Lauren Holmes was 11 when she discovered how her sister, Collette, had died. There were woods near the family home in Corby in Northamptonshire, and Lauren had ignored her mother’s warning that they were unsafe.
“We knew we weren’t allowed to go there,” Lauren remembers, “but we did, and we got chased by a local lad. Two of my friends ended up in hospital getting thorns removed because they’d tried to escape through the brambles. That evening, everyone’s parents gave us a real rollicking, but my mum was just silent. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t shouting. I was sent to my room and she came in and threw a load of newspapers on my bed, and she said: ‘This is why you’re not allowed to go into the woods!’ I felt shocked and guilty. It was a hard way to find out.”
