How do you feel about the post mortem, did you, did you accept it had to happen?

The first time, but the second time no, it was just dragging it out, dragging their heels. The defendants’ barristers, they don’t think of people’s personal feelings I don’t think.

So who wanted this, who wanted the second post mortem?

Her legal team.

Did they have any grounds for that?

Not that I can remember, but they must have thought so.

Fortunately the Military, they made; the funeral arrangements were already made, tentatively, a couple of dates had been booked for after Christmas, it would be New Year. The police had pressured her legal team because they could see what upset it was causing us, but I don’t think it’s of any particular concern, it’s not a personal thing for them.

The military funeral it was so special because there was a guard of honour, as you walked up to the church. In church there were a couple of hundred of marines in uniform. They spoke about our son, in a way which was, they have a certain sense of humour and that came across, which was our son.

There was a flag over his coffin, the Union Jack; we still have the Union Jack, and his cap which was on the coffin, which we were presented with later, both the Union Jack and the cap. It was such a special funeral.

And what did make myself and my daughter, and husband smile, and some of the family, when we were going from the church to the crematorium it caused quite a big traffic jam, and we thought if our son was here, this is what he would love, how he stopped the traffic on a Friday afternoon. Our son had such a sense of humour.

Our solicitor applied to the Coroner for the release of the body, for Marks body, in order that we could bury him, and the Coroner refused, with the result that we waited eight weeks to get Marks body back. I can’t describe how, what that’s like.

No.

Or to have to wait eight weeks.

Did they say they had to do a post-mortem or anything?

No, they had done a post mortem. He was waiting on; he said he was waiting on the county prosecutor’s decision as to whether there would be any criminal charges, manslaughter charges. Our solicitor actually wrote to him and sent him a home office memo, that said that a second post mortem should be arranged by the Coroner to allow the body to be released to the family for burial. But he said that that only applied to homicide victims, they were the only ones that were warranted early release.

So that was his reason for holding it up?

Well, he said he was waiting on the crown prosecutor telling him whether there was going to be any, it turned out I mean again this coroner turned out to be, well I don’t know whether we were unlucky, I mean I’ve heard others stories from other people whove gone through very similar experiences, he just flatly refused to listen to our solicitor. She sent him this home office memo, saying that, which said he should arrange a second post mortem to allow the body to be released, and he said, as I say, that that only, that only homicide victims warranted early release. Now the definition of homicide in the dictionary is the killing of a human being, so I don’t know what the difference was between manslaughter enquiries with an employer and homicide. I don’t know what the difference is, and to me it’s the same thing. But to him it was different.

The funeral was, Mark was very, very proud of his Scottish heritage really, I mean he was, it was a bit of a joke in his house because my daughter in law is English, my grandson was born in Wales, so, you know they always kind of say it’s a you know, a multi cultural family, so it was always a bit of a joke, but he was very proud of being Scottish, so we had a piper playing at the funeral and as I say, they were so many people there, but nobody, nobody from the employer, not even you know the men that he considered friends, attended the funeral.

It was a humanist funeral, simply because Mark wasn’t religious, and I, I probably I suppose at that point I was probably, I don’t know, indifferent, I was probably agnostic I suppose. But since then and you know the way that people have behaved since then, I would say I’m probably atheist now, you know I don’t really, I just think if there was a God out there, you know, people wouldn’t behave like that, you know it would just so but so it was a humanist funeral.

And how did you find someone to take that service?

Again, I went through the telephone directory and phoned up the Samaritans, I phoned up them because I, you know I have friends who are still Samaritans, so I phoned, I phoned them and you know someone phoned someone else, and they came back with this ladies name, and she was wonderful. She was, it was, it was a beautiful ceremony. I didn’t speak, at that time I, I couldn’t have, I couldn’t have spoken, I couldn’t have said anything. Marks friend said something, but she talked about Marks life and whatever, we didn’t, there were no hymns sung, it was music, it was Marks favourite pieces of music that were played.

So then you were allowed to plan the funeral then.

Then we were allowed to plan the funeral, yes.

But you say he’d already made his wishes known?

He had made his wishes known very clearly what everyone had to wear, he wanted to be buried, everyone had to wear a football shirt, he named his pallbearers, and some of them was his mates that were like 6′ and the other one could be like 4′ something, and he thought it would be funny, because he could picture them, you know trying to carry this coffin, and it would be wonky. But obviously it doesn’t work like that, because they put you on sizes and stuff. So he named the pallbearers and then obviously then I had the task of going round to these people that I knew they were, and ask them would they, would they mind doing it because this is what Dave wanted. And obviously they all, all agreed.

Had he written this down, or had he just told you?

No, verbally he’d told me, on, on, on like lots of occasions, so I was very aware of what he wanted.

Was it helpful to you to know what he wanted?

Yes. Yes. It was yes. Yes, because it felt like we were doing something that he wanted. The whole thing was a bit bizarre because even before he went away this time I was having re-occurring dreams of one of his best friends standing in the church, with his football shirt on, talking about him.

Ah.

Absolutely bizarre.

You knew about it.

Yes, before it even happened. Yes, it was all a bit strange really.

Was the funeral in a church?

Yes at the time the church where we live was being modified, so that church holds about 500, and we knew there would be a lot of people, and there isn’t another church in the area that we, that was big enough. There’s a church in [another village] which holds again between 400, 500 people and through the vicar that, that came, he said we could have it in this church, and we went over and had a look at it and stuff, so we, we went for that church.

And what, how did you arrange the service in the end?

At all times like I kept my own daughter involved in the whole thing, and to be fair, also Dave’s girlfriend, because I didn’t want them being pushed out in any way whatsoever. So we went through all of the music, and we went through hymns and we went through the whole thing before we, and we all agreed on the music that we were going to have. And my daughter chose the Robbie Williams, Angel, because she likes that, Dave liked Robbie Williams, so we had that when he came through.

And then it sort of went from there really. And some of his friends had asked if they could talk, and this couple we did ask would they like to say a few words, and they were quite happy to.

So after, the first thing was the funeral, in the May.

Yeah.

Do you want to say a bit about that?

Well what can one say? I mean, it was just organising it and deciding which undertakers to use,

Which one?

Which undertakers obviously to use. And we had, it was probably made a bit easier for me because obviously I deal with that side of things quite a lot, in my work, but I knew the undertakers my Mum would want to use because she’d used them for my Nan, and one of the ladies that works there, I’ve worked previously in another role with, so I knew her, so it was a bit easier, it wasn’t as if I was talking to strangers the whole time. It was, I suppose it was just the way that it happens with my background.

And where did you have the funeral?

At the crematorium, in [the town]. And then there was quite a few people there which was nice to see for her.

But I always knew my Mum’s wishes because when my Nan was cremated, she didn’t want anything, like she said, she’s not there to enjoy it, so, as far as she’s concerned, you know, it was, and I said, There’s no point in having limousine cars, she wouldn’t have wanted it. She didn’t have it for my Nan And I knew she didn’t have that.

The vicar that took the service. He did my Nan’s service, he did my Mum’s cousins’ service, he did my first wedding, and he was the vicar of the school when me and my sister were at school, so, it wasn’t too difficult. I mean he came to me at home to organise how I wanted the service done, but in the meantime I’d got bits in from everyone in the family what they wanted, because otherwise it tends to be a case of Oh well you choose it, you rdquo; Well you know if you’re put in that position. So I just took a bit from everybody, what they wanted in there, from all the grandchildren, and discussed it with my sister, and my Mum’s brother over the phone, sort of, what we’d planned and just to make sure everyone was okay with it really.

Did your son go to the funeral?

Yes. He, he came in the car with me, and Steph’s Mum and Dad.

Was he glad to be there?

Yes, Yes. But he was very withdrawn, very sullen on the day as you might expect, there’s just nothing you could say is there? There’s nothing, no way of coping with a day like that.

And did somebody talk about Steph?

Yes, I managed to say, oh, I managed to get up in church and I managed to read half a page of A4 that I’d managed to write, very stuttering emotional voice, and just about, just about got through it, but I just said in front of everyone that I loved her, and that’s all I wanted to say, and I, it was okay, I managed, I got quite a lot of praise if you like, later on that night, my sisters were phoning up and saying, I don’t know how you managed to say all that. That was one thing I’m glad about that I did manage to do that on the day, but even the vicar said after we’d finished, There’s nothing I can add to that. And I didn’t realise all the church was crying their eye’s out as I sat down. So I’m glad I managed, that was the one thing I really wanted to get through.

I wonder if people realise, I mean, we perhaps, we were terribly lucky that my husband knew the undertakers and he just said to them Please just, if you could back off and just let them do what they want to do it will help and it did help because we dressed her because I couldn’t bear the thought of somebody else doing that. She’d have been horrified and also we asked them to take, they’ve got a cross up and we asked them to take that down because that would have spooked her. But they were very, very sympathetic.

And we also . didn’t want her taken in a hearse so we took her in the van, in my husband’s van, that’s my husband, because before she went away she worked with him quite a lot and so they made it look all nice inside, and we all travelled with her in the van, so we were all there, there was me and my son and daughter and her two boyfriends, we all travelled with her because, we just didn’t want her to be on her own. And we didn’t want her to be in some anonymous old hearse, and people gauping at her, you know, so we went in the van and then we got to where…

This is your own personal van?

Yes, yes one of my husband’s work vans.

I don’t think people realise they can do this.

No, I don’t think they do.

Presumably it’s also cheaper as well because they charge for those things don’t they?

I don’t know, I guess so when we got to the crematorium, or just before, we did have a horse drawn glass carriage then because we thought we can’t turn up in a van, you know, that’s not really the thing is it, and we wanted her then to have a nice, and in fact the policeman that was very nice that came here to tell me, he wasn’t on duty that day but he phoned up one of his colleagues and he got the traffic stopped for her, so that we could just have that last little trip.

And who provided the carriage?

The undertakers, it was one with two horses and that and I mean that was very dramatic and I think she’d have liked that.

There was one other thing about the funeral that I wanted to say and I think most people realise that they can have their own pall bearers but in our case her sister was one of them and I think there was quite, there was a few raised eyebrows because she’s a girl, you know, and it was her brother and sister, her boyfriends, her step dad and her own dad. And I think people, there were a few raised eyebrows, even like my parents said her sister shouldn’t be doing that, but she wanted to do it, she wasn’t forced, we didn’t sort of strong arm her into doing it, there was no question of her not doing it and I think people again it’s one of those traditions that you don’t have to conform with, it doesn’t have to be all chaps that do it and although it’s a very sad thing to do, her sister felt it was an honour to do it, you know, she wanted to do it for her sister.

Yes, and we had a big photograph of her there, and she was sort of grinning and we deliberately didn’t choose a modelling one it was just a normal holiday one. And then we asked people just to bring a single flower and leave it on her coffin and the doors at the side opened and I thought oh my God there somebody else’s funeral going on but it wasn’t it was Marni’s and there were so many people there we didn’t have nearly enough things printed, there was about four or five hundred people there.