Darren Galsworthy - The Evil Within - Murdered by her stepbrother – the crime that shocked a nation. The heartbreaking story of Becky Watts by her father

The three of us spent the whole game shouting colourful abuse at the referee. It was hilarious but, looking back, it’s a complete wonder that we didn’t get thrown out.

During the months leading up to Nathan’s sixteenth birthday, he nagged Anjie and me for a moped, so finally we agreed to pay for him to do his compulsory basic training (CBT). Beforehand, I took him to buy some leathers and a helmet. I had owned multiple motorbikes in my lifetime, and was keen to impress on him that safety comes first.

‘You will get a bike one day,’ I told him as he tried it all on. ‘But let’s start with the protective kit, shall we?’

On his birthday I drove him to take his training and his CBT test. It was a viciously cold day in January, and as I dropped him off I wished him luck. While he was doing it, I waited in the car. It took hours and hours, but I didn’t want to drive home just in case he needed me.

At last, he appeared and started to walk towards my car looking really ill. He was pale as a sheet and I could tell he was frozen to the bone. The intense training followed by the test had completely exhausted him.

I held my breath as he got into the car sighing. I was worried that he hadn’t got through it but he turned to me with a huge grin on his face.

‘I passed!’ he shouted, and I punched the air in delight.

‘Well done, son!’ I said. ‘Yes! Now let’s get you home to warm up. You look like you’ve got hypothermia.’

The pride I felt at that moment was so immense, it couldn’t have been any greater if he was my biological son. I was just delighted for him. As a surprise, I had secretly spent around £2,000 on a moped, which was waiting for him at home. I quickly phoned Anjie and told her the good news. She knew that her job was to wheel the bike out of the shed and into the garden for Nathan to see when we got back. It was all wrapped up and ready, in the hope that he would pass that day.

When we jumped out of the car, Anjie and I grinned at each other, waiting for Nathan to see his bike. To our disappointment, he walked straight past it.

‘Hot cup of tea please, Mum,’ he muttered to Anjie. He didn’t even look at the moped.

‘Here’s your bike, Nath,’ I called. ‘It’s all legal. You’re free to ride it now if you want.’

He turned and looked at the moped for a few moments before answering. ‘Nah, I’ll go out on it tomorrow. Thanks Dar, thanks Mum.’

The poor sod was too frozen to think about anything other than getting warm again. I didn’t blame him, to be honest. Once indoors, he sat in front of the gas fire for the rest of the evening, trying to get the feeling back in his hands and feet.

The next day, however, he woke up and immediately got dressed in his leathers, ready to jump on his new moped. He asked Anjie to take pictures of him posing next to it, and he was beaming as he zipped off down the road. He looked so happy and confident. I felt really proud of him that day, and I could tell Angie did too.

After that, Nathan rode his bike all over Bristol, and he made some new friends as he met other moped owners. I used to laugh as I saw them all riding past the house together, as if they were in a pack.

When he left school, Nathan trained as an electrician at City of Bristol College, and owning the moped helped him to get an evening job as a delivery boy for Domino’s Pizza. He also worked at Sainsbury’s on weekends. At that point, he was showing all the qualities I had wanted so much to give him. He was hardworking, dedicated, and he was earning his own money.

‘He’s like a mini-me,’ I bragged to Anjie as we watched him ride off to work one day. She couldn’t have been prouder of her son, and I was chuffed to bits with the man he was becoming.

A few months later, Anjie called me in a blind panic while I was at work. She was such a blubbering mess that at first it was hard to make sense of what she was saying.

‘Nathan’s been in an accident,’ she said, sobbing down the phone. ‘Someone drove out of a junction and straight into him.’

‘Is he all right?’ I asked, my heart missing a beat.

‘Yes, but he’s in hospital,’ she said. ‘He was taken from the scene by an ambulance, but his bike is still by the side of the road. Can you go out and find it?’

‘Right, OK, love,’ I said. ‘Try not to panic.’

Nathan had been riding through Kingswood at about 35 mph when some idiot drove straight into him. He was thrown over the bonnet of the car on impact and ended up crumpled on the road, screaming in pain. His handlebars had smashed into his stomach and he had snapped his wrist as he landed but, other than that, he was OK. I silently thanked our lucky stars that I had made clear to him the importance of wearing appropriate protection while out riding. His helmet and leathers probably saved his life that day.

I left work immediately. My friend Andy Collins drove me in his van to search for the moped, which we discovered on the side of the road. I was horrified because it was completely folded in half. I felt sick as I loaded it into the back of the van, thinking about how much worse the accident could have been.

Later that day, we went to collect Nathan from hospital. He was in pain and feeling very sorry for himself.

‘Come on, boy,’ I said putting my arm around his shoulder. ‘Let’s get you home. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.’

‘I thought he was going to have a go at me about the state of the bike,’ he told his mother, who laughed.

‘You are far more important to him than any bike,’ she replied. ‘Darren cares about you – he doesn’t give a damn about the bike. That can be replaced – you can’t.’

‘Oh.’ Nathan replied. ‘All right, then.’

I think he needed reassurance every now and again that, as far as I was concerned, he was my son. He gave me a little more respect for a while after that, before we reverted to our normal relationship, which involved lots of banter and teasing of each other.

When Nathan turned seventeen, he asked if he could learn to drive a car. I was fully behind this, because Anjie and I had been shaken up pretty badly by the moped incident. I figured that he would be a lot safer in a car. We paid for lessons with a driving instructor because I knew I would never have the patience to teach anyone. Many moons ago, I did once try to give Anjie a driving lesson, and the hour I spent in the car with her scarred us both for life!

Nathan was so keen, he took to driving like a duck to water. He had absolutely no problems at all. When it came to his practical test, I drove him to the test centre and waited for him, and once again he walked out of there grinning like a Cheshire cat.

‘Let me guess – you passed?’ I asked.

He nodded in reply.

‘Well done, son,’ I said, starting the engine. ‘I’m proud of you. You’re doing really well – but you’re still not driving my car!’

Nathan always underplayed his successes and would never let on that he was pleased I was proud of him, but you could see it on his face. He couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. Within a few weeks, he rushed out and bought his first car – a sporty-looking white Renault Clio – with the money he was earning from his three jobs. I was less than impressed with this purchase, as when I gave it a test drive I could tell it was falling apart. The gearbox was on its way out, the clutch only engaged when my foot was a couple of inches off the floor, and there was rainwater leaking in, causing the electrics to fail.

‘This car is junk,’ I told Nathan, but he just crossed his arms and huffed at me.

‘I like it; it looks cool,’ he replied. It turned out to be one of those things I needed to let him find out for himself. After a few days he started moaning his head off about the car not running properly.