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cupboard.”
    At that point, it was just another typical, relatively mundane early evening. The reason I remember every word, every action, so clearly though, was because it was anything but. It turned out to be the start of a dramatic, traumatic, horrific, life changing forty eight hours. I wish I had dragged Colin to Top Gun or even gone to play cricket for twenty minutes before it lashed down. I wished and wished for so many things after those forty eight hours, but nothing changed. My brother had gone and I would mourn his loss forever.

SIMON-August 1986
    The evening that followed my trip to Top Gun became increasingly tense as my Mum and Dad’s concern about Colin’s failure to return home grew. My Mum was the first to panic. By seven o’clock she was asking my Dad whether he thought that they should be phoning around his friends to establish his whereabouts. My Dad played it all down at that stage, telling my Mum to relax, but by eight o’clock, he agreed that it was time to start phoning around.
    Mum phoned John Berry’s house and then Adrian Holmes’, but neither set of parents had seen Colin. They checked with John and Adrian and a similar story came back. Colin, Holmy and Bez had had started a game of cricket on Parklands school field, but as the rain became heavier, Holmy and Bez became increasingly fed up. Only Colin, who was batting at the time, wanted to continue playing. The other two boys both told Colin that they had had enough, but he was insistent that they played on, telling them it was only a shower. It wasn’t just a shower though and once the rain became practically monsoonal, they told Colin they were going to head home. Colin called them both ‘wimps’, hid his cricket set behind one of the trees and said he was going to find some tougher kids to play with. They both said that this was around about half past two and both headed straight home from there to dry off.
    Mum came into my room at about half past eight. I was sitting on my bed reading a copy of Record Mirror. I preferred Record Mirror to any other music magazine solely because it contained the Gallup Top 75 singles and album charts in it. I was a bit obsessive about the album chart in particular and can clearly remember Paul Simon’s Graceland and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet featuring in that edition. I used an A4 pad to collate the album chart information in and keep track of the performance of established artists and rising stars.
                  I knew Mum was coming in to my room to ask me something about Colin. Our bedroom was directly above the dining room, where the phone was and I’d already heard part of the conversations that she was having with other Mums.
    “Simon,” Mum said in a serious tone, “Colin isn’t back and your father and I are starting to get worried. I’ve phoned Adrian Holmes’ and John Berry’s and he hasn’t been with either of them since half past two, their Mums have said he was off to call for other kids, do you have any idea who else he may have gone to see?”
    “Other than Adrian Holmes and John Berry, he sometimes hangs around with Luke Booth, Phil Moss and Chris Gregory,” I told her.
    “Does he? I’ve never even heard of these boys. They’ve never been to any of his parties,” Mum said sadly, as though she was annoyed with herself for not knowing her son better.
    “They’re older than him, Mum. They’re all at Parklands with me. He hasn’t been hanging around with them much recently, because he’s been with me, but I know he used to.”
    Mum looked understandably confused . Mum thought he had always been with me and my friends, so I don’t think she could quite comprehend when he had befriended these older boys. She was becoming too anxious to try to resolve that particular puzzle though. She just wanted to know where he was.
    “Do you know their phone numbers, Simon?”
    “No, but I can tell you where they live, so you should be able to find their numbers