Images of the teenage Hicks sisters have been widely used to symbolise the tragic waste of life at Hillsborough.
Their father, Trevor, was a high-profile campaigner for justice for his two daughters and the 95 other Liverpool fans unlawfully killed in Britain’s worst sporting disaster.
Meanwhile, their mother Jenni, despite her dogged pursuit of the truth about Hillsborough away from the spotlight, went largely unnoticed.
But the woman who effectively lost everything that day in 1989 – her children, marriage, comfortable Home Counties life and almost her sanity – has written a book called One Day In April.
And what a heart-breaking yet inspirational story it is.
Jenni’s painful journey was unique:
She was at the FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield and witnessed the horror unfold, she took a ticket for a seat, allowing Sarah, 19, and 15-year-old Vicki and her husband to stand on the terraces, and she spent the next three decades campaigning for justice. And it took a crushing toll.
She said: “It was coming up to Vicki’s 21st in 1994 when reality kicked in and I realised I was no longer a mum or a wife.
"I was this person on my own and couldn’t work out where my place in the world was.
“For two years I went to a very dark place. I just couldn’t cope at all.
"The nightmares were so bad I was frightened to go to bed. I’d dream about the sights I saw at Hillsborough and when I woke up I could still see dying people lying on my bedroom floor.
"It was literally a living nightmare. I never want to go back to that place.”
Five years earlier, Jenni had been through the ultimate living nightmare, as she walked around Sheffield in a daze not knowing if her husband and daughters survived the crush.
When news of Vicki’s death was broken to her at a hospital, Jenni was told she could not see her because she was now the property of the South Yorkshire coroner.
“Being told my daughter was nothing to do with me just seemed utterly surreal. The way we were treated at the mortuary was horrendous.
“There wasn’t one ounce of compassion. I wonder how I coped. It must have been because the shock left me disconnected from reality.”
Making the pain even harder to bear were the lies spread by police, politicians and certain media, about the events of the day.
One, printed in a newspaper, cut like a knife to her heart. An unnamed policeman claimed as he tried to revive a teenage girl, some Liverpool fans shouted “throw her up here and we will **** her”.
Jenni found that utterly despicable. “It was a complete lie. I was with the fans and they were heroes that day.
“How low can you go to print an unsubstantiated report about something so vile being said about a person who could have been my dying 15-year-old daughter? It’s beyond belief,” she said.
As often happens when a couple lose children in high-profile circumstances, the strain on their relationship became unbearable and their marriage broke down.
As Jenni puts it: “We were two damaged people.”
She moved up to Liverpool to be close to where the girls were buried and did a degree at John Moores University in criminal justice and psychology, socialising with Sarah’s closest friends who were still at uni.
She said: “It was my crazy time. Young people accepted me.
"They let me do what I wanted whereas my own generation was trying to give me advice.
"And being with Sarah’s friends allowed me to reminisce about her.”
As someone who was at Hillsborough I have always suffered survivors’ guilt, but my guilt is nothing compared with Jenni’s.
“There’s guilt that it should have been me that died because I was in the stands and they stood on the terrace,” she said.
“But the real sense of guilt I feel is that I was the fan who introduced the girls to the club.
“Although I came from Yorkshire I’d been into Liverpool since I was 18.
"I still have days when I think ‘if only I hadn’t been a fan’. I feel terrible guilt about that.”
The cover-up shocked a woman who, with a successful businessman for a husband and a nice house in Middlesex, considered herself part of a model Middle England family.
“Before Hillsborough I thought I lived in a good country,” she said.
“I trusted the police and the government, then I saw first hand the corruption which went right to the very top.
"And I mean to the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
“It changed my whole outlook on life and it was a hard lesson to learn at a time when I was trying to cope with the grief of losing my children.”
Could she ever forgive? “If the police had held their hands up right from the start and admitted what happened maybe in time I’d have found some forgiveness but I certainly could not forgive them for the lies they made up about the fans.
“And I can’t accept that not a single police officer has been made accountable for what happened when an inquest found the 97 were all unlawfully killed.
"How can we have a justice system that allows that to happen? We need the Hillsborough Law, because without it every citizen in this country is in danger of falling into the same position as me.”
Does she ever wonder what life would be like if that day hadn’t happened?
She said: “All the time. I look at friends with grandchildren, see how it enriches their life and I do wonder.
“Sometimes I daydream about the girls coming round with their partners for Sunday lunch.
"But I have to stop thinking about that because it’s like chasing rainbows isn’t it?
“The life I thought I’d have was taken away and I’ve had to go down a completely different route.
"I think I’m a kinder person after all I’ve had to learn from the pain and suffering.
“Hillsborough turned some people bitter and angry but I couldn’t live with that because I haven’t got a safety net. I’ve got lovely friends but they’ve got their own lives.
“The pain is lurking all the time. I can have days when I’m positive about things and crash days when the pain makes me feel I’ve gone right back to the beginning.
“But I need to live the best life I can. How can I throw it away when my daughters’ lives were taken
so cruelly?
"My girls will always walk alongside me. I am not walking alone.”
One Day in April – A Hillsborough Story by Jenni Hicks, Seven Dials, hardback, ebook and audio, £14.99.
