By BARBARA DAVIES

Last updated at 22:20 28 September 2007

The utter pointlessness of

Rosemary Edwards' death is

what makes it so heart-breaking.

Recounting the final days before

their 15-year-old daughter took

her own life in the depths of the

New Forest, her parents David and

Jennifer describe a scenario familiar to

the parents of any teenager.

Quite what sparked her death has remained a

mystery until now.

But yesterday they told the

Mail how, the week before she died, Rosemary

had helped herself to a can of fizzy drink and

some sweets at the little village shop where she

worked part-time to earn some pocket money.

It was a minor misdemeanour and, say her

parents, totally out of character for their bright,

fun-loving youngest daughter.

"But after the shop

owner found out, they felt Rosemary couldn't be

trusted," says her father.

"She was given the

chance to tell us what had happened, rather than

having the owner tell us why she had lost her job.

But she didn't."

Instead, Rosemary told her family that she had

simply given up the job because it was boring.

It

was only a week later, when her mother Jennifer

popped into the shop, that her lie was

discovered.

"I told the owner I was sorry that Rosemary

had left them in the lurch," she recalls. "And the

owner explained what had really happened."

This apparently small crisis in the life of this

close-knit, loving, hard-working family should

have been resolved by the telling-off and the "let's

say no more about it" conversation that followed.

But somehow, the seemingly trivial events

of that day — Tuesday, September 4, the

night before her new school term began —

sparked a chain of events that culminated in

unbearable tragedy.

That evening, she sent text messages to four

teenage boys she had befriended on social

networking websites.

In one she wrote: "I want to

die."

In another: "I could either run or I could kill

myself, but I've got nowhere to run to."

The last one, sent to all four at around

8.30pm, said: "I love you."

What is so extraordinary about such

dramatic statements is that they came

from a girl with no previous record of

making any such comments.

Later that night, one of the boys

Rosemary had contacted rang the

family home in Dibden Purlieu, near

Southampton, and asked for

Rosemary.

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Her mother explained that she

was in bed asleep and, believing she

must be safe, the boy rang off without

mentioning the suicidal messages.

Some time after 10.30pm, however,

Rosemary slipped out of the house,

which borders the New Forest, and

after walking ten miles into one of the

remotest wooded areas hanged herself

with a length of orange bale twine.

Now, sitting with his wife and with

tears running down his face, her bereft

father attempts to make sense of what

she chose to do.

"We can't understand

how she could have done it, not just to

us, but to her brother and sister," says

David, an electronics consultant.

"They were incredibly close. There was no

fighting, just closeness and laughter.

She had so much to live for."

He and Jennifer, who have two other

children, 19-year-old medical student

Lucy and 17-year-old A-level student

Robert, speak in the tortured tones of

parents struggling to comprehend how

their horse-mad daughter could have

thrown her life away for such an

apparently trivial reason.

They have forensically dissected the

events of Rosemary's last day "a

thousand times in our heads", but

refuse to blame one another.

"Blame is destructive," says David. "It tears

people apart."

Certainly no one can possibly

blame them for disciplining

their daughter after she had

lied to them.

"We didn't want

her to go off the rails," says

Jennifer.

"It was a shock because we'd

had no trouble at all with any of our

children. We didn't want it to be the

start of something."

On the day that her mother, who

works as a secretary, discovered her

untruth, Rosemary was in Wales

with her sister Lucy, who was busy

sorting out accommodation for her

second year studying medicine at

Cardiff University.

David recalls: "When Rosemary got

back, I just said: 'We need to have a

talk.' And she just ran upstairs and

locked herself in the bathroom.

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"I think she possibly hated herself

because of the circumstances under

which she had lost her job, because it

was completely out of character.

"She had such a strong sense of what

was right and what was wrong.

Maybe there was a degree of

self-loathing there."

His voice breaks when he recalls the

words he spoke to her through the

locked bathroom door.

"It can't have helped — what I said to

her. I told her she had lost people's

trust. I also told her I was disappointed

in her.

"Maybe that was a trigger for

feeling she had no friends or no

self-worth, even though that was patently

not the case."

As a punishment, he temporarily

banned his daughter from riding. But

while Rosemary was tearful and sulky

for the rest of the evening as so many

adolescents would be, she did sit down

with the family for dinner.

"She ate a bit, but she didn't speak,"

says Jennifer. "There were six of us,

including Lucy's boyfriend, Ollie, and

we just chatted away as normal."

Later in the evening, Rosemary had a

bath and washed her hair — a fact

which her mother later desperately

clung onto after they realised she was

missing.

"It didn't strike me as the

behaviour of someone planning to take

their own life," she says.

Around 10.30pm, David and Jennifer

went upstairs to speak to their

daughter.

"I asked her for her phone," recalls

David. "We'd grounded her and I didn't

want her to stay up all night texting

people. She had school the next day.

"Rosemary switched it off and handed

it to me. I asked her for a hug, but she

said no. She was still half-sobbing, so I

kissed her on the cheek."

Now, he is overcome with

regret, and he wishes he'd told

her how much he loved her.

"How could I have known that

was the last time I would ever

see her," he says, sobbing. "Maybe if I

had said that, she would not have done

what she did."

Jennifer also spoke to her: "I said:

'Let's try to draw a line under this.

Tomorrow is another day.' Rosemary

said something like 'fine' or 'OK'.

"Her sister Lucy had also gone in to see her

and said that they would go to the

beach on Sunday. Rosemary said that

would be nice."

That was the last time Rosemary's

family saw her alive. In the middle of

the night, the headstrong teenager

walked out of the house, leaving

behind her purse as well as her

precious MP3 music player, which she

usually took everywhere.

Her absence wasn't discovered until

David went to wake her at 7.40am.

"I was calling her for school," he says.

"When I found she had gone, I ran

around the house checking all the

rooms. I checked the garden and

the garage."

David speaks of an instant and

overwhelming sense of dread, which

deepened when he switched on Rosemary's

phone and read the last text messages

she had sent to the four teenage boys.

Ten minutes after discovering

that his daughter was missing, he

dialled 999.

The hours that followed were filled

with desperate activity. While waiting

for the police, Jennifer telephoned her

daughter's friends, asking if they'd

heard from or seen her.

David drove

around the stables where his daughter

rode. Later, he took the family's two

dogs into the New Forest, "in case she

was sitting there, thinking about stuff".

When the police arrived, her

anguished text messages quickly made

it clear that Rosemary's disappearance

was very serious. The case was handed

over to Hampshire CID.

For hour after agonising hour, the

couple searched the area, desperately

hoping the phone would ring. That

night, neither David nor Jennifer slept.

"We left the house unlocked all night

in case she came back," says David.

He also took Rosemary's bag, which

she carried everywhere, and put it in

his and Jennifer's bedroom, "so she

couldn't sneak in during the night, take

it and go again", he says.

From the start, David feared the

worst. Jennifer was more hopeful,

despite the text messages. "I remember

what it was like to be a teenager," she

says. "Kids express these thoughts. I

thought it was an idle threat."

And there was nothing to suggest

that there was anything seriously

wrong in their daughter's life.

The

couple describe her as the most

outgoing of their three children — with

an enormous sense of humour,

combined with a love of animals and

the outdoors.

Jennifer recalls how, from the age

of three, Rosemary would wander

around the garden carrying the family's

pet Bantam chicken, Speckles, under

her arm.

David remembers the day four years ago when he and Rosemary,

aged just 11, climbed Scafell Pike in

the Lake District. Then there were

the family holidays this summer:

surfing in Devon and a week on a

narrow boat in which she revelled in

the outdoor life.

"You think life is just perfect and you

don't know what's around the corner,"

says David simply, still barely able to

comprehend how his family's

happiness has been shattered overnight.

Like her older sister and brother

before her, Rosemary was also doing

well at the state-run Noadswood

School in Dibden Purlieu. She had

taken two GCSEs a year early and

earned an A in maths and B in art this

summer.

She planned to take science

A-levels and train as a vet. Certainly,

there was nothing to suggest

anything was wrong at school.

"We were always aware that she

might be put under pressure by Lucy

and Robert doing so well," says

Jennifer, "but we always told her that

we didn't mind what she did, as long

as she tried. But she did well anyway.

She had no worries about school."

Not, despite her internet

friendships, had Rosemary shown any

intense interest in boys. "She hadn't

reached the boyfriend stage," says

Jennifer.

"In the past three months,

she had suddenly blossomed, but she

didn't seem aware of her own

sexuality or how beautiful she was."

Nearly all Rosemary's free time

was spend riding. She and her best

friend Poppy advertised on

equestrian websites, offering to exercise

people's horses.

The Sunday before

she died, say her parents, Rosemary

had fixed up a new job caring for

someone's horses.

All these thoughts occupied her

parents' minds as they waited for

news in the days following

Rosemary's disappearance. With every

passing hour, their darkest fears

loomed larger.

Several days after her

disappearance, the couple made an

emotional media appeal for

her return, which catapulted

her story into the national

consciousness.

Meanwhile, fingertip searches of her

bedroom by police, checks on her

computer and interviews with the

boys she had met online all failed to

offer any concrete explanation as

to why Rosemary would want to take

her own life.

But the news that they had been

dreading came last Sunday night. As

soon as David opened the door to a

police family liaison officer, he knew

what was coming.

In a way, he says, it

was almost a relief. "It would have

been far, far worse if she'd been

abducted or murdered. In the end, it

was her choice," says David. "And after

two-and-a-half weeks we had already

started the grieving process."

Rosemary's body had been found by

a couple trying to train a new dog,

which had run off into the forest.

"Rosemary wasn't near any path," says

David.

"I imagine she would have

walked through the forest. She knew all

the tracks from her horse-riding. She

walked to Ashurst, crossed the main

road and kept on walking through the

forest to the place where she died.

"She could have remained there for

years undiscovered. I don't think I

could ever find the place again."

Jennifer says: "We think she wanted to

find somewhere we wouldn't find her

because she didn't want to upset us."

On Tuesday, the whole family

visited the spot where their

daughter died. It was, they say,

"a real comfort". "It was like a

weight lifting," says Jennifer.

"It was very peaceful. The sun was shining

through the trees. We know from the

way she died she would not have

suffered any real pain."

Certainly, the discovery of Rosemary's

body has eased the couple's anguish in

some ways, but now they must

confront the brutal fact of her death.

The family has been offered

counselling, which they say they will

probably take up after Rosemary's

funeral next week at St Andrew's

Church in Dibden Purlieu.

They talk about Rosemary a lot

together as a family and are

encouraging their other two children not to

bottle up their feelings about their

sister's death.

"We are determined that the family is

going to come through this and it won't

wreck anybody else's life," says David.

The terrible truth is that Rosemary's

decision to end her life may have been

made in the heat of an emotional crisis.

For that reason alone, her parents

have decided to speak out.

They have

recalled every raw detail of the past few

weeks, in the hope that other teenagers

— and other parents — become better

at communicating with each other.

Rosemary's story also serves as a

reminder that, even as parents, we can

never really know our children and that

it's all too easy to confuse loving them

with knowing them.

David mentions a conversation last

week with a woman Rosemary used to

ride for.

She is a child psychologist and,

David points out, did not detect any

unhappiness in his daughter.

"She made the point that our children

don't belong to us. They are just lent to

us," he says.

Once again he is crying as he adds: "But we would have liked to

have had her even for a few more years."