ON JUNE 3, 1991, Alison Shaughnessy's body was discovered by her husband, John, in the flat they shared in Battersea, South London. Alison, who was 21, had been stabbed 54 times. Sisters Michelle and Lisa Taylor were jailed for the murder 13 months later, amid jurid stories of betrayal, sexual jealousy and an affair between John Shaughnessy and Michelle. However, on appeal, the sentence was declared unsafe and, much to the horror of Alison's family, the sisters were released. Now the case has been referred to Scotland Yard's Murder Review Group, which will examine whether to reopen it.

Although the Taylor sisters cannot be retried for murder, they could face new charges of perjury or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Alison, who had an elder sister, Susan, then 25, and two younger brothers, Robert and Richard, then 18 and ten, was brought up in North London by her Irish parents, Bob and Breda Blackmore. Here, Breda, a former nurse, speaks about her daughter's death and its terrible aftermath. YOU never come to terms with the death of your daughter. I try to cope as best I can, but Alison's absence hurts as much now as it did the day she died. I just have to programme my mind to think of something else or I would go crazy. For us, I suppose it's been particularly hard to deal with Alison's death because we feel justice was never done - no one has been punished for her death.

But maybe - hopefully that will change, now that the case is to be reviewed. It was June 3, 1991, that Alison died - I remember that night as though it were yesterday. There was a Robert Redford film on the television which my husband Bobby and I were recording to watch another day. At around midnight I went to bed but couldn't sleep - ironically I was worried about our son, Robert, who was out for the evening. Suddenly, there was banging on the front door and Bobby and I thought Robert must have forgotten his key. I jumped out of bed and put on my dressing gown while Bobby went to open the door, but instead of our son there were two female police officers and the tallest policeman I have ever seen.

I was thinking: 'Oh, my God. It's Robert. What's happened to him?' It didn't occur to me for a moment that anything had happened to Alison. I went into the sitting room with the policewomen and Bobby stayed out on the landing with the policeman. I kept thinking 'If I don't ask them why they are here, I won't have to deal with it', because I knew they had bad news. So I tried to chat about nothing and offered them a cup of tea. Then I blurted out: 'Is Robert OK?' They told me that as far as they knew, yes, he was, but that my daughter Alison had been found dead in her home under suspicious circumstances. I just couldn't take it in. Everything was in a haze. My head was spinning and my legs were weak. Then Bobby came in and put his arms around me, and I kept saying to the officers: 'Sorry, but you're mistaken. There's Alison's picture on the sideboard. Nothing's happened to her.

She only got married in June.' THAT night I went to bed and I just tried to blot it out by saying Hail Mary after Hail Mary. I am a staunch Roman Catholic and it helped because it stopped me having time to think. I just wasn't capable of dealing with the reality. The next day we had to wake our youngest son Richard, then ten, to ten him Alison had died. Tears came into his eyes and he asked if he could go back to bed. He was too young to comprehend what we were saying. How could he understand it if even we, as grown-ups, couldn't take it in? Robert ran out of the house crying while Susan, our other daughter, was inconsolable. I thought back to the previous day that I had spent with Alison. We'd walked to the shops to buy frozen peas and I remember her telling me how much she'd like to live in Ireland, which she had so loved as a little girl on family holidays. Now she never would.

Everything had seemed so normal that day. We'd had a lovely family lunch and I'd left her playing on the computer with her husband, John. She looked so happy I hadn't wanted to disturb them and had just shouted: 'Goodbye Al, I'll talk to you later.' I had no idea how final that farewell was to be. The funeral was terrible. You don't think you will ever have to bury your daughter. It's the worst scenario you can ever imagine. I just couldn't accept that I would never see my beautiful little girl again. Alison was born in a nursing home just around the corner from Alexandra Palace, in North London, at 2.15pm on November 7, 1969. I went into labour at lunchtime and she was born that afternoon, weighing 6lb 9oz.

From the beginning she was absolutely gorgeous, with a mop of jet black hair. I was overjoyed and couldn't wait to show her off to everyone, i was very lucky, with all four of my children. They had even temperaments and I seldom had to. get up in the night for any of them. We had a contented family life. The children did well in school and every summer holiday we would take them to stay with my parents in Ireland. I'll never forget those summers, watching Alison and Susan doing Irish dancing - they were always so full of energy, whether they were reeling or dancing to the hornpipes, and won lots of medals. I treasure those now. AFTER school Alison temped before getting her job as a clerk at Barclays in the Strand, Central London, in November 1986. I was so proud of her.

She loved her job and was very popular. She and John had been together two years when they were got engaged on May 21. 1988. John bought her a beautiful ring and I remember just how excited Alison was. At that time we thought John would make her really happy. Certainly, we had no reason to doubt his sincerity. Her wedding day, on June 23, 1990, was such a happy family occasion. I'd been worried that, at 20, Alison was too young to get married but Bobby had reassured me and I remember thinking it was the happiest I had ever seen her. She looked stunning in her gorgeous wedding dress, which had a beaded high-necked bodice and full skirt, and she loved every moment of the reception, which went on until the early hours of the morning. She and John were such a great couple - they were very happy together - and she loved being married to him because he showered her with attention. Alison would have made a wonderful mother because she was so good with children.

I remember us all celebrating her 21st birthday, seven months before she died. She looked radiant that night, with her family and friends around her. She should have had her whole life ahead of her. But she - and the rest of us - were robbed of that. She was buried at our family church in Piltown, Co Kilkenny, where she had taken her first communion and later married John. He had seemed so distraught at the funeral, but it wasn't long after, on August 7, two months after Alison's death, that we discovered he had been having an affair with a girl called Michelle Taylor. The police told us that she and her sister Lisa had been charged with Alison's murder. I was devastated. It was so hard for us to comprehend. John adored Alison and never in a million years would I have suspected him of cheating on her. Yet apparently Michelle, who had been a guest at their wedding, had even shared a bed with John the night before they were married. When we heard that, Bobby and I made a conscious decision that, once the trial was over, we would have nothing more to do with him.

We wanted to keep up a united front for the trial, but beyond that we didn't see much point in carrying on the pretence that we were one happy family. We knew we would never get an apology from John, so there was no point talking to him about his behaviour. For my part, the only way to cope was to put him out of my mind, otherwise bitterness and anger would have eaten away at me. Instead, I focused on getting justice for my daughter. The trial, which began just over a year after Alison's death, was indescribably painful. UNTIL then, we had tried to push the horrific details of Alison's murder to the back of our minds, but during the trial we couldn't avoid them any longer, which was extremely traumatic. I was on tenterhooks wondering what would happen, and when, on July 25, 1992, the jury unanimously convicted the Taylor sisters, we were all elated. The Taylors may have looked defiant but we were convinced they were guilty and I had no doubt that they deserved their life sentences. The months following the trial were terrible, Although i went back to work it was as though i was on auto-pilot, because it was only then that I really let myself grieve for my daughter. It was all I could do to get up, go to work and come home to bed.

I try not to dwell on the manner in which Alison died. I don't think I ever will. It was just so horrendous. To keep your sanity, you let the brain retain only what it can cope with. That's why you keep busy. If you are on the move, it stops you from thinking - you hope if you move fast, it won't catch up with you. But then we heard the Taylor sisters were appealing. I just could not believe there was a legal loophole they could jump through, and was confident they would remain in prison. So when, in June 1993, they were freed after a court ruled that an undisclosed police memo made the conviction unsafe, and hostile press coverage made a retrial impossible, I was appalled. How could they let the women I was sure had murdered my daughter walk free? I'll never forget watching them leave the court on the lunchtime news. OUR house, though packed with family and friends, was silent - it was a stunned, painful silence. But it was also a silence of disbelief. An injustice had been done and eveyone's thoughts were with Alison.

It makes me cry even now, thinking about it. I felt so let down by it all. A month after the appeal we decided to leave our home in Crouch End, where we had been for 30 years, to return to my family home in Tybroughney, Ireland, with our youngest child, Richard. We felt beaten by the system and we wanted to distance ourselves from everything that had gone on. We had so many conflicting emotions and wanted somewhere to think. We have done our best to come to terms with this terrible tragedy. We live very simply in the whitewashed bungalow where I was brought up and just try to get through each day at a time. We have Alison's things here - her black satchel, which :was found by her body, is in the sitting room, and her wedding album and video, which we never watch because it is just too painful. And of course we are near her grave, which is a real comfort for Bobby because it is her resting place. As for me, I see Alison wherever I go, whether I am near her grave or not.

Now all I want is justice for my daughter and, with this police review of the case, we have the chance to fight again. We have waited eight years for this to happen and now, for the first time, our family feels something positive is happening. We are determined to keep her memory alive. We owe that much to Alison. I brought her into this world and would have gladly died in her place. But I am here, and while I am I will. walk the streets, hold up the traffic and brandish placards with photographs of Alison - anything that will help our case. For only when justice is done can my daughter finally rest in peace.