Lauren Nixon, granddaughter of Sandra Bainbridge said in a statement:
"AS hard as I've tried, there are no words to truly describe the pain and loss that my family has experienced since the brutal loss of my Gran.
Last November, we came together to celebrate her 70th birthday. It never occurred to us that we wouldn't be all there again to celebrate another ten or twenty more years. She wasn't an OAP, as she has been described, she was a woman with the best years of her life ahead of her, whom I never imagined would not be there with us as we progressed through our careers, bought our first homes, had children.
As a family, we have been robbed of our centre and I can't fully express what that feels like. Nothing and no-one can prepare you for what has happened to us. There's no past experience we could draw on to guide us, nothing for us to find solace in. It's shaken every foundation of our lives – how are we supposed to 'get back to normal' after such a thing?
We lie awake at night, tormented by thoughts of what she might have suffered, what passed through her mind. We ask ourselves questions we know we can never answer, obsessing over the "what ifs" and "if onlys".
Though the police have done their utmost by us, which we appreciate more than I can say, the events of the last nine months have been an immense strain.
It sounds cliché, but I honestly feel that my faith in humanity has been shaken. I feel suspicious of strangers, scared of people I pass in the street when it's dark, constantly anxious about my safety and the safety of my family and friends. Everyone wants to believe that their home is their own personal, secure space. What has happened to my Gran has destroyed that for us. There is no 'safety of my own home', that concept doesn't exist for me anymore.
I can't express how frustrating and infuriating it is to be made to feel so weak and so vulnerable, to have our lives shattered in such a way.
It's not the way she would have wanted us to be living – she was a brave woman. She worked so hard, faced and overcame so many trials and tribulations to provide and support our family. Each time she travelled, we were bought back books and photographs, to show us what was out there for us to experience and she passed such knowledge, wonder and insight on to us. To be so afraid and constantly anxious is just a terrible injustice to her memory.
The disruption to our work lives and careers seems insignificant in comparison, but having to telephone my boss to tell him what had happened, having to walk into that office again when I felt that everything had changed forever but I still had to continue the same, was awful and indeed still is.
Similarly, it feels wrong to compare the struggle I have experienced trying to continue with my postgraduate studies to the stresses and difficulties my mother and her sisters have had to face. But to have something so important to me, something my Gran was proud of and so encouraging of, damaged and disrupted in such a way has been a constant source of stress and upset.
