FIVE months after the murder of their daughter, Amanda, Lee and Beverley Edwards still face daily challenges in their struggle to cope with their grief.

Speaking for the first time since her death in April at the hands of plasterer Ian Cortis, Mr and Mrs Edwards, of Blacklands, Purton, they said that time is not a great healer.

They were at a wedding when the DJ played Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely.

It was Amanda's favourite song. Once she discovered it among her parents' LP collection she played it almost every day.

"She even adopted it as her mobile ringtone.

"The DJ didn't know. It wasn't his fault, but it crushed our happiness for a couple of hours," said Mr Edwards.

"Amanda will always be there. The memories will never go away. It is like someone is grabbing your insides and pulling part of you away."

A date for the inquest into Miss Edwards' death is yet to be finalised but police are expecting it to be around the end of October.

The family feel that until the evidence is all out in the open there will always be whispers and theories about how their daughter died.

Her killer has taken some of the answers with him to the grave. But Mrs Edwards' view is: "People need to know exactly what happened.

"It is going to be very upsetting to us, but I am just praying it is going to help someone else."

Cortis' suicide means there will always be unanswered questions for family. They may have been spared the public agony of a trial but the answers have died with him. "I don't feel that we have had justice. It was the easy way out, the coward's way out," said Mrs Edwards.

Her husband sees it from a slightly different perspective. "I wanted to get my hands on him," he said.

Miss Edwards, who worked as a nursery assistant at Little Foxes Nursery in Brinkworth, disappeared on April 8. Her mother vividly recalls that day. She remembers the afternoon she first felt something was wrong. "Amanda always texted or phoned me during the day. She hadn't texted me by lunchtime and I thought she was busy," she said.

That evening Amanda was due to go out and, as time wore on, Beverley began to call round friends and family to try and track her down. She also contacted the police with her fears.

When Amanda didn't turn up for her evening appointment she knew something was seriously wrong.

"Even if she was really, really down, or we had had an argument, she would still contact me," she said.

Calling one friend she discovered Amanda's green Metro had been seen parked at Asda in West Swindon.

"Nothing was adding up," she said. She and her husband went over to Asda to see if they could catch a glimpse of her and discovered the detachable front of her car radio was still on. Both Amanda and her older sister, Anek, would always take the covers off if they left their cars for any time.

Mr Edwards went straight to Wootton Bassett police station and the police search was officially launched.

In the meantime her fianc David Board had been trying to get through to Amanda all day after being dropped off by her that morning. Eventually he rang her parents to ask where she was.

The next seven days are something of a blur for the family. Wracked by feelings of utter helplessness they went out searching. Driven by an urge she couldn't explain Mrs Edwards went out to look for her at the rear of the DeVere Hotel. Her husband did the same.

He said: "There was nothing I could do. I walked and looked and went to old boyfriends' places." Referring to Cortis he said: "But it never occurred to me to go to his place."