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in the phone book.”
    Mum ended up ringing them all, but all their parents said that none of the boys had seen Colin. By half past nine, it was beginning to go pretty dark, so Mum sent Dad out in the car to look for him. Forty five minutes later, Dad returned home, without Colin. From my bed, I could detect the frustration and anxiety in Mum’s voice as she said to Dad,
    “Where the hell can he be?”
                  As it was now completely dark, they rang the police. Until Mum made that phone call, I thought they had been worrying unnecessarily. I knew Colin better than them, knew what a little terror he could be and had been convinced he would nonchalantly walk through the door, wondering what all the fuss was about. That phone call to the police underlined the gravity of the situation. I started to blame myself. I should have stayed with him. I had promised Colin that I would. What if something awful had happened? If it did, it would all be my fault.
                  I’m not sure how to describe my subsequent meltdown, perhaps you would call it an anxiety attack or just fear taking hold, but it was like the polar opposite of waking up from a nightmare. When you wake from a nightmare, after a few seconds, you realise it was just a dream, it was not real life. This time it was real life, Colin had disappeared and for all we knew, he could have been run over, abducted or even murdered. I started shaking and crying.
    “Mum! Mum! Mum!” I shouted through my tears.
    I heard my Mum running up the stairs and then she came through into my room.
    “What’s the matter, Simon? Why aren’t you asleep?”
    “You know why I’m not asleep. Colin’s disappeared, Mum! Disappeared because of me. If he’s dead, it will all be my fault. I left him, Mum! I should never have left him.”
    My Mum, like the kind hearted, caring mother she was, and still is, put her own fears and concerns to one side to help me through mine.
    “Simon, calm down, love,” she hugged me tightly, “there’s probably a simple explanation for all this.”
    “Like what? It’s nearly eleven o’clock and Colin’s still not home.”
    “I know, love, but he’s probably just called around at a friend’s and forgotten to ring to say he’s stopping the night. You know what Colin’s like, Simon, he’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on!”
    I wanted to feel comforted. Mum was speaking in re-assuring tones, but it still didn’t seem right.
    “Why did you call the police, then?”
    “Because right now, love, we don’t know where he is. The police will help us find him. Let’s not start thinking something awful has happened yet, love. When the police get here, we’ll tell them everything that’s happened and let’s see if they can bring him home safe and sound.”
    “But what if they don’t?”
    “Simon, let’s not think like that. They will, love, I’m sure they will.”

GEOFF-August 1986
                  My panic attacks began after our narrow boat holiday in the summer of ’86. They are very difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced them, but mine manifest themselves in a way that I can only describe as a momentary physical and mental breakdown. I feel dizzy, shivery, I struggle to breath and the first time especially, I thought I was dying. In subsequent panic attacks, I haven’t felt that I am going to die, there is just an overwhelming feeling of dread. Generally, I have between one and a dozen a year. These days normally one or two a year, after the narrow boat trip, in the late eighties, it was a dozen a year, sometimes more.
    I wish we’d have gone to Westward Ho! Deidre, my wife, wanted to go to Devon, but we’d taken the girls down to the Cotswolds, Devon or Cornwall every year since they were four and two and I just fancied doing something different, something a little more adventurous. By 1986, our Sarah was twelve and our Joanne was ten, so I thought that if we did