touched my arm. ‘Maureen, you can come back and see Lee any time you want to,’ she said. ‘And you can stay with him as long as you like.’
It was just what I needed to hear. The thought of being able to see him again was enough to help me out of the room and go back to Ray. Alan took over after that. He’d gone through the same grim procedure with his own son. He knew what Ray and I were going through. We couldn’t have gone through all the formalities of signing the identification documents without him.
As we left the hospital to go to Michelle’s, I was praying she hadn’t heard anything about Lee’s death on the car radio. She usually listened to nursery rhyme cassettes with Paige, singing along to all the words as they drove along. Please, God, she and Steve had been singing and not listening to the news.
The police had assured us that they wouldn’t release any details until we’d had a chance to break the news to her and Steve, but I couldn’t rest while there was still an outside chance they’d find out.
I phoned Kim, one of the girls who helped out in the hairdressing salon in King’s Heath that Michelle and I owned, and broke the news to her. I couldn’t risk Michelle trying to get hold of me there and then worrying because I hadn’t turned up for work.
Even though it was a busy time with customers booking appointments to go out to Christmas parties, work was the last thing on my mind.
She was brilliant and said she’d hold the fort and do anything I needed. If Michelle rang, she’d tell her I’d taken the day off.
It was a good move because, when we got to her house, Michelle had already phoned the salon and was wondering where I’d got to. Days off were never on my agenda, especially when she knew how busy we’d be at that time of the year. Seeing me and her dad with Alan and Babs getting out of the car, I knew by the look on her face that she realised something was wrong.
‘You don’t have to come in with us,’ I told Babs as she closed the car door. ‘This must be so painful