This day, one year ago, we drove over the Pennines to Terminal 1, Manchester Airport, just like many other parents have done and many other parents will do, to drop their beloved off, to go backpack around South East Asia.

All perfectly normal.

Iz and Beth had their new bags packed. Their flight clothes on. They sat in the back of the car and joked about the music they’d want played at their funerals. I told them to f@&k off and didn’t listen.  (Beth’s jokes usually involved deciding between having monkey arms or no arms at all).

All perfectly normal.

Once their bags were through, Izzy wanted the ubiquitous ‘send off selfie’ and we all posed in front the Helvetica airport signs.

Izzy cried. She was, after all, only just 19 and this adventure would be by far the longest she’d been away from home comforts. Beth, a more seasoned traveller and 24, degree’d up but indecisive about her life ahead of her, smiled and said ‘love you’.

All perfectly normal. 

That was the last time we saw them.

The last time we held them. The last time we kissed them. The last time we felt their breath.

We had no conceivable, imaginable idea that this intimate, family huddle would be all over the Tabloids in weeks to come. Life was still ‘Before’.