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Anne Williams

Pictured above, Anne Williams with members of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign of which Anne is Chairperson.

Kirby Times is proud be able to publish Two Chapters of Anne's book "When you Walk Through A Storm" below.

When You Walk Through A Storm

ISBN 184018 067 6

Book on Sale HERE!

Contact Anne Williams HERE!

Hillsborough Justice Website

Introduction

A Portrait of Kevin By his girlfriend Esther, his best friend Lawrence, and his sister Sara

ESTHER

I got together with Kevin on a school trip the October before Hillsborough. We were both 15 and we had been part of the same group of friends at Formby High. There were about twenty of us and we would all go down to the beach together and just spend time there. The holiday abroad was called the `Three Countries' trip and we went to Italy, Yugoslavia and France. The distinct thing about Kevin was his honesty. I've got such a nice romantic memory of being on a boat travelling to Venice and Kevin sitting and talking to me about his dad, Steve, and about how Steve taught him how to speak and how he loved him. I thought then how honest he was. And a bit clumsy as well.

He would do daft things. We had a teacher with us called Mrs Horne who was about fifty and dead nice. One night, two of the bigger kids went and bought some drink and we all got drunk. Kevin was really drunk and the next morning we told him he had gone up to Mrs Horne and said, `Hey Horny - how about it?' And we kept on about it so much that Kevin went and apologised to her and she was like, `Go away Kevin, what are you talking about?' He was probably playing up to us, because Kevin was always making people laugh.

Kevin could be a bit of a divvy if there was something he wanted. When we first came back from holiday I was a bit hoity and not sure if I wanted to go out with him and whether I wanted more than we had on holiday. Kevin didn't mind making a bit of a fool of himself over it. A lot of girls would have said, `That's so uncool' but I found it endearing. He would be in my face saying, `Come on, you know you want to go out with me, don't mess me around.' Kevin was very dark looking and he had this lovely skin. He was really attractive but a lot of the girls were put off because he'd always have his shoelaces undone and his shirt hanging out. But he was funny and bright and mature beyond his years.

He used to walk me to Formby train station every night, he was quite gallant in that way. During the week we would just speak on the phone in the evenings because it was quite a nuisance to get from Hightown where my parents lived. But at weekends I'd go over to his mum and dad's and we would drink cider and lager and listen to Genesis or Pink Floyd. And John Lennon, of course. He loved John Lennon because Steve looks like John Lennon. His parents were brilliant. I think they thought I was quite sensible. Kevin told me that his mum, Anne, had said, `She's lovely Kevin. She's got long hair.' Before his mum went out, Kevin would always put her curlers out for her and put them away as well. One of the first times I came over he was putting them away and he said, `I always do this.' It was quite sweet. He would be protective of his mum. He was unusual in that he was quite a mummy's boy as well as being rough and ready and getting on well with his dad. When Anne and Steve went out we would look after Sara. He was lovely with her. He would be like, `My little sister.'

He loved an argument. We were always arguing about politics and he would take the opposite side just to be mischievous. He would pretend that he thought Margaret Thatcher was the greatest thing since sliced bread just to wind me up. I would get worked up and I think he enjoyed that. He was bright enough to go to university if he had wanted to do so. He was quite skilled artistically so he might have done something like that but I can also imagine him saying, `Sod it, there's more to life than university' He had his head screwed on though and he wanted to be financially secure.

The Christmas before Hillsborough I gave him a double Pink Floyd album which cost me about twenty quid and I was thinking, `He'd better get me something good.' I was made up when he gave me this gold chain with a heart on it. It was nice because he had thought of it himself. After Christmas we had some fall-outs and didn't go out with each other for a month. Then we got back together, but a week before Hillsborough we'd had rows. The day before, in English, I'd pretended I had a nark on with him and I got a friend to ask him for some of his Wagon Wheel biscuit because he wouldn't have given me any if I had asked. It was a silly argument. On the Saturday I didn't know anything about Hillsborough until later in the day when I was with some friends and there was a lad there in a terrible state. I was like, `Should I ring Anne and Steve?' and I thought, `No, because Kevin will answer.'

His best friend Lawrence told me that Kevin had said to him, `If I die, I'd like to die on the pitch at Anfield. I'd like to die in the Kop with Esther, with my arms around Esther.' That's quite a poignant thing to have said at 15.

LAWRENCE

We were 15 and we used to talk about girls, parties, drinking - all that business. If we could we'd be out every Friday and Saturday. One time we planned to have a party at Kev's house and we wanted to keep it a secret from his mum and dad. But everyone kept phoning up and asking about the party. There were literally fifty calls which Anne and Steve kept answering. They were like, `What's going on here?' It didn't take them long to cotton on. We were dead worried but they just said, `You can't have a party tonight but if you want to you can have a party next weekend. Just make sure you'll have tidied up by the time we get home from the Legion.' That was the start of Kev's parties. We used to kick everyone out at half past eleven and tidy up. A few of the lads or girls would stay behind and help. We had seven or eight parties here before Hillsborough. I had a girlfriend and she used to come. Carol, her name was. My mum used to get some lagers for us. She had the philosophy, `I might as well get them because if I don't they're going to get them from somewhere.' Everyone would bring something - they would raid their drinks cabinets at home.

Anne and Steve were always very welcoming to me and most weekends I would stay over. I don't know how friendships really start. I knew Kev from Formby High when we were about twelve and we just started knocking about together. We would play football in the breaks. We were quite similar: we both had a divorce in the family and there wasn't much money around. We used to walk to school together - when I went. Half the time I never turned up. But I used to meet him afterwards and talk about what was going on. We had arguments and that but it was always stupid things. We never argued about football because we both supported Liverpool. I went to a few home games but I wasn't fanatical like him. It was only £2.50 to get into the Kop then so it was quite easy for us to go. I can remember us sitting on the iron bars and shouting, `Champions!'
Kev was always up for a laugh. I remember he was a very fast runner. One school sports day he was doing the 200 metres and we were all there cheering him on and he was waving enthusiastically back at us. And then the gun went and all the others sprinted off but Kev was still just stood there, waving! Everyone liked Kev but not just because he would crack a joke. He was one of the people you could rely on. He would always put himself out for me. He used to carry me home most nights if we'd been out. It would be dead funny because he would be trying to act sober and I was, like, falling over. We used to try and get back in before Anne and Steve did but it never happened. One time Anne told me she had been woken by the sound of Kev dragging me upstairs, kicking me and shouting, `Get up there.' Another time I woke up and my clothes were covered in mud and we had no idea how it happened. But Anne just washed the lot. I only had to carry Kev home once. We'd been at a party and there was a drinking competition with a bottle of Southern Comfort. We were only 15 and he was pissed but it was the only time I can remember me looking after him rather than the other way round.

I had no idea what I wanted to do in life but Kev seemed to know where he was going. He was a clever lad, in all the top sets at school. I know he wanted to go to university but he never actually said what he would do there. He might have done something with drawing - I think he got his artistic talent from Steve's dad who had been an architect. Kev was an excellent artist and would always draw half of my pictures in art class as well as his own.

Formby was always a quiet place with little trouble. Sometimes we would have a scuffle at school and Kev was pretty handy in those. He was only about five foot four at the time but he was stocky with a bit of muscle on him. It would be a bit dodgier with the lads from Southport if we went up to the arcades because they knew we weren't from there. One day we went swimming in Southport and these 12-year-old girls started following us. We were about fourteen. They were going, `Will you go out with us?' but as they were a bit younger we didn't want anything to do with them. So Kev and me went to the fair where they had this ride called Speedway. There were rows of three motorbikes and you would sit on these and go round in circles. It was a bit boring so I was standing up to show off while Kev was sat on the next bike shouting at me to sit down. Eventually I went to get back on and lost my balance. The force threw me into Kev who fell into the next bikes while I flew right over all of them. They had to stop the ride. I was shaking. All I heard was Kev saying, `The face on you!' He was just stood there laughing.

SARA

I was the little sister who used to tag along. I always used to wish I was older so I could go out with him to his parties. I just wanted to go where he wanted to go. That's why I became interested in football. I knew he liked it so I begged to go to matches as well. I went to Anfield once before he died. My Auntie Penny, Dad's sister, took us. I don't even know what game it was because I was very young. All I can remember is that Kev and our eldest, Mike, went down the front and I had to stay with my auntie.

Kev taught me how to play football. I could dribble the ball really well. On Saturdays and Sundays, if Mum and Dad were down the pub, we used to play football in the garden with his best mate Lawrence all afternoon. I used to be dead useful! I usually had to go in goal though. If it was raining they used to play inside using my teddy as the ball. He was called Little Ted and my dad had found him on a building site.

Kev used to baby-sit me and sometimes he would have a party. His friends used to sneak in drinks. Mum and Dad didn't mind as long as it wasn't too noisy because the neighbours would complain and stuff. When Mum and Dad came home once from the pub they couldn't get in the front door because of the box full of drinks blocking the way. If he was having a party I would crawl behind the sofa and hide. His friends would go, `Kev, you know Sara's behind the couch,' and he'd say, `Just leave her.' He would ignore me until about ten o'clock when he would say, `If you want to stay up just ask me.' Then he'd send me to bed and all his friends would come up and read me stories and talk for hours in my room until Kev would say, all stern, `Come on, I've told you. Go to bed!'

I used to drop him in trouble with my mum and dad without meaning to. One night there was only supposed to be him and Lawrence in the house but one of his friends, Andy, came round. And three girls as well. I got sent straight to bed but I said I was going to tell Mum and Dad and I did. I thought they already knew. Kev went mad and wouldn't talk to me for ages. I kept crying and telling him I was sorry. In the end he gave in and started laughing. He was always winding me up. One night he pretended he was a dog and started licking my face. I was screaming and yelling so much that the neighbour came over from across the road because she thought we were all getting murdered.

Kev ran away from home once. He'd had an argument with Mum over this lad he was hanging around with who was always in trouble. So Mum sent our Kev to bed. When I went up to ask him if he wanted any tea he was gone. He had opened the window and got on to the kitchen roof. He came home about two hours later wrapped in his Liverpool blanket all covered in grass and said he had been on the Gala field. He'd come home before my dad came home from work. The field was behind the British Legion and I used to go up there with him and Lawrence some afternoons if Kev was looking after me. We would take my kite and they used to run off and play with it all afternoon leaving me stood there.

One time he gave me this Star Wars game which I used to play all the time. Then Kev took it off me and said he'd share it with me. When he went to school I would go and get it and he'd have the battery out the back. He used to hide the battery from me so I couldn't play it. And he used to take my Walkman. It had a microphone so you could sing along and Kev was mad for this. He'd run the batteries out. He would fall asleep with it and have it on all night. And he broke the microphone.

Kev taught me to count. He was brilliant at maths and used to do my homework for me. We would sit at the kitchen table and I used to copy what he was doing. I think he wanted to be a bank manager. He was always great with my friends, and kind. When I was getting picked on at school he used to teach me how to hit the bullies. `Just hit them, Sara,' he would say. `Just hit them straight.'

I used to play football for the school and one day our Kev gave me a load of Liverpool stuff so I could go into school with all this on. No one else had any. He even gave me the Liverpool shin pads to wear when I was playing. I was made up. And afterwards, 'cause it was dark, he came up and met me and walked me home.

I don't think anyone realised how popular Kevin was until he actually died

Chapter One

Hillsborough

Kevin was in a sulk. I could always tell when he was fed up. He had such a gob on him. His jaw would be in his boots. He was like that after his dad, Steve, had told him he couldn't go to Hillsborough. Liverpool were playing Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-finals and Kevin wanted to go with his friend, Andy Duncan. He was mad on Liverpool and had been ever since he was a little boy of four or five. His Auntie Penny, Steve's sister, used to take our two boys - Kevin and Michael, who was two years older. When he was 13 Kevin decided he wanted to go with his mates and actually stand in the Kop End at Anfield behind the goal.

Steve wasn't interested in football and I had never even been to a match but Kevin had a season ticket and went to every home game with Andy or with Stuart Thompson, another friend who lived on the corner of our street. He would come home and tell us all about it. I didn't know much about it but I knew that Kevin's favourite player was Bruce Grobbelaar. He used to wiggle his bum at the fans and tell jokes while the ball was up at the other end. That happened quite a lot because Liverpool were always winning.

It was the evening before the semi-final when he asked to go to Hillsborough. He'd never been to an away game before and we weren't keen on him travelling to Sheffield. He tried to put a brave face on it. `Never mind,' he said, `I'll give my ticket to Andy and he can sell it outside the ground for me so at least I'll get my money back.' Kevin went upstairs to his room and Steve looked across at me and said, `Poor little bugger. All he does is study and look forward to his football. Shall we let him go?' Kevin was quite small for a 15 year old. We would call him a `little lad' out of affection. He was always full of fun and spirit and he would laugh a lot - that's why I could tell if he was unhappy or bothered. He was good-looking in a bubbly way with a winning smile and the girls seemed to like him.

Kevin was very considerate to me and Steve. We used to like to go out for a drink on a Saturday night and Kevin would always be pushing us out the door and saying he'd do the hoovering or he'd look after his sister, Sara, who was just nine. Maybe that's why we weakened and called him downstairs. Steve said he could go to the match after all as long as he caught the police escort train to make sure he got there safely. Kevin was so pleased that he punched the air with delight as if he had scored the winning goal himself.

The next day was Saturday, 15 April 1989. I got up at five o'clock to open the newsagent's where I worked. It was only about half a mile from my home in Formby. We lived in an end-of-terrace house in Whitehouse Avenue on the north side of town. People think Formby is part of Liverpool but really it's 11 miles away along the road to Southport. It's by the sea which is a nice place to bring up kids. When Michael and Kevin were little, there were fields to play in and the beach was bigger and less crowded. And it was safer then. Everybody knew one another's business.

I would always leave the house just before six and on this particular morning I went into his room and woke him up. His room was full of Liverpool posters and programmes. He always slept with his Liverpool FC blanket on top of his duvet. It must have been really hot. His little black and white cat, Sally, would get under the duvet with him and lick his feet. He wanted to get up early because he was excited about the game and had decided to get the first police escort train to Sheffield.

An hour or so later, Kevin and Andy Duncan came into the shop for their crisps and cokes. I was marking up the papers

for the paper boys. He had made up his packed lunch of cheese butties and a Kit-Kat the night before. He would always use his sister Sara's packed lunch box. I gave them half a dozen packets of crisps. He was always eating crisps, like all boys of his age. He was wearing a beige sweatshirt and Chinos and white Reeboks. He had his blue jacket, which he had never liked, tied round his waist. Kevin said he would be home at about nine o'clock. Some friends were coming round for dinner and I had already prepared moussaka but Kevin said he didn't want any. He would have beans on toast. I told him to enjoy himself and to be careful, like any mother would have done. As he went to the door he waved his arm and shouted across the shop: `No worries, Mum. Three-nil!'

That was the last time I saw my son alive.

My hairdryer had broken so I went into the front room to dry my hair by the gas fire. I had finished work at lunchtime and had been picking some daffodils with Sara in the garden before having a bath. Steve was dozing in the armchair. Although the radio was on quietly I wasn't really paying attention until I heard them say the match had been stopped and there was trouble. I shook Steve awake quickly and he told me to switch on the television so that we could see what was going on. It looked like a pitch invasion. All these people were running round the ground and nobody seemed to know where they were going. I started to look for Kevin. I was still combing my hair through. I began to feel very uneasy as if something awful was going to happen. I felt tight in my stomach.

I ran upstairs to phone my mum. I told her there was trouble at the Hillsborough ground, that our Kev was there and that I was really worried. She told me not to be daft and that she would put the telly on to watch what was going on. At the time everyone thought it was fighting. Andy's mother rang. She was crying on the phone and was in a terrible state.

I started panicking. I couldn't sit down. I kept on jumping up and going from room to room and coming back in and asking Steve what was happening. I couldn't settle at all. Steve asked me to go to the British Legion to get some cigarettes. He was just trying to give me something to do. He was going to stay and try the emergency number which was flashing on the screen. I ran upstairs to change my shoes and as I was about to go out the front door I heard the news on the television that 25 people were feared dead.

I ran down the road and called in to see Stuart Thompson's mum, Winnie, who lived four doors away. Winnie would always stop and have a chat to you if you saw her in the street. She has had a hard life bringing up five children on her own without much money. I didn't know if her Stuart had gone to the match. She opened her front door and the first thing she said was, `There's 56 dead now.' I said, `No, you mean 25', but she told me it had just come up on the TV It was getting worse every single minute. Winnie and I both said we would get in touch the moment either Stuart or Kevin rang home. I ran round the corner to the Legion. I dashed through the lounge into the games room bar where I knew Michael was having a drink. I looked up at the big television in the corner and it came up on the screen that 74 people were thought to be dead in the crush.

It was packed in there. About fifty people must have been crammed in, all trying to see the television. Michael didn't know that Kevin had gone to the match so I told him and we both started looking to see if Kevin was running round the pitch. I told Michael what he was wearing. I thought his beige Chinos would be easier to pick out than jeans. I went to the cigarette machine and bought 20 Bensons. Everyone was just glaring at the television screen. I was saying, `Our Kev's gone to the match. He's there.' No one seemed to take any notice of me. I didn't realise then that this feeling would return to haunt me time and time again for years to come.

Many of the people in the bar had kids who had gone to the match and they were as worried as me. I lit a cigarette to try and calm myself down. I thought I was going to throw up. My friend Pat was in the bar and she came over to see if I was all right. I told her that Kevin had gone to the match and I had this terrible feeling he wasn't going to come home. That was the first time I had said that to anybody but I had been feeling it from the very first moment of trouble. Pat tried to reassure me. `Don't worry, Anne,' she said, `there are thousands of people at the match. Kevin will be all right.' Her husband John, a great big man, came over and told me to get a scotch down me. Pat and John are the sort of people who are always the first there if somebody is sick or in trouble. He bought me a whisky and I gulped it down in one go as if it were water. I couldn't stay there not knowing if Steve had got through on the phone. When I came out of the club I started crying. I could not stop. I ran home with tears streaming down my face. I burst in the back door and went into the front room. Steve was still in the chair watching the screen. I told him I had this terrible feeling that Kevin was not going to come home safe. Steve got up and put his arm around me to try and calm me down and said, `You know what our Kev's like. He'll fight his way out.'

The phone never stopped ringing all afternoon. Each time I prayed it was Kevin. It was his friends asking if we had any news. We kept trying the emergency number but it was always engaged. At 6.30, two friends, Bill and Ian, arrived for dinner. We had forgotten to cancel. I used to work behind the bar in a local pub called The Bay Horse and Bill and Ian were regulars and we all became friendly. Ian used to come round for his Christmas dinner and any time there was a meal going free. He was always welcome because he told wonderful stories about sailing and camping trips all over the world. They were both around fifty but they were real bikers with all the leathers and would go off touring. Bill had just been on a trip around Australia and had come round to tell us all about it. They knew about Hillsborough but they had no way of knowing that Kevin had gone. When they came in Steve sat them down and said we were both fretting about Kevin. We'd already broken into a bottle of scotch we had got in for them so we all had a drink together. They said we should have cancelled and offered to go but we got talking a little bit about Bill's trip and I was glad they were there. It helped me to think about something else. We went through and sat down for dinner. All the food was ready.Steve only sat for a minute before he was back in the front room on the phone. By this time, Bill and Ian were getting really worried with us. Nobody felt like eating anything. Eventually Steve got through on the emergency number. The man on the end of the line wanted a description of Kevin and what he was wearing. Steve said he had on beige Chinos and white Reeboks. The man told him to wait and he would get back to us. It was eight o'clock. Whenever we got through that's all they would say. It was useless.I started to think we were being stupid. I thought he'd be home at nine like he said he would be. He didn't come home at nine. We watched the news and they had pictures of the fans arriving off the trains. The TV crews were putting spotlights on them so that families could see if their dads and sons were all right. Kevin was not among them but I didn't see any of his friends returning either. I had the telephone number on my lap and I kept ringing the emergency number, then I'd ring Mum or my sister, anybody just to see if there was any news. About an hour later, Andy Duncan's dad rang to tell us Andy had just called from Southport Infirmary. The hospitals were so full around Sheffield that anybody who could walk was sent back home to get treatment locally. They called them the `walking wounded'. Andy had told his Dad that he had lost Kevin in a great surge and that he had tried to go back to the pens to look for him but was marched-off the ground by the police. We now knew Kevin had been in the crush.

It was so frustrating. There was nothing we could do except sit there, waiting and hoping and jumping if the phone rang. I decided to ring our local police station. They gave me the number of one of the hospitals in Sheffield. When I got through I spoke to a consultant who had a list of all the injured admitted to hospitals in Sheffield. Kevin's name was not on the list but the consultant did have a Steve Williams. I asked him to check for me because Kevin's dad's name was Steve and he might have used that name if he was in shock. I had to wait on the line while he checked. At last someone was being helpful. He came back on the phone a few minutes later and told me that the Steve Williams who had been admitted was 27 years old.Every time I got through on the emergency number I seemed to get a different person. All they wanted was a description of Kevin and then they would tell me to stay by the phone. Getting on for midnight, Anne Mawdsley, who lives three doors down and has been one of my best friends for 20 years, came round. I was babbling on about how things were not looking good and that Kevin's friend Andy Duncan had been injured. Bill and Ian decided it was time to be on their way and Steve got up to show them out. While they were out of the room, Anne came over to me. `I don't know how to tell you this,' she said softly, 'Stuart Thompson is dead.' I was numb with shock. For the first time in hours and hours I couldn't move. Anne said that Stuart's brother had rung from Sheffield to tell his mother, Winnie. He said he had looked for Kevin but could not find him.

When Anne left I was straight back on the phone. I had remembered in a flash that I hadn't told anyone that Kevin was wearing a `horn of life' around his neck. It was a little gold horn about an inch long on a chain. He had chosen it himself and we had given it to him the previous Christmas. When I was asked for yet another description of Kevin I shouted down the phone, `Look for the boy with the horn of life around his neck.' I described the horn and the man on the other end asked if the police had been round. I told him they hadn't and wanted to know why he was asking but all he would say was to stay where we were and the police may come round. When I put the phone down I sat very still for a moment while it sank in what he had meant. The police were coming round to tell us Kevin was dead. We were so helpless.

My mum, Margaret, came round in her dressing gown. She couldn't sleep. I didn't know what time it was now. We completely lost track of the night. Every time we heard a car engine or saw some headlights flashing we jumped up to see if it was the police. It was like a specially designed torture - very slow and painful. Mum started to clear up the kitchen where all the food had been left lying around, uneaten. I suppose she just wanted to be doing something. In the end I just couldn't stand waiting around any more so we decided to go to Sheffield. Steve's sister, Penny, rang. The boys loved their Auntie Penny. She was like a big kid, always playing jokes on people even though she had a really good job in charge of a job centre. She had actually been at the match but hadn't been worried about Kevin because she knew he wasn't allowed to go to away games. When she found out that we still hadn't heard any news she volunteered to take us to Sheffield. I rang the hospital in Sheffield again and spoke to the same consultant who had been so helpful all those hours earlier. He told me all the injured had been admitted and Kevin was not among them. He said there were lots of fans still walking around the city in a daze and that Kevin could be among those. He suggested we came to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and gave me directions.

While we were waiting for Penny I went back to see Winnie Thompson. I had to hear for myself that her son, Stuart, was really dead. It was almost dawn but I could see a light on in the front room. I knocked at the door and she came to answer it. She was in total shock. She wasn't crying or shaking but seemed to be somewhere else, in a world of her own. I think she was pleased to see me. She said Stuart was dead. I started to cry and my legs were shaking. I didn't know what to do or say so I just gave her a hug. All she said was, `I can't believe it.' I told her we were going to Sheffield to look for Kevin and, even though she had just lost her own son, she said to me, `Don't worry, Anne, Kevin will be all right.'

Penny, Steve and I set off in her Fiesta for Sheffield. It's a three-hour drive. After about half an hour we ran out of petrol. We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry with frustration. Luckily we were a few hundred yards from a farm and Steve went off and banged on the door. When the farmer found out where we were going he siphoned off some petrol from one of his farm vehicles and came and put it in the back of the car. I hadn't spoken to him but as were leaving he leant through the car window and wished me luck. I was crying. I cried all the way. I had the directions of the hospital written on a piece of paper but I was so upset I had got them all wrong and we were lost. In the end we went to the ground and a police officer outside directed us to a local school hall.

At the school we were met by a man and a woman who were social workers and they sat us down and asked us who we had lost. I was frightened because I thought they had dead bodies behind the partitions in the school. I could barely speak but I told them I had lost Kevin. I kept saying, `Where is he? Where is he?' The woman had a list of all the injured and said they did have a Kevin Williams who had been admitted to a small hospital where they had only taken six injured. She went off to check. I was overjoyed. He was alive. I felt so stupid for all the worrying. I said to Steve that I hoped his injuries were not too bad. I couldn't wait to see Kevin. Steve and I were so relieved. Someone brought up a cup of tea each and I was beginning to feel almost cheerful. Then the woman came back and said she had checked and that the Kevin Williams who had been admitted was 40 years old.

The social workers said we should go and look somewhere else and they took us to the Medico-Legal Centre in Watery Street. No one said anything but we all knew why we were going there. I couldn't have spoken even if I had wanted to. I have never been so frightened. When we arrived at the centre there were people and police everywhere. Families were gathered round each other in little pockets. Everyone was sharing a common sense of the worst. We sat and waited in a court room. It seemed like hours and every so often I would hear someone screaming. I knew they had just found someone dead. There was death in the air, all around us. Eventually a man in a white coat came and told us we would have to look at some Polaroids. He warned us that they might be distressing. I couldn't believe this was happening to me. It was really a dream and I would wake up. All the photographs were pinned to a board. I don't know how many were there. It was just a sea of pictures but all I could see was Kevin. His face jumped out at me. He looked so peaceful as if he was in a cocoon. He just looked asleep. Steve was stood behind and I heard him cry, `Oh no, not our Kev' We were taken back to the courtroom and I was wailing, `Where's my Kevin?' One of the social workers, Alan Nash, a tall kindly man who had been so gentle to me, said they were getting Kevin ready so we could identify him. I told him that I couldn't do that. I was too paralysed with fright. I was frightened of my own son. I was frightened of his death. Mr Nash kept talking to me and asking me about Michael and Sara. Finally the time came to identify him and I wanted to go. I wanted to hold my Kevin. Another man in a white coat took us to a small room. On one wall were a pair of velvet curtains and the man in the white coat pulled a cord to open them. There was Kevin behind a glass window. I could not touch him. I wanted to touch him. He looked asleep except for one eye that was half open. I wanted to scream the place down. All I could do was grab hold of Steve and ask him how we were going to live without Kevin. We were led to another room with two more men in white coats. I sat there full of tears while Steve answered questions about Kevin and filled in some forms. They brought in a small plastic bag containing Kevin's belongings - his train ticket, his match ticket, three pound coins and his `horn of life'.

Then it was time to go home but I did not want to leave Kevin. I could not bear the thought of leaving him all on his own in this strange, cold place. The social workers were crying as they walked us to our car. As we pulled away all I could think of was poor Kevin alone. If they had let me, I would have taken him home with us there and then. The journey back took a lifetime. How would we break the news to Michael and Sara? I had Kevin's `horn of life' and chain in my hand. I made a pledge with myself that I would wear it round my own neck forever.

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April 15th 1989

Hillsborough Justice Campaign