She is always in my dreams

Hilary Foster doesn’t know what triggers them, but in her subconscious she finds herself panicking, driving the streets trying to find her daughter Hannah who is missing.

In others, Hannah has been abducted and raped by Kohli, but she has managed to break free from the van and escape his clutches.

There are many different scenarios that play out in her mind about that night – but the outcome is always a hopeless one.

“Somehow, in my dreams, I have never been able to rescue her,” said Hilary.

“I have visualised it, every bit. The images are very strong of how I imagine it to have been.

“Maybe now all that will change after the court case, but I doubt if I will ever know the definitive truth of what happened.”

Their strong mother and daughter bond is, Hilary says, how she knows Hannah would have been petrified and paralysed by fear when she was snatched from the street. She blames herself for passing that gene to her firstborn.

“I knew my daughter so well so I can just imagine how Hannah would have reacted. That’s what I find so hard. To imagine any child subjected to what she went through is beyond comprehension, let alone when it’s your own.

“I’m still struggling with acceptance which may seem ridiculous after five-and-a-half years. It’s relentless.

“People say how you have those moments believing they are still here and it is true. You expect her to walk through the door. Sometimes it can be just the turn of a girl’s head as she walks down the road.

“It happens to me and just for a split second you get a little moment when you think it’s her, but it does not last very long.

“I think it’s because you want it so much. Everyone thinks it’s the waking hours that are the worst, when you suddenly remember what has happened, but for me I’m still so aware, even in moments like when I’m cooking one of her favourite meals.

“Even after all this time it still feels strange to set three places at the table and not four.”

Hilary added: “Every milestone is still absolutely appalling for us. You know what to expect but it still does not get any better.

“Christmas is unbearably difficult as we always knew that whatever the circumstances in her life, if Hannah was at university, that she would be home for Christmas. The first time was dreadful. We were all very nervous and worried about how we would cope. It was with a sigh of relief when it was over.

“It changes our own birthdays too. What’s to celebrate in being a year older when Hannah died so young? Friends and family never really know what to do. At any event we attend, you can’t escape the fact that somebody is missing.”

A graceful dancer, bursting with life and someone who made her proud, is how Hilary talks of her eldest daughter.

Trying to fight off the tears that always come when she remembers the happy times, she said: “Hannah was always a happy girl with a great sense of humour. When you look through the photos she was bursting with life, full of fun as both my girls were growing up. They used to have a ball together.

“Hannah loved to dress up as a bride and dressed Sarah as her bridesmaid. It’s the tragic irony that that will never happen.

“They would also make me the most fantastic Mother’s Day cards together that would be cute as well as funny. They are both just what you hope for in children.”

A fan of comedians like Eddie Izzard, Hannah also liked to read Terry Pratchett books and would have in-jokes with all her friends.

“She was just beginning to come out of her shell after starting college. She had been quite shy when she was younger.”

Hannah did ballet from a young age, with Sarah following in her footsteps, but she was forced to give up aged 13 after suffering problems with her knees.

“She was a very graceful dancer and would do very well in dance festivals.”

She also achieved her Duke of Edinburgh’s bronze and silver awards – with a teacher writing to Hannah’s parents following her death recalling Hannah trampling through the moors but still looking colour coordinated and stylish.

With a love for caring for others and wanting to teach people new things, she also helped with a local Brownie pack.

While Hilary is consumed by what has happened, Hannah’s dad Trevor is trying to deal with his daughter’s murder in his own way. He describes revisiting the horror of what happened in his mind as like “having had open heart surgery and now the stitches are being ripped off”.

Like any loving father, in the early days after Hannah’s death Trevor punished himself about how a slight change in the time he came home from playing badminton could have meant he met his eldest daughter at the bus stop on the night she was abducted.

Both have to regularly remind themselves that Kohli killed Hannah – it wasn’t something they failed to do as parents on that night.

Trevor said: “I know now that I can’t do anything about what happened. It’s a matter of personal management and how you deal with it. I don’t let myself go back over detail. I have deliberately just shut that out of my mind.

“I have to live with the fact I wasn’t there to help Hannah. That will be at the back of my mind until I die. You don’t get a second chance.”