Parents hope for answers over Willerby schoolgirl's death in France

Tony and Brenda Lawson described their daughter Jessica as "like sunshine"

The parents of a 12-year-old girl who drowned on a school trip to France say they hope a court hearing will provide answers about her death.

Jessica Lawson, from Wolfreton School near Hull, was swimming in a lake near Limoges in 2015 when a pontoon overturned. She later died in hospital.

A judicial hearing into her death is due to start in France this week.

Her parents Tony and Brenda Lawson said they moved to Portugal to cope with their grief.

"To keep my sanity I needed to lift myself out of the whole picture," said Mrs Lawson.

"When I opened my curtains in a morning it was no longer the view that I wanted to see because she wasn't in it. There was just a gap where she should have been everywhere.

"I needed to find somewhere where I can feel her hair, her colour, her beauty, her warmth, the sunshine which is what you would describe Jess as.

"All I saw in the UK when I opened the curtains every single morning was rain and grey and damp and dark. The light had gone out."

A judicial hearing into Jessica's death is due to start this week

Her husband said the move to a small house on the Portuguese coast "saved my life".

"We just felt it was a place we felt we could rebuild a shattered life. A life that had been completely destroyed," he said.

"I've got to say in 2016 for both of us we didn't want to exist any more because it was just a continuum of this grey life of continually going round in a circle, we needed something different."

"We're not making these dramatic long-term plans," he added.

"When Jessica graduates, or if she gets married or if she gets a boyfriend, all of those things. But we have no direct way of experiencing that now because it's something that has been stolen from us."