I forgave my son's killer

Joan Scourfield’s son, James, died from his injuries after a single punch. Yet the brave mum decided to meet his attacker…

- ANNA MATHESON, CHARLOTTE NISBET

Watching my son, James, then 21, pack his sports gear into his suitcase, I hovered by the door. ‘Don’t do anything too dangerous, please,’ I asked.

‘Sure thing,’ he shot back with a smile.

It was 2004 and James was off to the Swiss Alps for a week to ski and mountain bike. Ever since his teens, he’d been an adrenaline junkie, but he was a softie at home. Growing up, he was close to his brother, Phil, and when their dad, David, and I split up in 2006, they supported us. And when I remarried my new husband, also called David, they were happy for me.

In 2008, James announced he was moving from Southampton to London to retrain as a paramedic, and by 2011 he’d moved in with his girlfriend and was on the brink of qualifying. It was August that year when he called me for our weekly catch-up.

‘I’m off to Nottingham to watch the cricket this weekend. Dad and Phil are coming, too,’ he said.

‘Sounds great, have fun. Love you,’ I said. I was asleep after a nursing night shift when the phone rang at 11am that Sunday morning. It was my ex-husband. ‘James is in hospital and you need to come now,’ he said. He explained James had hit his head on the floor after being punched outside a bar. He had a clot and bleed on the brain and a fractured skull, and was going into surgery.

I rang my sister, Dot, barely managing to get the words out. ‘He’ll be OK, he’s young and fit,’ she reassured me on the three-hour journey from Suffolk. When we arrived, Phil, then 25, and David explained James had been talking to a bouncer when a boy punched him on the chin without warning, then ran off.

Saying goodbye