A cute smile when she was aged four.The last of our exclusive series in which we talk to the family of Amanda Edwards, 21, who was murdered earlier this year. TINA CLARKE reports.

AMANDA Edwards will never truly be gone.

The girl dubbed a pink angel by one of the children she loved and cared for lives on in the memories not just of her family, but in the community in which she grew up.

Having struggled all her life with dyslexia, she had just started to find the confidence to start enjoying life to the full only to have that life snatched away.

Born at Princess Margaret Hospital, she and her family moved into their Purton home when she was a baby. Already she was beginning to show the quirky nature that endeared her to people later in life.

Her father Lee smiled as he remembered why she was given her nickname "Pud Pud."

"When she was a baby she had to have a pint of custard before she went to bed. Then she slept for the rest of the night. She was a very con-tented baby."

Amanda would also sleep with a picture of her beloved nanny on the pillow beside her.

At school her dyslexia gave her problems and dented her confidence badly. But even-tually, with hard work and help from support teachers, she left Braydon Forest School with a couple of GCSEs. "It was an achievement," said her mother Beverley.

"She had struggled on and proved to herself she could do something."

It was also enough to set her on course for the only career she wanted. "Ever since I can remember she had always said she wanted to become a nursery nurse."

So Amanda went to college and wrestled the dyslexia yet again to pass a City and Guilds qualification in child care.

Armed with that she started working in local nurseries. It wasn't always easy and some-times she made it tougher on herself.

"One of her downfalls was that she didn't want people to know about her dyslexia. She was a very private person, " said Lee.

"She didn't want it known that she was dyslexic and people used to think that she was lazy," added Beverley. "She didn't have the con-fidence to tell them."

Still, Amanda managed to pass her NVQ2 and was well on the way to her NVQ3. And it didn't stop her passing her driving test first time after taking lessons with her grand-dad for 12 months.

And when it came to the children themselves, she was in her element. "She had a way of coming down to their level and she knew how to deal with them. She never lost her temper with them even when they were screaming and having a tantrum. She just talked to them until they had calmed down. She just had that rapport."

Although she was very young she also had plans for a big family. "Amanda used to tell me that she was going to have three children by the age of 24. She was adamant that she wanted a big family," said her mother.

Children had been a major part of her life ever since she was old enough to babysit. Rather than spend a lot of evenings out with friends Amanda babysat.

"She never charged the going rate. She used to say: 'I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it because it is what I want to do.' We have had some beautiful letters from the parents of children she babysat," said Beverley.

Pink also plays a huge part in people's memories of Amanda. She adored it. Not long before she went missing she redecorated her bedroom in pink and silver and every day she would wear some-thing pink.

That was why her funeral was dominated by the colour.

The room is now used by her older sister Anek, 25, who moved back to live with her parents after Amanda's death.

Like her parents Anek feels the huge gap left by Amanda. As sisters growing up they used to squabble, but grew closer with maturity. It doesn't make the pain of her loss any easier to bear.

Contrary to the popular saying, the family doesn't feel that time heals. It is five months since she disappeared, but it feels like yesterday.

And all it takes to re-open their emotional wounds is an innocent comment or a piece of music.

Lee said: "Some days I don't want to see anybody. Sometimes someone might inadvertently say something wrong and I am upset for the rest of the day."

They have been to two family weddings since the funeral and at one the thin veneer of normality was shattered when the DJ played Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely.

It was Amanda's favourite song. Once she discovered it among her parents' LP collection she played it almost every day.

"She even adopted it as her mobile ringtone.

"The DJ didn't know. It wasn't his fault, but it crushed our happiness for a couple of hours," said her father. "Amanda will always be there. The memories will never go away. It is like someone has grabbing your insides and pulling part of you away."

For the moment he and Beverley find it difficult to look past the inquest, which is still weeks away.

They feel that until the evidence is all out in the open there will always be whispers and theories about how their daughter died. Her killer has taken some of the answers with him to the grave.

But Beverley's view is: "People need to know exactly what happened.

"It is going to be very upsetting to us, but I am just praying it is going to help someone else."

"I want the world and his wife to know what happened to my daughter."

Tina Clarke