Vicky Hamilton RIP

The news story that broke my heart this week is that Vicky Hamilton, the Scottish teenager who went missing in 1991, has finally been found dead in England.

Ths story hit me harder than most because I was living in Falkirk at the time, a short distance from where she went missing. I was only 3 years older than she was and I remember the picture staring out from "Missing" posters in shops all over town.

I had also only left high school 3 years before, at age 16 as well, and that picture of her, forever enshrined in her school uniform, burned itself into my brain. She looked like any 1 of 100 girls I knew at school.

I watched the story as it periodically resurfaced after I had moved to England in 1994. The local paper in Falkirk would report any new leads and they would sometimes trickle south of the border to the broadsheets but as the leads died out so did the story.

Somewhere in the back of my head that picture was always there. When I first moved South and was working kitchen jobs and holiday camp jobs I would run into plenty of Scots and Welsh who had run away from home for a variety of reasons, some of whom I'm sure were listed as missing somewhere. I think a part of me hoped that maybe she was down here somewhere too. Perhaps working in a kitchen or some crappy holiday camp just like me but it wasn't to be.

Now they have found her. The last light of hope has gone out.

I am a Father of a girl myself now. Something in that fact makes the story harder still to bear. I cannot begin to imagine what her Dad is going through. I can only hope this discovery brings him some peace.

Rest in Peace Vicky.