Moved by the bravery and hope of April Jones' mother

I have a mug – ‘I don’t do mornings’ – that our daughter gave me; I collected our eldest son from a theatre in London, last night, where he’d been reviewing a play; our 22 year old is on tenterhooks, awaiting the birth of a foal; and our youngest has just achieved a second show-jumping ‘double-clear’ at the Bolesworth International Horse Show in Cheshire. Gems, all of them.

I didn’t really want to get my 0600 call this morning and groaned as the alarm bell buzzed. But my purpose eased all the pain and disruption; it even made leaping out of bed an unlikely joy. I drove to Wellington College where I’d been invited to chair a session at the Sunday Times Education Festival.

I have more than a passing interest in education – see opening paragraph. What’s more, the ‘coffee-mug donor’ is a Headmistress ‘elect’, with a First; the ‘play-reviewer’ is a former Winchester College Scholar, also with a First – indeed, a serial collector of degrees.

Beyond my pride in their achievements, and my memories of their four educational experiences, I am no education expert.

However, in the 1990s, I presented the programme ‘Missing’ for ITV. We produced it in conjunction with the ‘National Missing Persons Help-line’ – now morphed, magnificently, into ‘Missing people’. They were the chosen charity for this brilliant gathering of teachers, students and other great thinkers: Clare Fox, from the Institute of Ideas was there as were top-end journalists like Lord (Danny) Finklestein and Jenni Russell.

It was ‘Missing People’ who had invited me. And I was thrilled, moved, even reduced to tears.

In October 2012, I anchored the ITV Evening News from Machynlleth, in Wales: a beautiful, five-year-old girl, April Jones, had ‘gone missing’.

An entire community appeared to have gone into over-drive in a loving, caring effort to find her. The town was festooned with pink ribbons - April's favourite colour; there were posters and hand-bills; there was the police, aplenty, and the citizenry of this ancient welsh town, all harnessed by the simple desire to help find a vulnerable little girl.

It ended, as you may by now have remembered, badly. Mark Bridger was arrested, charged and convicted of her abduction and murder. Her remains, such a cold inadequate word, were never found.

I returned to Machynlleth to cover Bridger’s conviction and the wholly inadequate and heart-breaking conclusion to this bitter, brutal tale of woe.But that is not, in fact, where it ended. Nor is that the tone of the ‘April Jones’ story now.

My guest at Wellington was Coral Jones – April’s mother.

A chill runs through my body as I write those words. It is quite some time since I have been so moved by a simple meeting, enhanced, in a wonderful way, by the honour of spending an hour with such a remarkable woman. Her husband Paul, a strikingly handsome Welshman, sat quietly in the audience. I’d witnessed his love, loyalty and gentle support for his wife when the three of us took coffee together before entering the conference hall.

Our purpose was to promote the ‘Child Rescue Alert’ – an app capable of harnessing men, women and children of goodwill in the all-too-frequent quest for people who ‘go missing’. Many are children; some are folk, struggling with a mid-life crisis; others, struck by the cruel burden of dementia.

But ‘Missing’ is missing and doesn’t recognise age, gender, race or cause.The audience responded well and asked intelligent, probing questions. At the end, there was appreciative applause for what Coral had said and, I fancy, even more for what she had done just by being here.I was over-whelmed to have been a part of it.

Honoured? Moved? Touched? Motivated? Yes; all of the above; and more.

Take a look at the ‘Missing people’ website, if you can, and the ‘Child Rescue Alert’ app.

You might just help save someone from having to go through what Coral and Paul endured.

That they come out the other side, willing to help others, is to our collective advantage and, I suspect, our collective humility.