"I couldn't turn round in the kitchen without her being there It was very frightening for me I mean, I couldn't show my feelings. A boy at school - a black boy, oddly enough - beat her up in the classroom after telling her that she shouldn't have grassed on her boyfriend Other pupils had to drag him off. His girlfriend later pulled out a knife, stabbed it into the paintwork, and said that if Kelly had been there she would have stuck it in her.The strain began to tell on Kelly - and, as her behaviour began to deteriorate, on Gill. Kelly was followed in Romford by one of the boys who hung around with Nicky, who told her he knew where she went and who she was with. A girl threatened to get petrol and set light to me.' "There were death threats over the telephone, sometimes from a man, sometimes a woman.

There was a series of calls through the night until Gill explained to the caller that she was up with the baby anyway, so it was quite convenient. People would say: 'Are you going up Barking to see some monkeys?' I got beaten up in the toilets twice. Asian people as well as white apparently thought her guilty of some appalling act of near miscegenation: there was a series of silent and heavy-breathing telephone calls which were traced to an Asian man; at school, Kelly says she was called "slag, bitch, wolf's meat, paki-lover, whore. In the eight months between the attack and Nicky's trial, Kelly was subjected to a venomous campaign of abuse.

How would you feel if that boy dies? At the end of the day you won't be wasting police time You've nothing to lose. And whatever decision you make, I will support you.' "This promise turned out to require more commitment than anyone would have thought. "And I said, if it's disturbing you that much, make a note of what he's saying whenever he calls."They both insist that Gill didn't advise Kelly to go to the police. But the moral relativism and cowardice which affected so many other people touched by the case clearly wasn't given much house-room at the Turners' "I said to Kelly, 'As a mum I feel for his mum.

She pretended there wasn't because I was ill, but I said, 'Don't worry; I want to know what's wrong.' " Gill hadn't seen a newspaper for days, but after Kelly had told her about Nicky, she went out and bought one and sat Kelly down in front of the television, which was now showing the story on the local news. Slim, 41, with cropped blonde hair and Kelly's trenchant energy, she is the quiet driving force in Kelly's story, its moving spirit. She was recovering from biopsies for a cancer scare when Nicky Fuller started boasting about the Bethnal Green attack. She has an older sister, Sarah, 19, who is also a hairdresser - unemployed - who lives between her mum's place and her dad's in Southend. Gill was divorced from Kelly's father years back; Alex is the result of "a new love in my life" - Phil, who doesn't live with them, though he comes every day to see the baby. "I could see by Kelly's face - I've got quite a close relationship with the girls and they don't hide anything from me, though sometimes I wish they would - that there was something wrong. They will live together, Gill says, when they get married next year.Gill sits in on Kelly's interview with me.