A CIGARETTE SOLVED MUM'S MURDER

It was Gina McGavin's last chance to get justice

- WORDS: JANE HAMILTON

Watching my daughters laugh and play, I couldn't help but laugh. Laura, then 14, and Gail, 12, could be fighting one minute, then best friends the next.

My two were a handful, but becoming a mum was the most rewarding thing that had ever happened to me.

Later, after kissing them both goodnight, I sat down with my husband Larry, then 34.

'I don’t know how anyone could abandon their kids,' I said sadly. My own mum, Mary, had left when I was just two. I'd grown up with my five siblings and my dad Joe. While I'd longed for Mum to come home, she'd found a new partner, had five more kids and then left them as well. She'd stayed local, flitting in and out of our lives, and as I grew older, I told myself I didn’t need her.

But now, aged 30, in September 1984, I was a mum myself and, although I couldn’t understand how she'd left her children behind, a part of me had come to understand the pressure that Mum had been under.

CLOSER BOND

Yes, she'd made bad choices, but we'd never shared a cross word, I just wanted her in my life more and to build a loving mother-daughter relationship. So in the last few months, we'd started talking, then meeting up. And as I'd learnt more about Mum's difficult upbringing, we were finding our way to a closer bond and I loved her unconditionally.

Later that month, Dad passed away, aged 68, and I was heartbroken.

'I'm sorry,' Mum, then 58, told me, sadly, when we met shortly after. 'Your dad was a good man.' And even though she admitted she'd never truly loved him, I could see she regretted the way things had turned out between them. The truth was, I felt sorry for her.

Everyone in Partick, Glasgow, where we lived, knew Mum as 'Wee Mary'.