I was waiting for her to COME HOME

Karen Edwards spent more than eight years hoping that she’d see her daughter again

All any mother wants is for their daughter to be happy, healthy and safe, so when I turned on the news in March 2011 to see the parents of missing 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, I knew the sick feeling they’d have in their stomachs. My own daughter, Becky, had disappeared eight years earlier. As I watched the O’Callaghans beg for information about their daughter’s whereabouts, I felt every bit of the pain in their voices.

I followed their story over the next few days, sobbing for them when the manhunt ended in tragedy and a man arrested for murder led detectives to Sian’s body. I kept imagining the immense grief her poor mum must be suffering, until 24 hours later I no longer had to imagine. Detectives announced they’d found the skeletal remains of another girl and – I don’t know how, call it mother’s intuition – but as I listened to the latest development, I just knew. That second body was Becky.

As a little girl, Becky was a beautiful soul. She loved colouring, writing poems and playing outside with her older brother, Steven. When I married my new partner, Charlie, in 1997, we became the perfect little unit. But at school, Becky struggled to fit in, often becoming the victim of bullying. At 15, she’d got swept up with an unsavoury crowd, who introduced her to sniffing aerosols. When I found out, I was so angry. I shouted a lot, before talking to her about the dangers of drug addiction. It seemed to sink in and I hoped it was an experimental phase – but, several months later, I found drug paraphernalia hidden under her bed and was distraught when she admitted she’d tried heroin. From then, Charlie and I tried to watch her, but it was difficult to always know her whereabouts. Life became a constant battle, and I watched in terror as my daughter faded away until she was a shell with sallow skin, greasy hair, and protruding ribs.