Grieving sisters talk about their agony

Dec 28 2007 by Rebecca Edwards, Chester Chronicle

LAST December the lives of Tristan Cook’s family were turned upside down when he and fellow Christleton High School sixth-former Dominic Arnold were killed in a car crash. In the second week of our Too Young To Die campaign, Tristan’s three sisters talk to REBECCA EDWARDS about their ‘living nightmare’ of losing a brother to irresponsible driving – and the steps they hope will stop other young lives being lost.

Bryony Cook, 18, sister:

“THERE were only 17 months between me and Tristan growing up, he was always in the year below me at school so it would be me and him all the time.

“The main memory I have is how he would always make me smile if I was upset or down. He would do something stupid and make me laugh. The hardest thing is just missing him, not having him around, not having him joking.

“Often I forget he’s not here, it still feels like he has just gone away on holiday or something. I just can’t think about it really.

“I was a deputy head girl at Christleton High School and the night before the crash Tristan helped out with a disco for the Year 7 and 8 pupils. I think he was enjoying it the most, he kept going up on the stage and saying things into the microphone and dancing around.

“At the end he made the effort to come over and tell me he was going into town, which was nice because, although I didn’t realise it then, that was the last time I saw him.

“Katherine and I went to London on Saturday and got up early on Sunday morning to go Christmas shopping. I had a text message from my mum saying ‘Can you ring me I’ve got some sad news’.

“The first thing I thought was that it would be something silly, that the dog was ill. It didn’t ever cross my mind that something had happened to Tristan.

“So I rang her back and she told me it was Tristan. I was just screaming and asking what had happened, and I was trying to explain to Katherine at the same time.

“We were both screaming and crying, it was a complete nightmare. At the time it hit me that nothing was ever going to be the same again, everything just crashed down.

“Mum booked us a taxi all the way back to Chester. When we pulled up in the drive the family was all here, standing in silence and crying. It was horrible, so horrible.

“A neighbour came over and said another boy called Dominic had died in the crash, and little by little we found out the names of the other boys involved.

“I went to see Tristan in the chapel before the funeral. We had cards to put in the coffin and we put his Leeds United strip in with him. It is so unreal. I just don’t know how we got through those first days.

“I went back to school the week afterwards and had A- level exams in the January. I had planned to do a lot of preparation for them over Christmas and I was so determined to do as well in them as I would have done because we needed something to aim for. I got As and 100% marks in nearly all the modules I took. It was something to keep me going.

“I chose the song for Tristan’s funeral – P Diddy and Faith Evans’ I’ll be Missing You. Me and Tristan always loved the song and we always said we wanted it at our funeral. We had the lyrics engraved on his gravestone.

“I knew Mike Wood [who was driving the car that crashed] quite well because he was on the deputy head boy team with me. I saw him almost every day in school but he hasn’t said one word to me since the crash, not even ‘I’m sorry about your loss’.

“I wish I could tell him how I feel about that, the hardest thing I found about the trial was how he showed no remorse. He can just forget and move on but we can never forget.

“When I see drivers racing round I think it’s stupid and not worth the risk of what could happen, just for the sake of driving fast.”