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.”
Tamsin Cook, 14, sister:
“I LAST spoke to Tristan the night before the crash. I was at my friend’s birthday party and he had never shown he cared about where I was before but he rang me and asked where I was.
“He had never in our lives told me he loved me, but he said it that night, and I said ‘I love you too’. My friends all remember it because I came off the phone saying ‘How weird – Tris just said ‘I love you’.
“I always forget he is gone. We used to try to beat each other home from school to get on the computer first. After the crash I ran upstairs one day and shouted ‘Bagsy the computer.’ I forgot, I wasn’t thinking.
“To be honest, I didn’t know Tristan was going round in cars. The drivers are stupid. I just think it’s ridiculous putting you and your passengers at risk just to do handbrake turns and try to look cool. You don’t look cool if you kill somebody.
“I want to tell them ‘Just think what you are doing, just think what could happen and how stupid you are being’.
“I worry that the upper sixth formers will think that because it happened to Tristan and Dominic it can’t happen to them now.
“On the morning after the crash I woke up at 7am and no one knew I was awake. I heard my dad saying he was going to wake me up later. My first thought was that something had happened to my step-mum, I went down and asked what had happened.
“He said take a deep breath, Tristan’s been in a car crash last night and he has died. Then I don’t remember anything for the next month, I have been told I was screaming and shouting, but I can’t remember.
“I went back to Christleton High School three days after the crash. At first it was really hard but I’m lucky I’ve got an amazing group of friends, all of Tristan’s year were really supportive and all the teachers were really amazing."
Katherine Hannible, 18, step-sister:
“WHEN you start driving you don’t ever think you will crash. Young drivers start off with a completely unrealistic perspective of what your responsibilities are to yourself and your passengers.
“I don’t think many adults are able to deal with the consequences of a very bad car crash, but to expect someone aged 17 or 18 to do it is unrealistic.
“I would support raising the driving age even if it meant I had to stop driving because I know it could save lives.
“I stopped driving for a few months after Tristan died and it has had such an impact on the way me and all my friends think about driving. But it doesn’t have an impact until it happens to you directly – that’s the tragic thing, nobody learns unless they know someone who has died in a tragic accident.
“If I have more than one passenger in the car I feel nervous because I know I am carrying the lives and happiness of two or three families in my car. People don’t think about that when they drive like idiots.
“Tristan was great. It was never dull when he was around, he was either winding people up or making them laugh. I will always remember that about him.
“I was just getting to the stage where I really knew him. We would both come home from a night out and eat chips in the kitchen. We were just getting to the stage where I could go to his room and chat about nothing.
“Words can’t describe that loss. I lost my stepbrother but he was becoming like a friend in the year before he died. There were so many things I wanted to do with him and wanted to say to him and now I can’t.
“On the day of my last A- level exam in June I found out another girl from Queen’s School, Amy Underhill, had died in a car crash.
“I got out of the exam and my music teacher said I needed to come downstairs. They brought my parents in to tell me because they knew how much resonance it had to my life. I walked in and my mum was crying.
“My first thought was, ‘Who else has died?’. She told me and I just thought, ‘What’s wrong with the world?’."
