My husband wanted to murder the man who killed our...

ON ELIZABETH Jimenez’s phone there’s a picture of her daughter Maria blowing a kiss. “I smile every time I see it,” the proud mum, 54, from Guilford says quietly. “Eight years after we tragically lost her at just 24, every photo I have of Maria is precious.”. But there are other photos on her phone that also bring Elizabeth joy, including those of a young man with dark hair and a warm smile.

Image Credit: The Sun [Two women on a bus, one making a peace sign.]

This is Nick Tay, 32, the man who caused Maria’s tragic death. The same man who Elizabeth has forgiven and now loves like a son. “Maria was born happy in April 1992,” remembers Elizabeth. “Her favourite thing in the world was helping other people feel better. “She was very close to her older brother Joshua, now 35, and her dad Fernando, now 67. He absolutely doted on her.”. The mother-daughter bond was so strong that even when Maria went to study linguistics at Brighton University in 2014, they spoke every day.

Image Credit: The Sun [Family portrait outdoors.]

“She had such big plans for her future,” Elizabeth says. “In 2017 after she graduated, she told me that she’d applied to be a teacher in Korea. She was so excited for what was around the corner.”. In March 2017 Elizabeth heard the name Nick for the first time. “Maria told me about this young man who’d come to the UK from Singapore to study and was in the same music group as her. His name was Nick.

Image Credit: The Sun [Selfie of a man and woman at night.]

“One day at church she pointed to a quiet, smart young man across the crowded room. ‘There he is mum!’ she said. “Maria had been through a breakup the year before, and I was so pleased to see her smiling again.”. On March 22 Maria told Elizabeth that she was heading out for dinner with her music group, which included Nick. “She said ‘Bye mum, I love you.’ ‘Love you too,’ I replied,” Elizabeth says.

Image Credit: The Sun [Portrait of a smiling woman with long dark hair.]

“Putting the phone down I had no idea this would be the last time I’d ever hear her voice.”. At 9am the next morning Elizabeth walked out of her bathroom and saw Fernando standing there in the hallway, frozen. “As he asked me to sit down, I felt this wave of fear go through me,” she remembers. “Then he knelt at my feet and began to cry. I knew something life shattering had happened. ‘At first, I couldn’t understand the words coming out of his mouth. Something about the police having come to the house and an accident.

Image Credit: The Sun [Two men smiling together outdoors at night.]

“Then in horror, three things became clear. “Nick had been driving, there’d been a car crash, and Maria was gone.”. Elizabeth didn’t yet know all the details. That at 1:20am the night before, with Maria in the front passenger seat, Nick had driven at 110mph in a 50mph zone. That the car had veered across two lanes before hitting the central reservation, rebounded back onto the grass verge and flipping over.

Image Credit: The Sun [Selfie of a woman on a beach with Durdle Door in the background.]

She didn’t know that Nick was driving Maria’s car despite not having insurance, or that he’d emerged unharmed while Maria had been thrown from the vehicle. “I just understood that my darling daughter, my precious child, was no longer alive,” she says. “It felt like being hit by a huge, physical force.”. But as she held Fernando and wept, as they sat for hours in the hospital waiting to see Maria’s body, one thought kept whirling through Eizabeth’s mind.

Image Credit: The Sun [Photo of two women smiling for the camera.]

“‘What if it had been Fernando or Joshua at the wheel?’ I thought,” she says. “‘What if it had been me?’”. “I knew that Nick had been arrested, and I couldn’t stop picturing him alone and terrified in the cells. “Instead of a desire to blame him, to vent my fury and scream for revenge, I just wanted to know that he was okay.”. She didn’t tell Fernando how she was feeling. “And he didn’t tell me that he was so angry with Nick that he wanted to kill him,” she says.

“In those dreadful hours at the hospital, we were just managing our overwhelming grief as best we could.”. That night when Elizabeth got home, knowing that Nick had been released from the police station, she reached for the phone to call him. “It was the first time we’d ever spoken,” she says. I knew that by forgiving Nick we shocked many people, from the police to some of Maria’s friends. “I heard myself say, ‘I love you Nick, and I forgive you,’ He just sobbed in reply.”.

Two days later Elizabeth was nervously preparing for Nick to visit them at home. “I knew that Fernando was still struggling with his anger, but I was in such incredible pain,” she says. “I just felt that I needed to see Nick, that somehow it would help me, and seeing my anguish Fernando agreed to my request. “Nick looked so terrified when he walked in that my heart hurt. I held my breath as he stepped towards Fernando, unsure how he would react.

“But when Nick said ‘please forgive me’ Fernando reached out to hug him. Suddenly they were embracing in tears and Fernando replied, ‘I forgive you son.’. “I wept to see it and felt the burden on my heart become lighter.”. From that moment Fernando and Elizabeth were united in their determination that Nick shouldn’t go to prison. “I knew that by forgiving Nick we shocked many people, from the police to some of Maria’s friends,” she says.