LONDON – Sarah Everard, like so many others, had a difficult year in 2020. A long-term relationship fell apart and she lost her job when the company she worked for went wrong.
Still, she remained positive and active, playing online exercise classes and remaining a constant advocate for friends who were struggling for an equally arduous period. Lately, these friends said, things were looking up and she was looking forward to seeing post-pandemic life.
She was seeing someone new and was looking forward to traveling again, to see her family in her hometown, York, in the north of England and to reconnect with friends. She had just started a new job.
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So when Everard didn’t come home on March 3, a Wednesday night, they knew something was wrong. She had called her new boyfriend when she left a friend’s house and then disappeared. It was 9:30 pm
Later last week, when Everard’s death was confirmed and a police officer was charged with the crime, his name became a rallying cry for a broad movement to combat widespread and longstanding violence against women in Britain – a symbol of all those who were attacked, many of which cases went unnoticed.
Amid national attention, his friends and family were left in mourning privately by a woman, just 33, who was taken too early. They described someone warm and empathetic, always ready to listen to a friend’s difficulties and offer support.
“She was sunshine and light, and it made you feel warm, nice and safe,” said Holly Morgan, who met Everard through work in London years ago. “I’m also angry about it, but my main anger is that it happened to her.”
News of Everard’s disappearance spread quickly online, first among friends and family – a network that stretched from his hometown near York to a web of friends from his college years and colleagues in London. They worried collectively about it, amplifying requests for information. Many were desperately intrigued about how this could be happening to their Sarah.
“Today, more than ever, we miss our beautiful and strong friend,” Kayleigh Bryan, a friend from school, wrote in a post last week on International Women’s Day.
Then, when the news came that a policeman had been arrested in his death, the messages turned into memorials, and his story grew from personal pain to national recognition. As the flowers pile up on a bandstand in Clapham Common, south London, near where she disappeared, and protesters silently raise their fists outside government buildings in memory of Everard, the people closest to her are still trying to understand things.
For many, the transformation of their friend into a national symbol has complicated their own feelings of grief.
“In the commotion of what Sarah’s death is being considered representative,” as a friend, India Rose, described, she struggled to find words to pay due tribute to a woman she knew as “frank, honest” and “unshakable in her ability to listen and empathize. “
“We share a lot and I never doubted your discretion or sincerity in your support and kindness,” said Rose on Facebook.
While Everard’s family and many of his friends remained intensely deprived in the painful days since his death – with the brilliance of international attention extending that pain to some – the image of a fiercely loyal, compassionate and dedicated woman emerged.
Everard grew up in the Heslington area of York, where his family still lives. Her father, Jeremy, is a teacher, and her mother, Sue, works for a charity. She was the youngest of the family, with two older brothers.
In a statement released by the police, the family’s only public comment since Everard’s death, her parents and siblings remembered her as “brilliant and beautiful – a wonderful daughter and sister” and reflected on her caring and trustworthy nature.
“She always put others first and had the most incredible sense of humor,” they said. “She was strong, she had principles and she was a shining example for us all.”
Everard attended the Fulford School in York, where the team remembered “how adorable she was to teach”, in a tribute posted over the weekend. Steve Lewis, the school’s principal, said his family and friends were a valuable part of the community and described Everard as bright, vibrant and caring.
“His joy, intelligence and positive spirit shone at school,” he said in a statement.
After graduating in 2005, Everard attended Durham University, where he studied geography. In a statement, Stuart Corbridge, the vice chancellor, said the community was devastated. Everard was a “popular and excited” student who kept a large group of friends after his graduation in 2008, he said.
Rose Woollard, a close friend who met Everard at the University of Durham, spoke to the BBC when she disappeared for the first time, describing her as an “exceptional friend, who dropped everything to be there to support her friends, whenever they needed her”.
Everard moved to London shortly after college and started working in marketing and public relations, where he was successful thanks to his collegiality and keen intelligence that he rarely attributed to himself, friends and former colleagues said.
In a press release about a sporting event she worked on in 2019, Everard said that her organization was “determined to find the maximum opportunities during the event to tell the fantastic stories of pioneer women of the last century”.
On Everard’s Facebook page, the photos offer glimpses of distant travel and London, the city she has called home in recent years. In one photo were the prayer flags tattered and swept by the Himalayan wind. In another, the unmistakable London skyline, the River Thames glowing at sunset. Images of an unfinished life.
She was an introvert who still managed to attract others because of her rare ability to listen, but she could also be silly and irreverent, friends said. She was curious, active and adventurous, but also humble and reserved.
“There are those times when it’s like love at first sight, but with a friend,” said Morgan of the first time he met Everard. “You meet another woman and say, ‘I love you and I still don’t know you well, but I know I’m going to love you.’ And it was one of those things. “
Everard had friends all over the marketing world in London after a decade in the field, and many were the first to call attention to his demise. One of them, Helena Reason, described her on Facebook as a “talented and intelligent marketer” who got along well with even the most difficult people she met.
“Sometimes you meet a person with a beautiful soul and he shines,” she wrote.
Another former co-worker, Peter McCormack, shared a photo of an evening at a 1980s theme party with Everard. “Shit in karaoke, brilliant in everything else,” he wrote in the Facebook post.
“Our customers loved her, the team loved her, everyone loved Sarah,” he wrote. “At that moment, she came into our lives, she made them better.”
Morgan said it has been difficult to understand the national uproar that her friend’s death has caused, but the immediate display of love was touching.
“Everyone has a Sarah in their life,” she said, describing the magnetism of women who are intelligent, determined and humble. “That’s why there has been a continuous wave of pain and anger, because other people feel that they knew her, without knowing her at all.”
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
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