Holiday ends in tears for girls’ teacher

THE teacher of missing schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman yesterday fought back tears as she clutched a home-made thank you card made by one of the 10-year-olds.

Joy Pederson said she treasured the card from Holly but could not look at it without crying and was struggling to come to terms with the girls’ disappearance from Soham, Cambridgeshire.

She was on holiday in the remote Italian island of Ischia last week and only discovered as she was about to return home that the girls had disappeared and were thought to have been abducted.

Her husband David read news of the girls in British newspapers in the airport lounge at Naples as they prepared to fly home.

“He showed it to me and I got so upset he had to take it away again,” Mrs Pederson, 38, said. “It was a terrible shock, you just can’t believe it happened to people you know and in a close community like this.”

The couple’s flight was delayed 12 hours and Mrs Pederson said the time passed “in a blur” because she was so shocked.

Mrs Pederson has taught for 16 years, 12 of them at St Andrew’s School where the girls are pupils, and said she had known them since they started school. She taught Holly’s older brother Oliver, 12, and Jessica’s sisters Rebecca, 16, and Alison, 14.

“They are really lovely girls, a delight to teach, really sensible, bubbly, the life and soul of the class, they’re a delight to teach and to spend time with.”

She showed the card Holly had made her using A4 paper and fluorescent pens. “I’ll miss you” is written in large letters on the front, with a sad face drawn beneath it with think bubbles coming out of it. One says “Sad 2 see u go!” and the other “I’ll c you around school”; both girls were due to move class in the autumn and would be taught by a different teacher.

Underneath the face “Thank You!” is written in gold and inside Holly has written “To Mrs Pederson, Thank you very much for teaching me! Luv Holly” and signed it with six kisses in an upside-down pyramid.