Little Sarah's parents are now on the Other Planet, where nothing

A FEW hours after I read of the discovery of the body of Sarah Payne I paid a trip up the stairs of my home to an elderly wardrobe... my "Treasure House" as I call it.

I turned the tiny key and looked inside.

A leather jacket hangs there, several pairs of pants lie folded, there are jerseys and T-shirts, one trainer, a brown envelope containing pounds 7.41p, a car key, a packet of 10 Embassy cigarettes, a battered green monkey and some car books. A funeral bill for pounds 1,275. Oh, and a little brown tag bearing the imprint of the Norfolk Constabulary.

The little world inside this cupboard is a microcosm of a life. The life of a child and then of a young man dead at the age of 20. It is six and a half years since that dread moment - and yet it is as if it were yesterday.

The moment and all that surrounds it has been freeze-framed in my life - and so it will be for Sara and Michael Payne who, along with every other parent who has ever lost a child, will now find themselves transported to a strange planet where nothing will ever be the same again.

It was brave, incredibly brave and incredibly strong of them to visit the site where their daughter was found.

It took me nearly two years to summon the courage to go to a tiny road in Norfolk where, around midnight on October 18 1994, my beloved son Mark lost control of his Toyota and crashed head-on into an oak tree.

There, as I worked in an office 150 miles away, his life ebbed away, his hand held by a farmer awakened by the noise of the impact just outside his home.

When I did go, I drove to the cottage where he had been lodging and then back to the scene wondering whether my tyre tracks were, by some curious chance, mirroring the last journey as a living human being that my child had made.

And then I stood by the tree and just stared at it. There were cuts in the bark. Cuts where about a ton of car hit it very hard.

THE morning after the crash, I vaguely remember telling a neighbour who burst into tears.

Then I drove to my parish priest, Gerry Murphy. His eyes filled with tears, and tears blinded him as he later said the funeral Mass for one of his favourite altar servers. I read the lesson and, for months afterwards, people said: "How did you find the strength to do that?"

I have no idea. I can remember virtually nothing of the three weeks immediately after Mark's death except for one thing - the coffin being lowered into the ground. At that point, all parents who have experienced that Ultimate Horror feel as if half of them has been ripped away without an anaesthetic.

And then you find yourself on the Other Planet. There will not be a day in the lives of Mr and Mrs Payne, not one day EVER, when they do not think of the "Little Princess".

It will be the first thing they think of every morning and the last thing at night. Yes, of course, they will learn to be strong for their other children - they are a blessing they will rely on much more than they can realise. But Mum and Dad now live somewhere else. A world in which the most simple things destroy you. A world, initially at least, where carols and Christmas cards are obscene.

Yes, of course, they will celebrate every festive season with their other children and make a massive effort to provide some sense of comfort and stability. But there will be one pile of presents missing for ever.

They will be out shopping or on holiday and see the back of an unknown child which stops their hearts. A child who reminds them so much of what they no longer have. In milliseconds you are back to square one.

They will analyse every moment they can recall. And be grief- stricken for any cross word, anything she wished for that they had denied her for whatever reason. It will be completely out of proportion to the rest of the world, except to them. And that is because on the Other Planet everything is out of proportion.

They will spend the rest of their lives asking why it had to happen to them. They may blame God, or they may find themselves enfolded in his arms. I cannot say. But I can say, quite definitely, that they will only be able to talk, really talk, to those who have suffered the same loss. It is not maudlin sentiment. It is a real need, because for all those wonderful and caring people who are trying to share their grief at this moment, no one else can.

In the first weeks and months they will find friends and acquaintances unable to cope with it. They will cross the road to avoid confronting what you have suffered and they have not.

Some will just hug and cry...and I suspect that is probably best. No words - not even these - can mean anything to anyone who has not suffered the same loss of a child.

It is a common belief that time is a "great healer". I believe that is true in all BUT the loss of your child. For a parent, it never ever heals. It cannot. In the words of Father Murphy: "It is because it was REAL love ...and that is why it hurts so much." So Mr and Mrs Payne are now on the Other Planet. All of us who live there will, if we have the chance, do everything we can to help and comfort them.

There, they will be surrounded by deep, understanding love only possible from those who have trodden the same awful path down which they now mindlessly plod.

Try as they will - and for the sake of their other children I know they will - no Christmas will ever be the same, no birthday, no holiday, no house, no room, no school, no clothes, no children's book, no funeral procession, no church even.

You wonder, as they will in 10 years time, whether Sarah would have been on the brink of going to university. And in 15 years time you wonder if she would have had a boyfriend and what he would have been like. And then if she would have married, and what their children would have looked like and whether they had Dad's nose or Mum's eyes.

Little things she said, once treasured, now become like knives.

In my case it was the phrase: "Dad...it's me!" as if it could be anyone else. As with all parents with someone just out of their teens, the house was like Charing Cross Station. How intolerant of the noise I was and how I wished to hear it, more than anything else, as a complete and ghastly stillness descended upon my home. I learned my lesson. I think my daughter would agree that, as for noise levels and general freedom, I have been a tolerant father.

That is the only thing poor Sara and Michael Payne will get out of this. It will transform their love for their other children in a way they would not have thought possible. The depth of their affection will transcend anything even they thought they were capable of.

SO perhaps that is the one bit of goodness that brightens the lives of those of us who reside on the Other Planet. There is nothing much else here for us.

They will learn to give Oscar-winning performances in all sorts of places from home to supermarket, office- and sometimes just between themselves. They will carry with them the equivalent of heavy suitcases full of emotion.

I do not know whether Mr and Mrs Payne will found a Treasure House of memories. Whether they will keep things or find it unbearable. It is for each of us to decide. For me it was the right thing to do.

For them, it may be very different, and only they can make the decision. I suspect also that they will find that it is the little things that hurt most.

Some tiny memento. Upstairs in the Treasure House to which I shall return immediately after writing this article there is the tiny brown tag that I mentioned.

Just a piece of police bureaucracy - thousands issued each day. It listed the property found on my son after his body was taken to the mortuary in Norwich. It was handed to me in February 1995 at the conclusion of the inquest.

It hurt me more than anything has ever hurt me. It said, "RTA" (road traffic accident), "Male. Deceased".

I respect the police for the dignity they have shown Mr and Mrs Payne at the scene and at the Press conference where they asked for a minute's silence.

I would ask them, as a resident of the Other Planet, if they would make sure of one other thing - that anything returned to them has the proper name of the Little Princess written on it.

I remember staring blankly at the label and thinking: "Goodness...my cold, bruised, still child didn't even have a name. Fancy that."

But of course on the Other Planet we do think very, very differently.

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