To my darling Phil, If you can see me, if you are near me then you know as soon as I wrote the opening sentence to this letter the tears started to flow and I can barely see the keyboard, but I want to keep going. In the early days of our relationship this is all we had, letters, you were in Belize I was in Eastham. To me your life seemed so exciting, whilst mine mundane and at times quite hard with two young boys to bring up alone. But I was safe you were not, and you had been through so much horror at this point in your young life you were only 25, I was to learn little of the horrors, but was to see over the next few years how they had affected you. But over the years the horrors diminished and you lived life to the full and the nightmares grew weaker, and you learned to adjust. You came into our lives in 1989, and the impact you had was amazing, you transformed us, you gave your all. We grew as a family together, sealing the bond with marriage in 1991. We became the Case’s and boy we, all four of us were Case’s we still are! We had a great marriage, it had it’s ups and downs, like all, but the downs were few (sounds like a song) and no I’m not looking back with rose tinted glasses, this is simply the truth, ask any member of our family and our friends and they will tell you, many people where I think a little jealous of our relationship. Phil I love you unconditionally, I love you with every fibre of my being and you returned my love tenfold, this is the truth, this is not an exaggeration. We laughed, we loved, we played, we cried, we did it all together, we had found our soul mate, so few people do that you know Phil. How sad that many will never experience the love we had. We watched our boys grow into fine young men and they are a credit to us both, they are so like you Phil. They have your sense of right and wrong, your sense of humour, and your need to give all the time. It is uncanny how like you they are, and getting more like you on a daily basis. Your Mum can see this in them too, they make her cry when she is with them because they remind her so much of you. Your Mum is very proud of our two boys, and their relationship with her is blossoming. We will look after her for you, just as you would have done had you still been here. We will never know what happened on that bloody awful day 7th December 2006 (forever burned into my heart) even the official inquest was not able to tell us what happened. You left our house your perfectly normal self and you never returned, and we are left with an open verdict that answers nothing, no line to be drawn here, we will always wonder, we will always try to sort it out, but we will never be able to, only you know and I can’t ask you. I think my darling this is one of the hardest parts of this tragedy, that I will never know the truth. I know what I believe, but it is only what I believe, I have no proof other than I knew you probably better than you knew yourself. You were saving us all… I know this much… I wish I could have said goodbye to you, I wish I could have been with you as you passed into the next world; I wanted to lay with you when this happened. I wanted to be holding your hand and talking to you gently telling you how much you were loved and how much you were going to be missed, I wanted to thank you for everything you had done for us a family and for everything you did for me as a woman. I wanted the romantic death bed scene! I didn’t want you to be alone I wanted you to be safe and warm and pain free, and I wanted you to do all this for me when my time comes. I wanted us to grow old together, to get a stair lift in our house, to potter to the shops on Zimmer frames. I suppose I wanted to die together, and then neither of us would have to go through the agony that I am going through now. But it was not to be, so now I go through this grief journey alone. If I had my wish I would have told you, Phil you are my world, you are everything to me you are my life. I love you so much more than simple words can convey, I adore you, you are beautiful inside and out. Thank you, thank you for making my life complete, thank you for giving our boys the best Dad in the world, thank you for all you taught them and for helping them to become those proud young men who stood at your funeral and spoke of their love for you. Thank you for caring so much for my family, my sister, my brother. Thank you for all your support of me as I pursued my career, my faith, my life. You gave so much to us Phil; you gave it with pure love in your heart for us all. I miss you my darling, I miss you so much, life with out you is so difficult, it’s so sad and lonely without you by my side. Phil I will love you till my dying day. I live on with you in my heart, proud to be your wife and mother of your boys….. Till we meet again my darling, till I can once again be in your arms, hear your voice, smell you, touch you… I love you. With all my love, yesterday, today and all my tomorrows Beth xxxxx ‘your love bundle’