Face to Face: Bea Jones, charity founder of the Moira Fund

Moira’s mother, Bea Jones, sits with her back to the view. She takes, she says, comfort from sitting on Moira’s sofa in her former home but, while she recognises the scenery is lovely, she cannot take pleasure from it.

For Mrs Jones, unadulterated happiness is no longer a feature of her emotional range. Next year it will be a decade since the body of her “vibrant, enthusiastic” daughter was found by a park ranger and she is still trying to process this.

“Until fairly recently I wasn’t able to go back to anything that happened before,” she says, meaning before her daughter’s death. “I could remember things that happened before. I could remember doing things with Moira but when I remembered these things there was no emotion with it.

“For a long, long time – and still, to a certain extent – if somebody says to me, ‘Look at that view, isn’t it beautiful?’, I look at the view and my head acknowledges that all of these things make a perfect view but I don’t feel anything like joy.

“I am detached, disaffected. And I am detached from things happening to people around me. I don’t like myself sometimes if I don’t feel what I think I should feel.

“It’s definitely getting a bit easier [to remember Moira]. She was my best friend. We shared so much. We were soulmates.

“I see people smile fondly if they talk about Moira. They’re remembering something and there’s a warmth. I want that. But I don’t know whether I’ll get it. That upsets me.”

What strikes you about Mrs Jones, a former English teacher, is how articulate she is and how dignified she remains.

She was dignified on the steps of the High Court in Glasgow in April 2009, flanked by her husband Hu and son Grant, as she spoke following the sentencing of Moira’s killer, Marek Harcar, a Slovakian national with a criminal history.

She has been dignified while speaking to officers from the Met and Police Scotland, politicians and home secretaries during her campaigning work to have stricter controls on criminals moving around the EU. She is always dignified at events to raise money for the Moira Fund, the charity the family founded following Moira’s death.

It was fairly early in the aftermath of Moira’s killing that her thoughts turned to how others might cope in a similar situation and these thoughts resurfaced months later when the family began to contemplate what they could do in Moira’s name.

The family had flown to Glasgow from their home in Weston, Staffordshire, for Moira’s memorial service. “When we went to get our plane back, it had been cancelled, and we were going to have to wait about four hours in a public place. I’d held on all weekend – we’d met many people, we’d had a moving service – and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“I thought, ‘I can’t do this.’ I just wanted to sit on the floor and howl. And Grant sorted it – he spoke to someone and we were found a quiet place. I then thought, ‘I’m here with my husband and son. If I had been a single old-age pensioner with no son, how would I have coped?’ “So that was the start of the thinking about others, those with fewer resources than we had.”

The Moira Fund provides grants to the families of those who have been murdered, a fitting tribute to gregarious businesswoman Moira. Following her death, friends and neighbours lined up to tell of the help she had given, how she had supported them through bereavement, broken relationships and work problems.

One of the details that emerged during the trial of Moira’s killer was that passers-by had heard her scream and done nothing, a fact that sits uncomfortably with Glasgow’s reputation as a friendly city. Mrs Jones, who was born in Tayport, Fife, and raised in Dundee, remembers a newspaper editorial from the time which said Glasgow’s citizens had not properly cared for Moira and for Greek waitress Eleni Pachou, who was murdered by Juan Carlos Crispin within 24 hours of Moira’s death. For Mrs Jones, however, the people of Glasgow were a source of great support.

“Within two or three days of the end of the trial I thought, ‘I can’t take this. I’m going to crack now,’” she says. “By the time we got home our friends had been to our newly set up PO box and there was a lot of mail, mostly from people in Glasgow who knew about the trial, so we had cards and we had letters and little cheques from Glasgow mums, from an OAP who cared, as well as the letters and cards that came from Moira’s friends.

“I had to behave how you always behave. People send you things and you thank them. So straight away I had a job to do.”

Mrs Jones, who moved to England from Dundee “when I married my Sassenach in 1964”, has kept up that work full time – writing letters, campaigning, running the charity.

“Looking back, I don’t think I would be here if I hadn’t done that,” she says. “There have been occasions when I felt I couldn’t go on, that I was on the brink of something, maybe a collapse, maybe insanity – I didn’t know.

I was hyperactive, I kept myself busy, morning till night.

“I am less frantic now about things, I’m pleased to say, and run on much less adrenalin than I did, thanks to the efforts of patrons, trustees, fundraisers, the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), many wonderful caring people, Hu and Grant and Sharon, my wonderful son and daughter-in-law. I have a sense of security about the future of Moira’s charity and it is very important to me that the Moira Fund lives on.”

Last year, for the first time, Mrs Jones ran Moira’s Run, an annual 5k in Queen’s Park organised by the VRU to raise funds for the charity – no mean feat for a 75-year-old. She was spurred on by the kindness of runners touching her arm as they passed.

“I can’t explain it but I feel as if I am lifted up by the warmth and support I have felt at each of the runs,” she says.

“It poured with rain at the first one and I was so pleased because it blended with the tears pouring down my face. Yet I was smiling at the same time, smiling at all those who I felt were reaching out to me, supporting all of us.”

Grant and Sharon, who have lived in Moira’s flat since before they married, are now moving house. Although she says she will miss the flat, Mrs Jones says she will still be travelling regularly to Glasgow for trustee meetings and events such as the next Moira’s Run in October, a Ladies Luncheon in September and meetings with the cabinet minister’s team about homicide support in Scotland.

Incredibly for such a small charity, the Moira Fund has helped more than 700 families. The charity responds directly to the needs of the family; it might pay the deposit for a funeral or a headstone. In some cases, a woman might have been killed by a husband or partner who is now in prison, leaving a family member to bring up the children. A respite break for such a family can reinforce to those children they are still part of a loving family and give them happy memories. New families may need extra furniture or to redecorate a bedroom to make it a child’s own. Survivors might need respite or a trip to look forward to when a black hole looms at the end of a trial.

“There are so many needs and every one is different,” says Mrs Jones. “I read all of their stories and I can cope with them – I always want to help.

“I think most of those we help are told of how and why the Moira Fund came about and for some of them just knowing there is someone like them, someone who understands their pain, helps almost as much as any financial help we give.

“This is when I do get emotional, especially when heartfelt thanks come in, when I hear of a desperate mum bursting into tears when she knows her children will have gifts at Christmas, when a granny can’t believe she can plan a wee treat away with her grandson, when I’m told a dad actually laughed on the second day of a respite break with his boys.” And what would Moira think of the fund? “She’d approve,” says Mrs Jones.

“Yes, she’d approve.”