I shake my head to try to focus on what I’m doing. I have a vague idea where she is buried. Towards the far wall, close to the edge of the maze of pathways that wind down the hill from Creggan to the Brandywell. The graves in this part of the cemetery are well settled now. Mostly just a long line of frost-covered lawn, occasional floral arrangements or ornaments showing them to be well-tended, their inhabitants still loved and missed.

It doesn’t take me long to spot Kelly’s grave – the tall angelic figure, chiselled out of white marble, glistening as if she has been freshly hewn. The gold lettering that spells out her name has been retouched, Bernie told me. Fixed up for her anniversary. They retouch it every few years. Liam takes cleaning cloths and spray to the cemetery with him at least once a week to make sure the stone is kept sparkling. Looking at it now, I wonder how on earth they had been able to afford such a stone. ‘Debt and danger’ probably, as my mum used to say.

Bernie had told me, ‘You know, we had all these hopes and dreams for her and in the end, all we can do for her is make sure her resting place is well-tended. So we do that.’

Kelly Doherty

1986 – 1994

Taken from us

Beloved daughter, sister & granddaughter

Be Not Afraid

Instantly the words and the tune of the hymn ‘Be Not Afraid’ come back to me. I remember it was sung at Kelly’s funeral. I had wondered if she had been afraid. I’m sure she had been. Even then there was something about the reassurance that God was with you in your most trying times that didn’t ring true.

I felt it even more now, after listening to Bernie Doherty tell me how she’d had to listen to her daughter’s injuries outlined in a cold, methodical manner. As if it hadn’t been her baby girl who had died but instead just a collection of bones and muscles and organs.

‘He took her humanity away,’ Bernie had told me. ‘When he killed her. You know. He took away so much, but what I can’t forgive him for is taking away the very sense of who she was. She wasn’t my wee girl, who would roar laughing watching Mr Bean, or who would constantly be on at me to save the empty toilet roll tubes and milk cartons and to buy her poster paint so she could make some monstrosity she’d seen on Art Attack.

‘Nobody cared that she loved being read to still each night. That writer, you know. The famous one …’ She’d paused for a moment or so as if trying to pull a name from the depths of her memories. ‘Dahl!’ she’d said triumphantly. ‘That Roald Dahl. She loved him.