‘It’s stopped everything’
FOR 20-year-old Louise, life has been on hold since the death of her brother Martyn Hett, 29, who was killed in the attack.
She had planned to study fashion at Leeds University but felt she wanted to be with her family after losing her ‘confident, entertaining and caring’ sibling.
Days before his death, she had been among guests at his leaving party as he planned to travel to America for a two-month break.
It was to be the last time she saw him.
“I got into bed, noticed on my phone that something had happened, heard there had been a possible bomb or something.
“I wasn’t worried because I didn’t think I knew anyone there.”
Then, a Twitter message came up from one of Martyn’s friends saying she couldn’t find him.
“This police car came. The lights and sirens were on. It hit home, this is happening to us, this is happening to our brother.”
She recalls the coroner addressing them to say 13 bodies hadn’t been identified.
“Looking around the room it’s quite clear there are 13 families.
“It was just like the noise of 13 families in absolute bits, like grown men sobbing. It was really horrible.
“I think that sound was the most traumatic sound you can hear, just 13 families wailing and screaming and just they are so heartbroken and we’ve lost people we love and we are all doing it.”
Louise, who now works in a charity shop, adds: “It doesn’t feel like he’s gone. It just feels like he’s away.
“I think I need people more than I’ve ever needed people before.
“When you turn 18, 19, 20, you make your way out into the world but it’s put everything on hold for me. It has stopped everything I’d planned.
“I just don’t think I’d be good at making friends right now. I don’t want to be known as the girl who’s lost her brother in the terrorist attack.”
Describing grief as ‘exhausting and quite suffocating’, she says talking to teddy bears her mum has made with Martyn’s shirts helps her.
“It feels unfair that it’s happened to him and to all of us, to everyone, not just our family just all of the people that were just so innocent.
“It’s not even that they’ve just died, it’s all the things it’s caused afterwards. My life is completely different. Nobody’s doing what they wanted to do anymore, you just can’t.”