Original subtitles

Every day I do think of her.

Sometimes I look at my grandkids and I remember Nicola being like that.

Nicola would do things like that.

I do remember all ages of her.

Yeah, yeah.

I’m kinda glad that there isn’t just one fixed image.

I still can remember Nicola in all ages.

I think you could pretty much go up to anybody in Coventry and say,

“Nicola Payne” and they’ll tell you what happened that day.

MARTIN SLEVIN: It’s one of the greatest unsolved crimes in this country.

REPORTER: Nicola Payne had left her boyfriend and baby son

to go to her parents.

She simply vanished into the mist.

It’s just hitting home that summut serious has happened to my sister.

REPORTER: A team of police officers today began a yard by yard search

of the waste ground where Nicola was last seen.

MALCOLM ROSS: It was the biggest search that West Midlands Police

had ever encountered.

Every effort, it seems, is being made to find Nicola Payne.

If anybody is holding Nicola, just take her somewhere, or to just phone anybody.

I kept thinking, where’s my Nicola gone? Where’s me Nicola?

MALE: What happened to Nicola could happen to any woman.

How can an 18 year old disappear and just never be seen again?

It’s just a never ending real life horror story.

The truth. That’s all we want is the truth.

If it was your sister, when would you give up.

REPORTER: Last year a jury cleared two Coventry men

accused of Nicola Payne’s murder.

REPORTER: Brothers in law, Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly,

seen on the left with a beard,

were cleared of any involvement in her disappearance.

Nicola was not only our daughter,

but a loving mother to her son, Owen,

and sister to her four older brothers.

She deserves to be laid to rest.

As a family, then we have somewhere to visit

and at least get some sort of closure on this time.

We cannot contemplate not knowing where Nicola is for another 24 years.

I think Marilyn and John were just completely heartbroken after the trial.

Everybody had put all their eggs in one basket.

We finally thought we’d get answers and we were back to square one.

You know, where do we go from here?

We can’t give up on her.

Well, it was a complete let down in court.

During the trial we used to say to them like, you know, how about this,

how about that?

And we kept asking questions and they kept saying,

“No, we’re alright. We know what we’re doing.”

But it never worked out.

MARTIN SLEVIN: What can you say at a time like that?

You can’t really give any crumb of comfort in a time like that,

because everybody has worked so hard to get to this day and this position.

And it hasn’t gone the way that we thought and hoped it should go.

Marilyn and John were never gonna give up on trying to find the truth for Nicola

and neither did I.

And very soon after the trial,

we had new information come in to the investigation

about a sighting of two men on the day Nicola went missing,

in and around the area we had searched,

at the right time, acting suspiciously.

(clock ticking)

AMANDA EALES: We were made aware

that there was an incident in Coombe Abbey Fisheries.

There was people spotted in the bushes

and that there was a bit of a confrontation.

MARTIN SLEVIN: The information that the witness told us

was the on the afternoon that Nicola disappeared,

around 3.30, 4 o’clock,

he’d actually stopped at the Fisheries to see how the fish were biting

and he intended to come here the next day and fish.

He noticed a car had parked just where I am now.

It was the only other car apart from his.

And he saw a man at the passenger door and spoke to him briefly and said hello.

And as the witness walked back towards his car,

he saw a second man coming out of the woods to the righthand side.

And this man was startled to see him also.

The man that had come out of the woods,

beckoned to the man at the side of the car to grab the witness

and said, “He’s seen us, stop him. Let’s grab him.”

The man that was at the car door said, “No, let him go.”

In that moment of indecision,

the witness was able to jump back into his car and lock the door.

But the second man ran to the gate

and tried to close the gate to prevent him from driving off.

Fortunately, the witness was able to drive out of the car park and escape.

When he gave us that information,

obviously we were concerned as to why he hadn’t told us that before.

We’d been searching in the Coombe Abbey area over the previous three years.

And what he said was

that he didn’t connect that incident with Nicola’s disappearance initially,

because all of the activity around Nicola’s disappearance

centred on the Black Pad, where she’d been last seen.

It was only when

the witness had watched the trial of Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly

and had followed that trial in the local media,

that he actually learnt that they had been driving a blue metallic Ford Capri.

And he stated that the car he saw was a metallic blue sports type car.

What that led to was a further search of this area of Coombe Abbey

that hadn’t previously been searched.

(clock ticking)

PETER WILSON: The police have now begun searching a new location

at Coombe Abbey Country Park, after a witness came forward.

MARTIN SLEVIN: It was an incredibly difficult area to search.

There was dense undergrowth,

there was 25 to 30 years of fallen trees and debris.

The area had never been husbanded before.

We’ve been searching here in Coombe Abbey for the past eight or so weeks.

And that’s following a credible witness coming forward,

that gave us the information about the day Nicola Payne went missing

on the 14th of December, 1991.

In order to maximise the opportunities on that search,

we again sought the services of the scientists, plant specialists,

search experts,

and we cleared the whole area for over 200 metres.

Interestingly, we found old bottles and debris of shoes and boots

that had been dumped here after the war.

And we compared those shoes

with the shoes that we knew Nicola had been wearing

on the day that she’d disappeared.

And we knew that she had new pixie boots on.

But it was quite clear they were not the same shoes.

Throughout all of these searches we kept the Payne family fully up to date

and fully informed.

And I thought that was important because it demonstrated to Nicola’s family

that we wouldn’t give up searching for her

and we would react to any new intelligence or information that came to light.

It was a huge area and a massive police search.

Huge resources put into it.

But this witness appeared to be credible.

And again, the family were caught up in the expectation

that this was going to be a breakthrough

and even though he was in poor health,

John Payne, Nicola’s father, came down to the area.

There was hope that something significant would be found.

We still had that hope of finding Nicola

even after all what we knew and what we’d been through.

AMANDA EALES: You try not to get your hopes up

and we’re all quite good at saying that we’re not gonna get our hopes up,

but I think secretly inside you just can’t help but think, is this gonna be it?

You know, because surely at some point

things have to change and go in our favour.

PETER WILSON: Once again, the police, they said that they were confident.

They said that if Nicola Payne was at Coombe Abbey,

they would find her.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

MARTIN SLEVIN: After ten months there was still no sign of Nicola

and we couldn’t find any evidence that she’d been there.

AMANDA EALES: We were completely deflated.

We can’t always have everything against us.

One day someone will tell us where she is

and she will be there and we’ll get what we need and what Nicola deserves.

MARTIN SLEVIN: From the information that we have

and all of the intelligence that we have,

my firm belief is that on the day Nicola disappeared,

at some point in the afternoon she was brought here

with the intention to dispose of her here.

I felt that we’d thoroughly exhausted the search areas

in Coombe Abbey Country Park.

Certainly based on intelligence.

But there are other areas of the park still to be explored.

And we’re waiting for that intelligence to come forward

to allow us to go in and utilise all of our resources

in those particular areas.

It’s a vast Country Park.

But my firm belief that Nicola is buried either here

or somewhere very close to this area.

I reminded myself of the very first conversation I had with John and Marilyn.

I said to them that I would work tirelessly

to try and bring those responsible for Nicola's death death to justice.

However, I might never be able to tell them

actually what happened to Nicola on the day.

PETER WILSON: The police have learnt lessons,

but there’s something like a hundred thousand people

every year leave their families,

seem to go off the grid, so it’s a huge number of people.

It’s a tiny number of people who are killed.

And what helps most of all is, unfortunately, when there’s a body there,

because a body provides, especially now,

so much evidence, so much information that the police are able to follow up.

When you haven’t got a body, you don’t have access to any of that.

HAZEL JOHNSON: This case could be resolved forensically if we could find Nicola.

At that scene we might find a little bit of evidence.

A piece of vegetation,

a piece of soil that could link back to something

that we examined back in 1991.

Equally, there could be something that the offender has left behind.

Cigarette end, a fingerprint.

Again, something that would actually resolve the case.

I asked John and Marilyn this question

early on in the investigation,

“If it was a choice between bringing Nicola’s killers to justice

or finding Nicola,

which would you choose?”

And overwhelmingly, without pausing for breath, both said,

“To bring Nicola home and lay her to rest.”

And that’s the fight now.

And I would never give up on trying to find Nicola’s remains

and laying her to rest.

Marilyn and John,

all they ever wanted was to just find out where she is.

You know, that’s the priority.

Justice is something else,

but the absolute priority, and it still is to this day, is where is she?

I don’t think there is anyone in this family that will ever say,

you know what, we’re just gonna let her stay out there

wherever she is on her own. Never.

We’re always gonna look for her.

MARTIN SLEVIN: What happened to Nicola could happen to any woman.

When I see stories similar to Nicola’s in the national media,

and whether it’s an abduction and a missing person,

or whether it’s a, you know, senseless killing of a lone female,

it saddens me.

It saddens me we live in a society where

women in particular can’t go about their daily activities

and business without fear of being attacked, you know, murdered.

REPORTER: Sarah Everard’s disappearance has rocked the country,

leaving women everywhere thinking, it could have been me.

Since Sarah’s death, 109 women have been killed by men in the UK.

On average it’s two every week.

And whilst Sabina Nessa’s death took too long to reach headlines,

many don’t at all.

That’s making women on these streets feel unsafe.

WOMAN: Sabina was meant to be out of her house for five minutes.

That’s 300 seconds.

This girl could not go 300 seconds in broad daylight.

It is horrible to never be able to relax,

to constantly have to be on your guard.

Every time you see a story that there’s a woman missing or been murdered,

it just throws it all back again.

It just reminds you, it just kicks it all back in.

‘Cause you put the memories kind of away

and then every time you hear a story, they come forward to your mind again

and it just all opens it all up again.

I’m Jess Phillips, I’m the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley,

and I am the Shadow Minister for Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding.

I’ve been working in the field of violence against women and girls,

or more accurately men’s violence against women

for nearly two decades now.

REPORTER: Sarah Everard’s disappearance has sent shockwaves throughout the UK,

with many women taking to social media to express their distress,

but also their own personal strategies to cope with the fear of attack

when they walk alone at night, or even in the day.

JESS PHILLIPS: At least every two or three days in our country a woman

is murdered by a man.

If the same rates of people were dying week in, week out at football matches,

during the football season,

you’d take note, wouldn’t you?

Tracy Kidd, Nelly Mustapha, Zahi Debi...

The list I read out every year is a list of the women

known to have been killed,

where a man is either the prime suspect or who has been convicted.

Kelly Stewart, Josephine Kaye...

It’s called the Femicide Census, so it’s a list of the femicides from that year.

Shadika Mohsin Patel, Maureen Kidd, Wendy Morse...

We just tolerate the murder of women as one of those things

that just happens as part of sort of society.

And I read the list of names out for that reason.

To try and show the extremity of it.

The trouble is, it is so well settled in our life that, you know,

generations, our heritage is male domination

in the culture and in relationships literally of women,

and unless you keep that pressure up to change culture, it all slips back.

And that, I fear, is where we are now.

Yeah, I think that we are not in a time where the tide is advancing

in the direction of tackling this.

I think it is in retreat.

Huge cuts to services, huge cuts to the criminal justice system.

So I’m afraid that’s had a massive impact.

Now the focus has to be on educating men from a young age

about how their behaviour can affect women and make them feel unsafe.

And make them stop and have a zero tolerance approach.

REPORTER: What needs to change to make women feel less afraid on our streets?

Some are arguing women have done all they can, and enough is enough.

These stories suddenly hit you every time.

And it stirs it back up.

And then your mind goes through

and you’re like, what the families are going through,

you understand what they’re going through.

You see the parents.

They’ve got the look that my mum and dad had.

And you just know they’re heart breaking inside.

REPORTER: The photographs have started to fade,

but memories and the torment of not knowing what’s happened

to their daughter, Nicola, has haunted John and Marilyn Payne.

I just want answers. Just want to find her.

Find out what’s happened to her.

That’s all that matters at the moment.

I’ve gone through the whole of the grieving process.

All I need now, I’m just stuck at the end.

I just need a body to lay to rest.

There is very little support for families who have suffered homicide.

And there is even less support for those where no justice is served.

There needs to be way more support and recognition of them

as victims in their own right.

I think every time I ever see that a young girl’s gone missing on the telly,

you just instantly feel for that family, ‘cause you’ve been there, you know.

And you just really, really pray

that they don’t have to suffer for the length of time,

even if it’s not a good outcome.

But they don’t have to wait like we’ve had to wait.

I know my mum has reached out to several other families

and been part of their support, and had discussions with them.

And I know it relives it for my mum. My mum lives it every day.

My dad lives it every day.

They say time is a healer. Time is not a healer.

You just get used to the pain and it becomes normal.

(clock ticking)

Sadly, in 2017, I transferred from West Midlands Police to DyfedPowys Police.

And it was extremely difficult to tell John and Marilyn that I was leaving.

In some ways I felt like I was abandoning them.

I felt like I was letting them down.

But I’ve remained resolute in my promise to them.

And I’ve supported a number of campaigns and projects

to continue to highlight Nicola’s case.

And I’ll go to my grave

still working tirelessly for the Payne family.

I feel the police feel there’s nothing else they can do.

And they’ve done as much as they can do.

And they’ve got no other leads to chase and follow up.

NIGEL PAYNE: I don’t know who to contact if we get any more information.

To me, there’s nobody on the case.

There is people I can ring up and like inform,

but it’s not really their baby anymore.

To me it’s on a shelf somewhere.

Same as quite a lot of others I presume.

My name is Shaun Edwards.

I’m Detective Superintendent

and I’m Head of Homicide for West Midlands Police.

So the state of the investigation is still very much open.

It is one of those investigations that are under the review team.

We still monitor.

Can’t begin to understand what the Payne family must be going through

over the last 30 years.

It’s been termed a ‘never ending murder’

and without Nicola being found,

without people being brought to justice...

I can see why that is called that.

What I can say is

the West Midlands Police, and certainly the homicide team here,

are committed that any credible intelligence about Nicola’s whereabouts

or evidence that will bring those to justice who are responsible for that,

we will follow that up.

(clock ticking)

Good evening. The family of Nicola Payne,

the Coventry mother who went missing 26 years ago this week,

have made a renewed appeal to find her body.

AMANDA EALES: I think after the trial, it was very, very hard of any of us

to get motivated to try and carry on searching, appealing,

I think everybody just felt completely battered.

But in time you shake it off.

We’re quite good at doing that in our family and we thought, you know what?

It’s not over just because the court says it is.

We can still do things on our own.

So we decided that as a family to make a fresh appeal.

Everybody got involved.

And we just gave it a new lease of life, really.

Nicola Payne’s family are making this anniversary, the 26th,

the most personal and the biggest yet.

Family photos never released before.

A video to be played at Coventry City FC’s next home game.

That wish to see Nicola returned is stronger than ever before.

Her parents are both now in their 70s.

This was the moment when they realised just how much their family are doing

to keep alive their campaign.

MARILYN PAYNE: It’s just been the hardest year for her anniversary,

because we’re getting older and you just think,

it’s not gonna happen while we’re still on this Earth.

We’ve always tried our best to keep the story alive every year.

Get things moving, but, you know, I had to say to them a couple of years ago

like, Nigel the oldest, I said, “You’re gonna have to take over.

I can’t handle it no more.”

DALE PAYNE: Now me mum and dad are getting older,

it’s definitely coming down to us brothers to keep it alive and keep the story going.

And we’ll never give up until we get answers.

MELANIE EALES: Both Marilyn and John have suffered in different ways.

Marilyn will talk about it, but John, he’s very withdrawn.

He doesn’t like to talk about it,

and it's definitely affected them health wise.

SCOTT PAYNE: It has took a great toll on their health.

It really has.

Stress of it all.

GARRY PAYNE: They’ve been through so much.

It seems to have hit my dad really hard

because she was the only girl of five.

She was like his little angel.

His baby.

And he didn’t go to bed for about six months when it happened.

He used to sit in the chair.

He wouldn’t lock the door.

Just sat in the chair, waiting for her.

He said, “I don’t lock her out if she comes home.”

Just sat there, wouldn’t go to bed.

And he’s a different man since it happened.

He’s just in a world of his own.

Just in a world of his own. Totally destroyed their life.

Totally.

It’s been very hard for us.

We’ve lost our girl.

And we could never get over it.

Something you never get over.

To watch your mum and dad just disintegrate in front of your face,

time and time again.

It’s about having their hopes raised and dashed, raised, dashed, raised, dashed.

Because we’ve had no luck from day one.

No luck in the ID parade,

no luck in court,

no luck in the search, no luck in anything.

So, I thought, how can we keep this going?

What can we do to keep the story alive?

And tried to breathe a bit more life into it.

So, okay, we’ll have a vigil.

We’re gonna have like a candlelit vigil.

(clock ticking)

I said no, we’re not having it on the Saturday,

which would have been when she went missing.

We’re gonna have it the day before.

Because my dad saw Nicola on Friday evening.

17 hours later she’s gone missing.

I would love to know what happened within them 17 hours.

So, we’re trying to throw things in the ring to spice it up a bit

Let’s ask the awkward questions.

Because, as a family, we are not happy with that missing 17 hours

and the answers we’re getting back.

But the priority was to remember Nicola.

It was very emotional.

AMANDA EALES: We just thought it was a really great opportunity

for the community to come together to show the family that they still care,

that they haven’t forgotten.

So, we did the vigil and we called it #lightupherpath

and we just asked people to bring a candle or bring a torch or something

and we walked the Black Pad,

the path that she should have taken home to safety,

but obviously didn’t manage that.

ADELE DUNCAN: So it was nice to be around her family, her friends,

the local community.

And it just goes to show the support

that the Payne family have around them.

It was great to see that people are still remembering.

And even the new people on the estate were out for it as well.

It was really good that the community is all still listening

and involved in the case.

NIGEL PAYNE: Quite humbling the amount of people turning up today.

It’s a massive, massive thank you from me and the family.

My mum and dad can’t be here today.

My mum’s not very well at the moment and...

and Dad’s actually at home, just like taking care of her.

They’d love to be here and they generally always are.

Again, this brings it home to myself the age that they are,

to try and get some sort of answer just for them.

Yeah, I think the boys will never let it lie.

They’ll do anything they can.

And they’ve now got children

and their children are quite keen to keep it going.

NIGEL PAYNE: I just can’t find the words sometimes.

And it’s great to see all the younger members of the family,

because although we’re getting old now,

after 30 years of it there, I know without a shadow of a doubt

the younger members of the family here will carry this on.

Yeah. Because we will never ever stop looking.

Never ever give up.

MALCOLM ROSS: I’m sure that everybody in Coventry is aware of Nicky Payne.

I think you could see that when so many people turn up to the vigil.

(applause)

If you mention Nicky Payne’s name, the vast majority of people say,

“Oh, I remember that.”

And it’s because of the efforts of John and Marilyn

to keep the story going, and their family.

One minute to us...

MALCOLM ROSS: And I think it’s wonderful what they’ve done.

It’s been organised by family members,

a vigil where around 80 people turned out earlier this evening.

And I’ve been talking to the family about their quest

to find the truth about Nicola.

It means everything to the family because it just shows us that other people,

as well as us, want to keep this going,

want to keep it alive, and we’ll always remember Nicola.

Talking to people here tonight, they all said that they remember that weekend

when Nicola disappeared, and everybody just simply wanted to know the truth.

I always thought this sort of thing happens to other people,

don’t happen to you.

You see it in the news and that, but it did.

GARRY PAYNE: All sorts of things are going through your head.

They really are.

One day revenge, next day leave it.

After the trial, I just decided then, just I’m putting it behind me.

Putting it to rest.

Getting on with my life.

DALE PAYNE: It’s controlled our lives.

All my brothers lives, Mum and Dad’s lives.

It’s kind of controlled it from that day.

Any family meetings, any family dos,

the conversation all comes generally back to that.

So, it’s hard to get away from it. Very hard to get away from it.

So, I chose to try and keep my children...

They know about it, but they’re not involved too much with it,

and just let them try and lead their life as good as they can.

I moved away.

It does help we’re not seeing Coventry anymore.

Not driving down the Henley Road looking across at the fields.

That helps, it not being there consciously.

But she’s always there. She comes with me.

MALCOLM ROSS: For me, it is a significant case in my memory.

Because I often wonder where is she?

Who’s responsible?

I often wonder how Mr and Mrs Payne are coping with it.

How the family are coping with it.

How Owen is growing up without his mum.

I often think about that.

PETER WILSON: It’s been a huge story for me.

I’ve grown old, my hair’s gone grey, I’ve actually retired.

You know, you see so much.

I’ve just been on the side-lines but I’ve stood watching the Payne family

and the anguish that they’ve gone through

and you really feel, as a human being, for them.

One part of me is I keep saying it’s the two M’s.

I don’t know if I’m mourning or just missing.

And it’s that that you’re torn apart with, you know.

Throughout my police career

I’ve been involved in some of the most high profile investigations

and murder investigations,

but this is the one that leaves the biggest scar, I’d say,

on my career, I guess, because it’s unsolved.

We haven’t brought closure for Nicola’s family by finding her body.

We haven’t got a positive result at court.

Which is why it’s incredibly important that documentaries of this nature

continue to be made,

continue to highlight not only Nicola’s case, but similar cases.

This documentary keeps the story of Nicola alive.

It tells Nicola’s story.

The last thing you would think is

to be in a documentary about your friend

that’s been missing for 31 years nearly.

It’s not something that I am enjoying doing.

However, I feel that I owe it to Nicky.

SHAUN EDWARDS: Anything we can do to keep this in the public’s mind,

that can maybe trigger people’s memories,

but equally, people’s allegiances change.

They may well assist the police and come forward.

And things they thought weren’t important at the time,

more intelligence can come in that we can act on

to find Nicola and bring justice to Nicola’s family.

AMANDA EALES: People’s loyalties change.

People’s health deteriorates

and they might have something on their conscience

that they just don’t want to take with them to their death.

I think any opportunity that we get to tell this story

and to let people listen to, there was a girl called Nicola Payne

and she disappeared off the face of the Earth and nobody can tell us why.

Because the alternative is that we just all forget it and go away

and you have to think, well, if that was someone you cared about,

would you just give up? No, never.

This is probably our last hope.

This is something hopefully I can show me mum and dad

and say, we’ve done everything we can.

Where do we go from here? I don’t know.

When people go missing and there’s nothing...

it’s just, I don’t know, there’s an emptiness.

There’s just a... there’s just a nothing.

Hence, we wanted to do some sort of memorial for Nicola.

For me mum and dad, ‘cause they’re getting old.

AMANDA EALES: So, recently we’ve had a bench installed in memory of Nicola.

Obviously we don’t have her body,

we’ve got nowhere as a focal point to go to.

You know, if someone’s having a bad day

or just go and have a chat, you know, “I’ll meet you at the bench.”

We feel like if she’s anywhere,

she could sort of maybe channel herself there and spend some time with us.

And it’s just a really peaceful, fitting tribute.

Myself and Adele, who is Nicky’s best friend,

we would often go and have a chat there.

I took my best friends there to break the news to them

that I was expecting my first baby.

It’s almost like involving her in the conversation,

which, had she been here,

then I’ve no doubt she would have been and putting her penny’s worth in.

So it’s including a lot of nice things and a lot of sort of conversations

and people go on their own and have a reflection as well.

It’s really important that we’ve got that now.

ADELE DUNCAN: One evening Amanda gave me a quick ring and said,

“Do you mind coming up and meeting me?” So we come up here.

We had a look around

and we decided that this is probably the best spot for her to be.

And it’s just nice.

It’s peaceful, and it’s the place to come and reflect.

AMANDA EALES: So we never actually told Nicky’s parents

that the bench was a possibility,

‘cause there was always a chance it wasn’t gonna happen.

But once it was finally installed,

we came up and checked it,

and then a few days later we brought them up on a Sunday morning.

A lot of the family were here.

And we just walked them down and surprised them with it.

NIGEL PAYNE: Bit of false pretences we got you here.

Did ya?

I don’t know where you thought I was taking ya,

but I bet you didn’t think you were coming here, did ya?

No, I should find him...

MELANIE EALES: Do you wanna come and sit down?

NIGEL PAYNE: Got you a little bench.

JOHN PAYNE: They done it and they surprised us about it.

They said, “Oh, we’re taking you out one Sunday morning,” and...

“Where are they taking us? Where are they taking us?”

But when we see that, oh, it’s lovely. Lovely, yeah.

MELANIE EALES: Ah, they were overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah.

It really took them back,

that now they’ve got somewhere to just go and sit.

JOHN PAYNE: The lads and the cousins, they’re always thinking about it.

They’re always trying to help us,

anything to do with Nicola, they’re always there.

(laughs)

AMANDA EALES: They were really overcome with emotion,

‘cause I think they’ve waited so long to just have that place

where they could just go and sit,

because they’ve just been in no man’s land, really.

There’s never anywhere for them to just remember her properly.

DALE PAYNE: The memorial bench was a great idea.

I’ve been up a couple of times myself since it’s been there.

It is, it’s a really good touch. It’s really good.

My mum and dad love it. They’re up there all the time.

They’re always up there.

JOHN PAYNE: Oh we’ll just go up there and sit there for a while

and just think about her.

It’s just nice to...

We’ve got somewhere we can go and just think about her.

Think, well, this is Nicola’s little spot.

And we can come here, ‘cause we’d got nowhere else before that.

Nothing.

This has gotta be one of the last... probably the last picture of Nic.

-Yeah, all of us together. -We’ve got all of us.

Yeah, like I say, she’s pregnant there.

NIGEL PAYNE: Now that’s Nan and Granddad’s 50th.

And who would have thought that’s our last picture together?

DALE PAYNE: I do sometimes wonder what she would be like now.

She’d have been a doting mother.

Well, she’d have had two or three more kids and that.

Which I think she would of, I think she would have had a good family.

And she always wanted a good sized family.

DALE PAYNE: But I do think of her as that girl, that cheeky little girl.

Little sister all the time. That's the last memories I’ve got.

NIGEL PAYNE: You can take pictures on your phone nowadays

and you can have them all like that,

but I don’t think it ever replaces getting old pictures out.

Just brings back good memories.

It’s really strange how I imagine Nicola,

because to me, I’m still a child compared to her.

I still look up to her, I still idolise her,

whereas she’s actually frozen in time.

RACHEL MOFFITT: She’d always be 18.

To think now we’re nearly 50, it’s our whole lives gone, hasn’t it?

She’s still as I seen her last.

Forever young she’ll be. 18, curly hair, fun.

She’ll always be that mischievous little sister

that got took away from me and I’ll never be able to have again.

I can still picture her.

Once she stood at our door on that Friday night,

I can still see it in my mind.

Her and our Owen.

Hmm.

And it’ll always be there.

Yeah.