Boxing Day 2004 tsunami: ‘She was gone with the waves’

Twenty years have passed since that terrible day and Nicola and Jason now have three daughters.

“For their sakes, we made ourselves go in the water,” says Nicola.

“Slowly, over a passage of time, we’re comfortable enough to be in the water.

“One of my worst fears is not being there when they’re in the water.

“When we are on a beach with them, and I’m watching them, I know if it’s looking dangerous, I can wave for them to come out.

“I can cope with it. But my biggest fear is when they all go off travelling on their own and I’m not there to wave. I know that will be an awful time as a parent.”

The mum of three says it took them years to come to terms with what happened.

“How were we both alive when so many died?” she questioned.

“Why were we allowed to survive and others didn’t? That took a while to process, the guilt of surviving.

“There was a long time, a good three or four years when I felt that I had cheated death.

“I thought it was going to come and get me in a different way – I’d be in a road crash, a tree would fall on me, another disaster would happen.”

For Jason, he says it is part of who he is now: “It will live with us for the rest of our lives and I kind of like that.

“That fear that I had, that experience that I had, moulded me into the person that will hopefully make me stronger and my children will see that.”