… most difficult of all are my thoughts of life before Alice was murdered. Because everything that happened before that day led us to the point where she was murdered.

The reality is that having survived the trauma of losing a daughter, I find myself having to face up to asking for funds to help prevent it happening to others.

it was important to keep Alice’s name alive. It was inconceivable that such zest for life and vitality would simply disappear

Family liaison officers are amazing people. They are absolutely essential if your daughter has been murdered, because you need someone to ask all those unimaginable questions.

In the early days, most people just gave me a hug. I didn’t have to speak and I could avoid crying. But then people needed to talk to me about Alice, about what to do with her stuff, arrangements for her funeral and mundane, but hugely distressing administration tasks. I discovered that if I felt emotional, I could avoid crying by just stopping what I was saying, usually mid-sentence. In those early days there were a lot of silent pauses. I think my friends got used to it.

The first time we went to Newcastle with Alice, the Tyne Bridge was displaying The Great North Run logo, and every time I visited Alice in August and September, that logo was calling out to me. When we were in Newcastle after Alice’s murder, the logo was still there, and it triggered something in my subconscious. By the end of the year, without really understanding how I was going to do it, I had signed up for a place in the Great North run 2017, supporting Women’s Aid.