Stifling laughter in her living room, Sharon Goodman, 59, recalls taking her reluctant granddaughter Olivia “Liv” Campbell-Hardy to a tennis lesson.
She had barely blinked before she caught Olivia lining up a bunch of other children to whom she was dictating the choreography to Cheryl Cole’s song Fight for this Love. “She was in front, of course,” Goodman says.
That happened when Olivia was eight; seven years later a shrapnel-filled bomb killed her as she and her schoolfriend Adam Lawler were leaving an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017. Nearly three years on, decorative tributes to the “precocious, funny, and competitive” teenager fill Goodman’s home in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester.
Next to a cushion bearing her face, Goodman’s son and Olivia’s father, Andrew Hardy, is sitting on a sofa flipping through family photo albums, a framed Manchester worker bee listing the names of the 22 victims hanging on the wall behind.
“She was a typical teenager – her phone was constantly in her hand,” Hardy says. Beyond Snapchat and Instagram, Olivia was dedicated to dancing and singing, and had hopes of teaching one of them.
Though Hardy, 41, separated from Olivia’s mother when their daughter was small, she stayed with him twice a week and they texted every day. Their last contact was just hours before Olivia died, when she rang to ask if he’d seen a jumper she wanted to wear to the concert. “Obviously I’m a man and wouldn’t know where it is in the house,” he says.
Olivia didn’t end up wearing the jumper, but after the print manager left work at around 6.30pm he walked through a tunnel to Victoria Station, next to the arena, to try to spot her among the queueing teenagers. A Facebook post from the night shows that at that point, Olivia was in nearby St Ann’s Square taking selfies with Adam.
Later, Goodman says: “I got a text from her at the interval saying: ‘Ariana Grande, grandma!’”
Neither had cause to fear for Olivia’s safety. Adam’s parents had offered to drive her back to her mother Charlotte’s home.
Even after Goodman heard breaking news of, she recalls, an “incident involving balloons and electrical equipment going up” at the arena on the radio shortly after the attack at about 10.30pm, she rang Hardy and tried to quell his fears that Olivia was not answering her phone. “She’d probably used her battery up taking videos,” she remembers saying.
However, within 15 minutes, both were in his car headed toward the arena. “I saw possible fatalities on the television, and that’s when I said I’m going in,” Hardy says.
They parked at Hardy’s workplace, having been told by Charlotte that Olivia was not at home and by Adam’s parents that their son was injured, but no one knew where Olivia was.
“We told the police this and they let us go through the cordon to the Holiday Inn,” Goodman says. The next few hours were spent frantically visiting city centre hotels where unaccompanied children had been taken in from the concert..
“We had hotel staff shouting her name down corridors,” Goodman says. But despite their efforts, they were unable to find Olivia and reported her missing.
Having not slept, they went to the Etihad stadium on Tuesday afternoon, where the police had asked family and friends to gather to await news.
Some families were taken into rooms, where they were told it was “highly likely” their loved ones had died. “We were the only family who wasn’t in a room at the time, then they took us down this corridor past all these rooms where you could hear people screaming. It was just the absolute worst thing ever,” Goodman says.
While Olivia had not been confirmed as a victim, the family still believed that she would return home unscathed. “As a parent, it doesn’t matter if it’s 0.1%, you’re still holding on to that hope. Even though I knew it in my own head, you don’t like to admit it,” Hardy said.
But as the hours passed, police told the family Olivia had probably been killed, and the coming days were a blur of family liaison officers, and DNA swabs, before she was formally identified almost a week and half later.
The surreal nature of the events has made it difficult for the family to grieve. “It’s never hit us,” Hardy says. “If Olivia had been killed in a car crash, it would be different.”
The family attended some of Hashem Abedi’s trial. But Hardy has been adamant the verdict will not bring them closure.
When Abedi refused to give evidence in his defence last week, Hardy says he felt nothing. “Even though he probably was involved, he didn’t carry out the final act. The only person that can answer why it happened is dead.”
One way the family has coped since 2017 has been to set up Liv’s Trust. The charityuses public donations to help those under 25 to receive education in dance and music.
Though the main driving forces are Goodman, and Olivia’s step-grandfather Steve, , Hardy and his wife, Sharon, help out too.
Hardy says the trust has given him a reason to carry on. “I think I would’ve locked my door and that would’ve been it. Just not moving, not functioning. But it wouldn’t be doing her justice.”
Another coping mechanism has been taking the same walk through the tunnel he took on the night to try to spot Olivia.
“For me, it’s the last place she was. Best way I could describe it is, I can turn back the clock and I’m here. I’m Olivia’s father and I promised to protect her when she was born. I didn’t keep to my word. If that makes sense.”
