The last 27 hours

 04.00am

Sunday night,  all is quiet.

06.45am 

an alarm clock sounds. Preston wearily hits the snooze button , all is quiet.

06.50am 

an alarm clock sounds for the second time. The sun is shining bright. Preston get out of bed and puts on his work clothes, day 2 of a new job for a construction company at Royal Sussex County Hospital assisting in the expansion of the 19th century buildings and a new helicopter pad on the roof of the 15th floor

In the next bedroom Preston's dad, Paul (myself) wakes up to the sound of Preston's loud alarm clock buzzing for the 2nd time. 

The sun has well and truly risen and the east facing bedroom is very bright, no chance of getting back to sleep  ! Love you I shout as I hear the front door opening and closing shut.

 He’s on time !

07.30am

Its very bright and its very hot 

9.00am

still very sunny, still very hot My friend Samantha has a new swimming pool in her back garden in Newhaven that she has been banging on about for a while. at this moment in time, in my hot city centre flat it seems very appealing all of sudden

11.00am 

im on the 12a bus to Newhaven with my swimming shorts and some cold ciders 

Midday, high noon

 I’m in Samantha’s swimming pool on a inflated lilo with a cold cider in the molded drinks holder, eyes closed bumping myself back and forth off the round edges of the pool 

Iv decided to spend the day and evening here floating in the pool, I may even stay here and do the same tomorrow then go home, iv no immediate need or desire to go back to my hot flat in Brighton I trust Preston and i'm confident that he will go to work on time the next day. It is mid lockdown of the covid19 virus and the second time most people are instructed to stay safe and stay home, Preston was in the construction industry and they are exempt from this and Preston values this and he values his hard earned wage 

17.40pm

 i'm still in the swimming pool and its still a scorcher of a day, the sun is shining !

 My mobile phone starts to ring, its Preston, we always answer the phone to each other, its a deal we have with each other 

*** TRIGGER *** ** INQUEST FINDINGS **

“hello Prest, how was work?” I ask, trying to keep my phone dry 

its noisy where he is, he’s finished work, he’s in a pub 

“brilliant” he says, “and guess who works at the hospital too ?” 

I hear the phone being passed to someone and I hear my friend Gage, he’s a plumber

“Paul how you doing mate i'm working with Preston and iv taken him for a pint come and join us, its been ages come join us”

it sounds very noisy there in contrast to the quietness and peacefulness of the pool 

id love to Gage but I'm in Newhaven at Sam's for the night ill be back tomorrow and we will definitely catch up” I reply again he asks me to come back to Brighton again I politely refuse and he passes the phone back to Preston. “come on dad come for a pint with us “ he sounds a little tipsy, hes had a long hot day and is probably on his second pint. I tell him i'm at Sam's and ill be back tomorrow , I remind him to make sure he gets home at a sensible time and he has work in the morning, he acknowledges this and I tell him I love him to which he replies the same, love you dad, and the call is terminated 

as soon as the line goes dead I realise iv just told Preston and Gage and whoever else they are with that im away for the night ! We have a 6'x3' old style pub pool table in the front room at home and I kind of know that with the knowledge im away for the night they could well all head back there and be very loud and potentially cause my neighbours a disturbance 

shit !!

7.00pm

 its still hot here and all is good however I have the nagging thought of the commotion that could be occurring back at home so I say to my friend Sam that I think I need to jump on the bus and nip home check on the situation, and if all is good then jump on the bus back to the hers and the swimming pool that is oh so lovely on this hot balmy day. I really don't want to have to but I really feel I should, before when I have had these 6th sense feelings I have been correct and this time It felt no different to those other instances yet obviously I hoped I was wrong and all is quiet but due to previous noisy kids at home and disgruntled neighbour situations I went home to check !  *** TRIGGER *** ** INQUEST FINDINGS **

7.40pm 

 On the bus to Brighton

 I arrive at the flat there is Preston, Frankie and his friend Alfie the music is quite loud and they looked surprised to see me ! “hello dad, come to check up on us have you?” Preston says with a smile “no not at all, I just came to get something” I lied 

they seemed a bit displaced now and soon said they were going down grand parade lawns to meet the others as the flat now has me in it ! 

*** TRIGGER *** * INQUEST RESULTS *

Now I am at home on my own, no one is here and i'm thinking of going back to Newhaven as I planned ideally the kids will return all calm and good first but no one comes back.  

At this preston, Frankie nd Alfie have left the flat this is what was happening with them at this time I only learnt of this last night from my son Frankie x Although what he recounts really does not surprise me !! 

Words of Preston's brother Frankie 

After you left it was just me Alfie Preston and Casey me and Alfie were playing ps4 and could hear Casey shouting at Preston calling him all kinds of shit and bringing up more shit and then they both come into Preston’s room and calmed down for 5 minutes then she’s kicked off again threw a bottle of water so we all left the house to meet Gage but we got to the end of the road and Casey was kicking off so we kept walking and let Preston deal with her and i turned to Alfie and said I should knock her out for talking to my brother like that but Alfie told me that he could handle it so we kept walking towards London road then I realised it was 10:30 and I had school the next day so I said to Preston we have to go and he asked me to stay over that night with him  *** TRIGGER *** ** INQUEST FINDINGS **but I couldn’t stay so he asked Gage to lend him £10 so me and Alfie could get home as he didn’t want us to walk then and then we left x

Like i said it doesnt surprise me, that was her common behaviour to him ! 

i hate her !!

10.30pm

I arrive down with the youth on the grass there’s about 15 or so mostly calm with the exception on a couple of drunken girls Casey's friends. Preston is there and uncharacteristically quiet and sombre !

I ask if he is ok and he says he is 

he had put his younger brother frankie in a cab home because they were drinking and at 15 was too young and of course Preston was looking after his little bro   *** TRIGGER *** * INQUEST RESULTS *

1145pm 

the kids now decide to move down to Pavillion gardens and we all walk the few hundred meters there when we arrived I said to preston im going home to that he said he’d only be 30mins or so because he had work the next morning and he still was very quiet and calm 

00.00

im home 

00.45am

preston rushes in all hyper and anxious, I ask whats happened he said hed just had an argument with someone and decided to run home rather than get into a situation. He is on his own he said he’d run past casey in the opposite direction he also doesn’t have his phone neither does casey he worries she is caught up in the drama at the gardens so goes down there to check she is ok whilst he out she arrives at the flat looking for him I explain he,s looking for her then she leaves to go look for him 

01.50

preston arrives back still on his own and I tell him to wait at the flat and she will turn up here otherwise they be chasing each other all night he has no phone still and goes to his room 

03.50am 

I hear the front door closing shut ! Shit he’s gone out again! He has work at 8am !

04.10am

I hear the front door opening n closing and preston comes into the front room 

“alright I say where’s casey then? “

for the next 10 minutes he just sat there cussing at casey muttering fucking bitch fucking c *nt 

04.20am

still sat on the sofa he goes quiet just sitting there, all still and silent 

04.30am 

preston suddenly stands up and motions towards the front room door, ah at last he’s off to bed 

good night prest, love you, I’ll get u up for work in the morning yeh ? The door closes all is quiet 

there are no buses to newhaven yet I plan to go there when preston gone to work I make him some tuna /mayo sandwiches and tune into netflix

*** TRIGGER *** * INQUEST RESULTS *
 

07.00am 

preston should be getting up now however because of his late bedtime and only having two and half hours sleep ill give him another 20mins before I get him up

he will still be on time for work 

 07.20am

bright and sunny outside and already the temperature is getting hot ! Nice 

I go down the hallway to wake preston and as I approach his room I see him kinda in-between the open door and the wall slouched on his feet I laugh and say bloody hell preston u slept like that? You ache like fuck later on to which he didn’t give a response either physically or verbally I say come on prest u’ll be late for work, again motionless then all of a sudden my eyes started computing to my brain what they were seeing and that he had one of my yellow ratchet strap cords around his neck and over the door !!1 WTF WTF !! 

07.00am 

I take his dead weight holding him up then realising he had put put a screw through the strap to secure it from slipping off WTF

unable to put him down to find a screw driver I just physically dragged it off of the screw, fuck he’s heavy I just laid him backwards onto his back onto the rug just outside of his door

07.22am 

he is kind of making noises still

my day from that point went into hyperspeed mentalness as u can imagine

I ring 999

 07.23am

The 999 operator is asking me lots of questions I’m just screaming down the phone what the fuck do I do tell me please tell me after what seemed an eternal length of question asking she is instructing me to give him cpr it got to the point I felt I couldn’t keep up with the speed of it all eventually paramedics arrived and I just crawled off the top of him they told me to leave them to it I went in the front room and a few minutes later they opened the door and told me he was dead !!! FFS WTF !!! AND I KINDA LOST THE PLOT !! 

I was also told they wouldn’t be able to tell me when he chose to do it at 430am or 7am because of the small time window so *** TRIGGER *** ** INQUEST FINDINGS ** did he do it at 7am expecting me to go to get him up for work finding him and it just trying to be a cry for help but I gave him the extra 20mins 

in the matter of fact at the coroners inquest the first thing they told me was that when the paramedics arrived rigor mortis had started to occur so they told me that when he left the front room at 04.30am he went straight down the hallway, grabbed one of my straps and did it there and then, which clears my mind of whether he did it at 7am expecting to be found within a few minutes but also then the knowledge that he was hanging on his door dead for 2 hours with me just 9 meters away in the front room 

still to this day that 430am till 730am monday night tuesday morning thing is a thing