MILLY: THE SISTER'S GRIEF: Milly always said 'Night night, I love

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Sep 22, 2002 | by GERARD COUZENS

NIGHT night, Gemma, I love you. These are the words that will both haunt and soothe Gemma Dowler for the rest of her life.

They are also words she will never hear again because they were said every night by the 16-year-old's beloved little sister - murdered schoolgirl Milly.

In a harrowing interview conducted shortly before 13-year-old Milly Dowler's remains were discovered near Fleet, Hampshire, Gemma paints a picture of two inseparable sisters.

Recalling Milly's loving words, Gemma said: "She'd say that every night before she went to sleep.

"She said it to Mum and Dad too. She'd say it in case anything happened during the night so that she knew the last thing she'd said was 'I love you'.

"Milly had this teddy that Mum had had made for her. When you squeezed its tummy it said, 'Night, night Milly, I love you'. Mum got all upset when we came across that."

Before Milly was abducted, the youngsters would talk about boys, school and everything you would expect from two girls who were as much friends as they were sisters.

"Milly was really funny and very intelligent - more so than me which could be quite annoying," Gemma says. "She was with the in- crowd at school. She was cool. She wore the clothes and talked the talk.

"The only thing that ever scared her was the sea. Last Christmas we went to Cuba to swim with the dolphins. She was really frightened of what was under the water, even though it was as clear as anything.

"Generally she just took life as it came. Milly and I used to take the mickey out of Dad a lot. He'd come up with stupid phrases like 'Shall I log off now?' and we'd sit and laugh at him.

"Mum would laugh too. If he was telling us off, Milly would always say 'Mum, we know you want to laugh'.

"The night before she disappeared she was talking about a Pop Idol concert she'd been to the night before. She said she really enjoyed it and had been singing her little heart out with her friends, Hannah and Sophie."

After Milly vanished Gemma suffered dreadful nightmares and found it very hard to sleep. Her mother started to share her room, trying to calm her, and after three nights Gemma was prescribed sleeping tablets.

"When you try to go to sleep your heart goes 'boom, boom, boom' and you think about everything. Every time I shut my eyes I could see Milly being stabbed.

"I also kept getting visions of her stuck in a room with this man trying it on with her and I couldn't do anything about it.

"I was supposed to be revising for my GCSEs and it started to really worry me because I couldn't actually work. If I was doing German and there was a phrase like 'I'm going shopping', I'd think 'Milly could be out shopping with the person who's taken her'."

In the end Gemma got eight GCSEs and this term has started a college course in travel and tourism.

She found the first day very difficult. "I wanted Milly the be there to check my outfit and make sure my hair looked all right," she says.

The stress on her family has been unimaginable.

"In the beginning you felt you were trapped. You weren't allowed to do happy things in case people judged you.

"We had to spend so much time together our relationships got very strained. It was like something had taken over our whole family and everyone reacted differently from how they had before.

"Whenever I went out I felt I had to look upset because my sister was missing.

"We went on holiday in the summer. It was hard to go so far away. We felt we shouldn't be there. We went to a karaoke bar to sing songs. We went with a family who had two friends of Milly's and mine that we'd been with the year before.

"Sometimes if we sang a song I'd think 'This one is for Milly' and in my heart I was singing it for her. But I wouldn't say it out loud because it would have upset everyone."

Gemma says there was nothing out of the ordinary about March 21, the day her sister vanished. "The week after Milly went missing was Mum's birthday. Milly and I had arranged to go shopping on Saturday to get her a necklace. Mum didn't know about it - it was a secret.

"In the end her birthday was awful. I bought her a little present - a rugby shirt, because I didn't know what else to do. Now, whenever it's someone's birthday it's difficult. We don't know how to sign the cards.

"We'd normally put 'Bob, Sally, Gemma and Amanda', but Mum doesn't like writing cards any more so she just puts 'The Dowlers'."

Gemma was always adamant that her sister had been abducted and hated hearing the police implying that she might have run away.

"I used to get very angry. I know she wouldn't have let Mum and Dad do those emotional appeals. I couldn't live with myself if I saw Mum and Dad doing that."

Gemma recalls sitting watching television on the afternoon Milly didn't come home.

"Mum came into the sitting room and asked where Milly was. I said she must be at a friend's house. Mum was babysitting that night and went out.

"Dad was working in the dining room. He came in about 5pm and said, 'Gemma, where's Milly? She was supposed to be home at 4.15'. He said he was going out to look for her.