FATHER FORGETS MURDER OF DAUGHTER AFTER April has gone & now I’ve lost my soulmate... He’s the only one who knew my anguish

APRIL Jones’ mum Coral has told how she is heartbroken by her husband’s memory loss over their daughter’s murder.

Coral has to remind Paul of what happened to their little girl after he could not understand why the tot had not visited him in hospital.

Paul, 49, broke down when Coral told him their precious five-year-old daughter had been killed.

In an another devastating blow for the shattered couple, Paul has been left permanently brain- damaged because of the virus from a simple cold sore.

Doctors have told his family he is the worst case of the condition, known as encephalitis, they have ever seen.

Tearful Coral told the Sunday People: “How much more can my family take? I’ve already lost my daughter and now I have lost my soulmate and my rock and I feel so alone.

“Paul is the only person who can truly understand the pain I have felt over losing April. People said we’d split after she died but we beat the odds and it was us against the world.

“Now, I know our marriage will never be the same.”

Paul has forgotten large chunks of his life and has no memory of t he night April was abducted and murdered by evil Mark Bridger as she played on her bike.

Coral, 46, had to break the awful news after he recognised his daughter in a family album but did not know who she was.

The devastated mum told how Paul struggled to recall who April was at first but then faced the question of why she had not been to see him.

Awful

and I worry it will drive him even deeper i nto e depression.” Depraved Bridger, now 52, was caged for life in 2013 after being found guilty of killing A April in October 2012. He snatched her as sh she was playing on her bik bike near the family home in Machynlleth, Mid trial at Mold Crown Court. Yet Paul, who spent over a year in hospital after

vd falling ill 18 months ago, cannot remember a single detail.

Like most of his memories from the last decade, his recollection of the case which shocked the nation has vanished. He also cannot remember his wedding or precious family holidays which his wife holds dear since the murder.

Coral said: “He remembers some people who were close to him, he can recognise their voices and their faces.

“Sometimes, he’ll talk about things which happened years ago but most of the last decade is gone. We’ve talked to him about holidays we’ve gone on to Spain, Florida and Australia, but he doesn’t remember being there

“He used to love walking his dogs on the hills around Machynlleth. This gave him so much comfort after April was taken.

“For a long time, he’d walk up into the hills every day and tie a pink ribbon around a gate in her memory.

“But now, he wouldn’t even know how to get there. His memory is so bad that he would be lost as soon as he walked out of the front door.”

Paul is currently being cared for in Wales but devoted Coral is determined to one day bring him home.

She said: “Paul is not the man I married. We have to remind him to do the most basic things like wash and eat.

Fitness fanatic Paul cycled from Edinburgh to London in April’s memory for the Missing People charity