| Hateland -
Articles |
01/07/00
- Dad missed girl's last phone call
By PATRICK MULCHRONE
The Mirror
PHIL HADDOCK missed the last phone call from his daughter
before she was killed in the Soho bombing and it will
haunt him forever. He had guessed that the special news
Andrea Dykes wanted to tell him was that she was pregnant.
But he was too busy to take her call: "I was in the
middle of cooking dinner for six people I wanted to speak
to her properly, not in front of a room full of people
when I was rushed off my feet. "I never got the chance.
I tried next morning but there was no answer. She'd gone
away for a few days.
A few days later I came home from work to the news of
the bomb and that Andrea and Julian were caught up in
it." Andrea had called Phil's mum to tell her she
was pregnant. Airport security guard Phil, 51, said: "Mum
told me Andrea had some news and I instantly knew what
it was.
"I said 'She's pregnant, isn't she?' Mum made me
promise to act as if I knew nothing when Andrea called.
"I was going to be a grandad! I couldn't keep the
grin off my face." Days later a policewoman phoned
Phil's home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, with the devastating
news. He recalled: "She said Andrea was dead and
the baby had died with her. The price she had paid for
a night out with the man she loved had been her life."
It was meant to be a night of joy as Andrea, 27, husband
Julian, 26, and close friends Nik Moore, John Light and
Gary Partridge celebrated the news that she was pregnant.
John, best man at the couple's wedding, had bought tickets
for Mama Mia: The Abba Musical in the West End as a thank
you for asking him to be godfather to their baby.
Before going to the theatre they decided to drop in to
the Admiral Duncan gay pub for a few drinks. Minutes later
the nailbomb exploded in the packed bar. Andrea and John,
32, were killed instantly. Nik, 31, died next day from
horrific injuries. Gary, 34. John's gay partner, had serious
burns but was soon out of hospital.
Computer programmer Julian spent three weeks in a coma,
unaware that his wife and unborn son who they had decided
to name Jordan were dead. Medics at first doubted that
he would pull through. He said later: "I can't really
remember what happened but as a result of it I lost my
wife and my future baby. It wasn't until I began to recover
that I was told Andrea, John and Nik had been killed."
Despite making good physical progress, friends say Julian
is "shattered" by the loss. One told The Mirror:
"He is like a shadow of his former self the bomb
took away virtually everything he held dear. "Even
though it is now more than a year since that awful night
he still can hardly bring himself to talk about losing
Andrea.
He said: "The terrible irony is that Andrea and Julian
represented all that was good about this country they
were incapable of prejudice. "Their best friend and
several other friends were gay. It was just not an issue
to them. "But we have to remember bigots like the
bomber are a tiny minority.
Decent, tolerant people like Andrea and Julian make up
the vast majority of this country." Another close
friend said last night: "He won't talk about Copeland,
the day itself, Andrea's funeral or his own grief. He
hasn't blanked it from his mind. It is all there under
the surface, but he just finds his loss too appalling
to contemplate.
"We are all scared that if he carries on holding
everything back, one day that brick wall in his mind will
break and the effect will just blow him away. "We
just hope that with the court case out of the way he will
finally stop bottling it up." Gary Partridge said:
"It completely wrecked my life. The memory won't
go away.
The man who did it has just wiped out three wonderful
people." Andrea's mother Frances and stepfather Trevor
Hogg answered a knock on their door to learn from detectives
that she was a victim. Trevor, 49, said: "My wife
and daughter freaked out, screaming. It was terrible."
Prances, 50, said: "It's so horribly unfair."
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