In a Stirling council flat, Agnes Watt is watching television. She does this most nights. After darkness falls you can see the weak light on behind the red curtains, and the flicker of the pictures. Just round the corner from her flat is Sheila Sutherland, a retired hospital domestic of firm opinions and intransigent waistline. She was there at the Cullen Inquiry, she says proudly, chaperoning Agnes in and out of the courthouse. She’s been looking after Agnes’s best interests since she moved here around a decade ago, helping with forms and making sure that Agnes isn’t bothered. ‘She’s like my wee sister,’ says Sheila. ‘My own wee sister was killed in ‘32, so I’ve taken to looking after her, I suppose.’

Agnes Watt was adopeted by John and Kathleen Hamilton as a child after they discovered they couldn’t have children of their own. She was often unwell, and seems to have been very much under the thumb of her adpostive parents. Aged 19, she married Thomas Watt, a bus driver, and bore him a son, also called Thomas. Eight weeks after Thomas was born, Agnes divorced her husband and returned to live with her parents. Thomas was then adopted by the Hamiltons because Agnes was working as a chambermaid at a local hotel, and the Hamiltons therefore bore the brunt of the responsibility for the baby. For reasons that remain unclear, Kathleen Hamilton also suggested that Agness should consider Thomas to be her brother, not her son.

The Hamiltons moved through to Stirling from Glasgow when Thomas was eight. It was then that it was explained to Thomas that his sister was, in fact, his mother. Kathleen Hamilton then developed a paralysing disease - thought to be multiple sclerosis - and died in 1987. After her death, Agnes moved to a flat of her own in Raploch, down among the shadows of Stirling Castle.Thomas and his adoptive father remained on the other side of town in Kent Road until the arguments between the two became so fierce that his father moved out. Sheila Sutherland considers John Hamilton, Thomas’s adoptive father, to have been the source of most trouble in the family. Her voice rises indignantly. ‘Do you know, all the furniture she had when she moved here, he gave it to her but he made her pay for it. Sat there with a list, worked all the prices out.’

Sheila asserts that Thomas was a fond and attentive son, popping round to Raploch a couple of times a week for his tea, ringing every night to check Agnes was alright. Shelia found him a quiet but picky character. ‘He was a bit of a pernickety person, old-maidish. he would be very fastidious about things - not wanting them moved and that. Quite a lot of people thought that he was a poof because he was so tidy and clean - everything had to be just so.’ He used to bring the boys round sometimes to see Agnes after the summer boys’ camps, and Agnes would give them biscuits and lemonade. ‘He seemed to me to be a fatherly type to them, schoolteacherish sort of thing. Shelia also saw him with guns. ‘I said, “What the hell are youdoing with guns in the house?” He says, “They’re mine, you know, I own them, I got them.” I says, “If you’ve got guns in the house, you’ll use them.” “No,” he says, “I won’t use them on anyone.”

Round the corner, Agnes is already sitting upstairs watching the telly. Her flat is spartan: a few china figures, a neatly dusted sideboard, and a small trolley on which sit the essentials - cigarettes, ashtray, TV schedule. Two budgies chirrup in a cage. There are no photographs.

Agnes herself is a frail-looking woman, with the sickly spindliness of limb of the undernourished. She has big, watery-blue eyes behind unflattering spectacles, papery skin and a curiously mannish haircut. If she turns her head slightly to one side, the effect is disconcerting. For a second, she looks androgynous, almost masculine. But she is warm and welcoming, apologises at the end for failing to offer me coffee, and dispenses cigarettes with the automatic generosity of someone who cannot afford to be generous. After almost three hours of talking, I ask if I’ve tired her. ‘Oh no,’ she says instantly, ‘I could talk all night. I’ve got nothing else to do.’ But when I return the next day, and the next, the lights are on and the telly flickers, but the shutters have fallen and Agnes will not come out.

What she says here is her own understanding of events. Even now, she slides from past to present tense, unable fully to take in her son’s loss. And, when she says she doesn’t know something, there are only a couple of times when I think she is being deliberately evasive; he told her so little that she cannot yet comprehend the magnitude of his secrets.

“Since it happened,’ she begins, ‘I’ve been up every night, drinking coffee, smoking, watching the telly. Now I don’t got to bed early, I go to bed at about 2am and I’m up at six, and that’s me up for the day. I can’t sleep. I had nightmares at first. I don’t so much now. Now, I wake up in the morning, watch the telly and it’s always on the telly, all of this stuff. It was the TV men that told me it had happened. I hadn’t heard any of the stuff on the news, because I go out, up the town during the day. My father (John Hamilton) came up here that night, and he says, “Our Yommy’s in troubl,” and I says, “How do you mean, he’s in trouble?” He says, “The press have been looking for him.” He didn’t say that Tommy had shot himself, that he had shot these kids and shot himself. Then he went away, and I was sitting there thinking, ‘what the hell have you been up to, you?’ He’s never had any bother with the police as far as I know. And just then the TV men came and said it was our Tommy, that was when they told me. I couldn’t talk, I was shocked, just shocked.’

‘That night, the police says, “Have you got anywhere to stay?” I says, “I’ve got a father, but I’m not going to him.” And Sheila says, “She’s coming with me.” So I had to go round there, with my nightie and my dressing gown. I still had my face on. The doctor says, “If you go and get your nightie on, I’ll give you this jab.” I’m still waiting for it to start working. I had horrible nightmares. I was up all night. Honestly, I’ll never get over it. I was up and down with the shock - sometimes I didn’t even know where I was. I kept talking all the time to my pal, and weepoing. She says to me, ‘You speak like he’s still alive, you can’t take it in.” And nor can I. I can’t believe he’s dead. I always thought I’d be the first to go.’

‘That Tuesday (the night before the shooting0, when Tommy came up, he had a bath and then he had something to eat, and then he handed me £30, which was the money he owed me, right enough. We were just sitting here, talking away; he was joking about this and that. We were just talking about the usual - talking about my father. And then Tommy says, ‘I’m going to the club, but I’ll be back.’ There was no hint of anything strange. I says, “Alright, but if you don’t feel like coming back, phone me.” And he didn’t phone. I thought it was strange that he didn’t phone - maybe he’d got in too late and thought, better not disturb her. So I phoned on the Wednesday, and there was no answer, so I phoned again. And a voice came to the phone. I says, “Can I speak to Tommy?” And the man says, “No, Tommy’s not here.” He says, “This is the police.”
‘I’m not talking to my father now, not since that happened to our Tommy. He says to me, “It’s all your fault. I’f you’d minded your own business, I wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble.” Well, I wouldn’t turn my back on my Tommy. I couldn’t, you know what I mean? He hadn’t got anyone else but me. My father said he didn’t want nothing to do with it. He just wanted me not to bother. I said, “That’s a fine thing, father.” I said, “If you’d had nothing to do with me, what would folk think?”
I don’t understand my father. I don’t think he’s got any feelings for anybody. For strangers, yes. But he’s never been a father to me. Never. I would have been better off without one. When I was young, I used to see other people’s fathers coming back in from their work, and they would run to them and swing them round. He never did that. I used to go to sit on his knee and he would just shove me off. He’s a strange man. If he didn’t like having kids around the place, why did he adopt me? I think it was my mother (Kathleen Hamilton) who wanted me. She used to spoil me a bit, let me get away with things, you know? But she was strict. I had to toe the line, do what I was told.’
‘There was always bad feeling. When Tommy was young, he’d be in his bed, and his father would come in with a drink in his hand and waken him up, start arguing with him. My father drank quite a bit. Our Tommy didn’t drink. He couldn’t stand the smell. Didn’t smoke either. My father wasn’t violent usually. My mother was in a wheelchair, and I used to have to go there to stay while my dad went for the messages. He would come back late - on the last bus, about one o’clock. Sometimes I would have to stay there to look after her, when he didn’t come back.’
‘I don’t know why I was adopted by them. I just was. I didn’t know until I was a wee bit older. I didn’t know who my original parents were. I never actually asked my mother who they were. I didn’t want to know. Because I thought, with them bringing me up, it would have been like a slap in the face to them, you know? And I didn’t want to hurt them that way. I was fond of them.’
‘And then I got married (to Thomas Watt) and I had Tommy, and then I got divorced and went back to stay with my parents. Tommy was only eight weeks old. I was still out working all the time in the hotels - as a housemaid or in the kitchens - so my parents were looking after him. My mother says to me, “What if we adopt Tommy, as we’re looking after him anyway?” I thought about it and I thought, “Right enough, they are,” so I let them adopt him. Of course, they didn’t get on with him - too busy fighting and that. But I thought, when anything happens, at least the family will stick together. But none of my aunts in Glasgow has got in touch with me since it happened. Nobody has got in touch with me - none of the family.

Once my mother adopted him, she asked me, “Would you call yourself his sister? So he thinks he’s your brother?” I says, “Aye, alright.” That’s the way they wanted it. I never asked why. I think it was because they adopted him. But he knew all the time who I was - he knew all the time that I was his real mother, right enough. He was told when he was young. My mother told him, because she was worried that somebody else would maybe tell him, and she’d rather that she told him herself. It didn’t seem to bother him - he never asked. He treated me like a sister; half as his mother, half as his sister. He was just an ordinary boy, you know? He went to school, played games, played with his toys, went out with his pals. I don’t know what happened.

He didn’t keep in touch with his father (Thomas Watt). He didn’t know him. His father went out with a conductress, from when he worked down the buses. And he told me that they were wanting to get married, so I divorced him just after Tommy was born. I wouldn’t let Tommy near him - I was that livid with what he had done. He used to beat me with one of they cables from the lamps. Even when I was pregnant with Tommy he used to thrash me. So I didn’t want Tommy going anywhere near him.

Our Tommy was my man’s double. He was very like his father. He had my eyes, but everything else was the same as his father. Tommy asked about him, aye. And I would say, “You’re the double of him. But you’re not as handsome as your father.” And he says, “Aye, well.” But after a while, he stopped mentioning it - he wasn’t bothered. His father hasn’t been in touch with me since. But he was on the telly, and he said, “I fathered a monster, I created a monster.” He didn’t even know him.

Me and Tommy, we were close. When I was working in Callander and these places, he used to come to the hotel to see me and take me out for a meal. Oh aye, he would spoil me when he had a bit of money. He was into buying cameras for a while, and every time he got anything decent, he’d give me some. Not very much, but he would save something. Once or twice, he would pay my bills. I says, “Tommy, I’m not wanting money.” It used to be £30 or something, and he used to pay that - it wasn’t awful high. If he was stuck,he’d ask me for money, but he always paid me back.

He didn’t want to be married. I don’t know why. He wasn’t interested, you know? He didn’t want to be pinned down. He got the food and the comfort from me. I says to him, “Are you not thinking of getting married?” And he says, “No, these women, they’re too expensive.” He never bothered with all that. He had a girlfriend, but she got too serious, so he dumped her. See, he had a boat, and that was all he was interested in, his boat and his clubs. He wasn’t interested in lassies or anything like that.

I don’t think he wanted children. I mean, he liked kids. If he didn’t like kids, he wouldn’t have had that club. I don’t know why he didn’t want his own. He likes them, right enough, but he doesn’t want them. He seems to like being with them, you know. What he says to me was, “I give them this club to keep them off the streets, to keep them out of trouble.” He had these ideas about what they should be doing. He says to me, “If they run about the street, they’re going to get in trouble with the police. But if they’re in the club, they’re not doing anything wrong, you know?”’

With the guns, he just said he was going to a rifle club and that was it. I just said, “Alright.” He’d had them for years. But the only time he had them out was when he was cleaning them. He’d be sitting them in the room where we were sitting. He had a box - you know the Army’s boxes, the big trunks? He had guns in there. I don’t know how many, but that’s where he had them. And chain after chain after chain after chain - he had about six chains round them, and locks and everything. The police used to come round every so often and check them. My mother had a big press under the stair, and he would put it there so nobody could get into it. And he was the only one who kept the key - I think he carried it about with him. He was very protective about them.

I didn’t like him keeping the guns. I never actually said so to him, I didn’t want to interfere. He never talked to me about any of they clubs, and he didn’t talk to me about what folk were saying. See, Tommy’s a quiet person, and he keeps things to himself. I never knew all he thought about was clubs and going shooting and all of that. If I’d known about all this, I would have said, I sould have talked to him about it. Said, “ Don’t be silly, Tommy, you’ll get yourself into trouble.” Stopped him doing it. But he never said anything about it. Oh yes, he would take advice from me. He listened to me.

There’s a lot of people have said things since. What I don’t understand is, if they all felt like that about him, why did they let him into the clubs in the first place? That’s what I don’t understand. They called him a pervert, a queer, you know? And it was proved that he wasn’t; he wasn’t charged with anything. And yet they still called him all these names. I think that’s what set him off, because he knew it wasn’t true.

I don’t think he meant to kill the kids. I think it was the schoolteachers. Because he was angry at them for not letting them get to the kids, and what they were saying about him. That day, he must have thought that all the teachers were in the gym room for the assembly, and then he opened the door and just opened fire. I don’t think he realised there were kids in there. It said in the paper, he opened the door and just started firing, and a teacher got killed. I don’t understand it myself.

I’ve not been up to Dunblane. No way. If I walked down the street up there, they’d slaughter me. Nobody’s hassled me round here, though. Nobody’s ever mentioned it. All they said was, well, it wasn’t your fault, we’ve got nothing against you. But when I go out, I don’t know what to expect. When I first went out with my pal, I went up to the cafe. There was this woman there, and she was pointing, nudging her friend - not saying anything to me, but elbowing her friend, saying, “That’s his mother, Tommy Hamilton’s mother.” That’s probably the worst it’s been.

The police kept coming and asking me questions - do you know this, do you know that? I forget what they were talking about, but they kept on at me - I never saw so many police in all my life. I could have spoken to them, but I couldn’t. Do you know what I mean? I couldn’t face anybody. The police says to me to identify his body, but I couldn’t do it. They got two pals to do it. They were two fellows who knew Tommy.

I went to his funeral. It was at night. There was Sheila and I, and three policemen and the rest were all the undertakers, that was it. He was cremated. I came home and the reporters were there. There was one of those caravans and a man up on the top trying to see in my window. And then there was the (Cullen) Inquiry (in May). Oh, it was awful. I was sitting there for the questioning - there was a policeman sitting behind me, and I had to speak into the microphone (Agnes told the Inquiry that she had not knownb about the boys’s clubs, the number of guns he kept, or the extent of his £11,000 debts). I answered the questions, but I was nervous, you know? I was trying to hide it, but I was. All the Dunblane folk were up the top and I had to keep staring straight ahead all the time.

Well, I suppose I just have to live with it. It’s a thing that you never forget. I haven’t forgotten it, and I know the Dunblane folk won’t, because it was their kids. I know the Dunblane folk will never forget their kids, because I’ll never forget our Tommy. I just have to live with it, that’s all. How could he do it? He wasn’t that kind of person.

I don’t have to get up in the morning, I lie trying to sleep every night, and I toss and I turn, and I get up and I have coffee and cigarettes, and try going back to bed but I can’t sleep. I go out during the day, up to the town. I see my two friends, and then I come back and have my tea - I’m not hungry, I should be eating, but I can’t when I’m not hungry. And then I watch the telly. Sometimes I watch till “God Save The Queen.” They don’t have that on any more, but you know what I mean.’