George Larmour: Cheery, curious Lyra would want us all to learn from her death

A mother asking herself — what if I hadn’t allowed my young daughter to go the shop that day when she was killed in the explosion?

What would she have achieved now as an adult? Would she have managed to become the teacher she always dreamed of being?

Would she be a mum herself with children that I never got to hold and spoil the way only a granny knows how?

Or a young boy asking — what if I hadn’t opened the door that night and let the gunmen rush in and kill my daddy?

Or a young girl asking herself — what if my sister hadn’t witnessed mum being shot and cradled her as she died?

Would she have not killed herself years later as she struggled to deal with her grief?

We all thought those what if instances were part of the past but now those two little words will be forever spoken in the future by the family and friends of young Lyra McKee.

What if that gentle, talented, ambitious, always smiling, harmless young journalist hadn’t been in Fanad Drive the other evening doing the job she loved?

What if she was still here with those big trademark glasses making us feel better seeing that permanent, cheeky, cheery smile?

I had never met Lyra until a few years ago when she contacted me and asked to have coffee to discuss some research she was doing about a book she was hoping to write.

She was aware that I had written a book about my own brother John’s unsolved murder.

I did meet her out of simple curiosity. She looked so small — almost child-like. But her initial inquisitiveness outweighed her stature and she actually made me feel uneasy with her endless questions and I did briefly internally question her motive for meeting me.

But as the coffee chat continued and she continually flashed that disarmingly, impish little smile, I realised she was simply a determined and ambitious young girl who had that rare professional, investigative journalistic scalpel-like ability to cut through to the core of the story she was pursuing.

I hopefully provided her with some helpful advice that day. Even my brief coffee chat confirmed to me that I had just met someone who would achieve greater things as an investigative journalist and writer in later life. And her photo and stories would grace the front pages of newspapers across the globe.

But now her name has been added to that long list of names and that what if phrase that will remain unanswered.

Sadly her photo and story has made headline news worldwide for all the wrong reasons.

It is a cliché that so many will hope that she didn’t die in vain like so many others. However, this time it seems to be different.

The outpouring of genuine hurt and pain is testimony to that and a fitting honour to what she achieved in her short life. It is just so sad that we will all lose out on the stories she would have written.

What if those who killed her and their Godfathers who gave the order had learned to use intelligent words just like Lyra instead of bullets and blind, hatred to express themselves?

And if our politicians really care about the murder of young Lyra McKee then they should stand together in Stormont instead of at her graveside.

And stop using vitriolic language that only encourages greater division in our still un-healed society. Maybe then it might help stop any more of our children and grandchildren being manipulated by Godfathers of hate and more young people being killed.

Lyra can’t ask those what if important questions any more but WHAT IF we could all learn something from her senseless death at such a young age — that is something Lyra would want.

• George Larmour’s brother John was an RUC officer murdered by the IRA in 1988. He is author of ‘They Killed the Ice Cream Man: My search for the truth about my brother John’s murder’