The home of Grant Ritchie and his wife Jane is a welcoming place. In the living room where the couple of 12 years spend their evenings are pictures of their children, nieces and nephews. Their dog, Buzz, playfully roams the flat in Torry, Aberdeen, entertaining himself with his football and greeting those who visit.
But not every guest to the couple’s home knows that, four years ago this month, Mr Ritchie’s 20-year-old son, also named, Grant, went missing after leaving a party in Cove with friends. Police feared he had fallen to his death after walking along a clifftop. Two weeks later, his family’s worst fears were confirmed when Grant’s body was found washed up at Balmedie beach.
A happy chappy
Forty-five-year-old truck driver Mr Ritchie describes his son, who was known by the nickname Gruntie, as a “happy chappy” who was loved by many. Like many young lads, he was engrossed in his football and computer games, and just weeks before he died, he received his mechanic qualification paper.
“I’ve got his papers here, he hasn’t even seen them,” said Mr Ritchie.
“It took him four years to get them. I went round to his work just after it happened.”
Grant lived in Newburgh with his girlfriend Lisa Stephen. He worked for Arnold Clark and regularly checked in with his dad and stepmother Jane, 47. On Christmases and birthdays, Grant would pop in to his dad’s with gifts, phoning before he set off so the family knew he was on his way.
Mr Ritchie said: “That’s what I miss, him just phoning to say he’s dropping off the present. Or even just him saying ‘Hi Dad, here’s yours, it’s nae much though, me and Lisa liked ours’.
“It’s the same for birthdays. Going out for a meal, we miss things like that.”
Lisa was just 17 when Grant died. She was there the night he disappeared and said at the time that she saw him running past her, only to disappear 15 seconds later. Now a qualified nurse, Lisa is still in touch with Grant’s family. She regularly visits his grave at Hazlehead in Aberdeen, laying flowers and wreaths by his headstone.
Stepmum Jane remembers the young couple as happy and right for each other and still considers Lisa a friend.
“She was in pieces, but he wouldn’t have wanted her to be 18 and have no life,” she said.
“She’s happy now and I’m still in touch with her mum. They are a lovely family.”
The search
The search for Grant started at the end of January 2012. Rescue helicopters scoured the cliffs where he was last seen while divers plunged into the North Sea.
His family, including his uncle, Craig, mother, Patricia, and sisters were among the search party.
In Torry, an area of Aberdeen where passers-by acknowledge each other and make chit-chat about the weather, Good Samaritans rallied together to do what they could to help the concerned Ritchies.
Jane said people had claimed to have spotted him in town, going into a flat for drugs.
“He never did drugs,” she said.
“We kept hoping that maybe it was him and that’s he’d gone off the rails or wanted a break and went missing for a few weeks. You just kept hoping and telling everyone he will turn up.”
As days without news of Grant’s whereabouts passed, the police called off their search. Wanting to give himself hope, his dad carried on himself. He said: “I have asthma and I climbed down the cliffs looking for him. You couldn’t stop me. We searched the fields for days and we did The Gramps to Altens right down to Torry.
“I knew myself there was no way he was there but it was a way of keeping myself busy, it was a way of keeping everybody busy. That was my way of giving myself hope.”
Looking back on the search, Mr Ritchie does not recall it with pain or bitterness, he tells it like a story and even cracks a joke.
“I needed my inhaler on my way back up the cliffs,” he laughed.
After a couple of weeks, feeling there was nothing more he could do, he went back to work. His boss made sure he was ready to return, but Mr Ritchie just wanted to have his mind on the road for a while. But just one phone call took him back to where he left off.
A parent’s worst nightmare
“Is it true?” were the three words he first heard when he answered his phone. He was on a job and a friend was phoning to ask him if the news reports of a body being found at Balmedie were correct.
It was February 10, 2012 and it was the first he had heard of the discovery.
Shortly afterwards, he received a call from the police asking him to drop by the station.
“I knew what it was,” said Mr Ritchie.
“I had a load on my truck at the time, it was actually a lifeboat. I said to the detective ‘I’ve got to get to Peterhead with this lifeboat and then I’ll come down and see you’.”
Before he got the news, Mr Ritchie was dedicated to searching other areas for his son and planned to ask those he was delivering the boat to if he could borrow it for an hour or so to look for him.
He said: “It never came to that. The guy told me I’d have to wait for the boat to come off the truck as sometimes you have to wait for a crane but I told him I couldn’t wait and right away they got the boat off my truck.”
Mr Ritchie and his wife still cry when looking at photographs and sharing memories, but as they sit together on their sofa, they don’t appear to dwell, but smile through the tears as they look back on Grant’s life.
“I have been dealt death since I was little,” he said.
“I kind of got used to it, it sounds morbid but everyone adapts in different ways. I still have text messages from him.”
The pair empathise with the family of Fraserburgh’s Shaun Ritchie – no relation – who went missing after a night out with friends on Halloween, 2014.
“There’s never been a body found, I feel for the family,” said Mr Ritchie
Jane added: “Hopefully one day he will turn up, you never know.”
Goodbye
Shocked at a life taken so young, scores of people turned up to pay their respects to Grant at his funeral.
As a nod to his support for Celtic, friends and family wore green, with some donning football shirts with “Gruntie 20” embedded on them.
“Everywhere in Aberdeen was running out of the numbers two and zero,” said Mr Ritchie.
“We found a guy at the end of George Street and he said anyone that came in for a top for the funeral would get it done for nothing.”
The church was packed, and although Mr and Mrs Ritchie had given The Holburn pub, where the wake took place, an estimate of 80-100 guests for the buffet, the numbers soared and the bar ran out of drink.
“He was very popular in Torry,” said Jane.
“We just didn’t realise there would be so many people there. It went on all night and the young ones took Grant out in Torry. It was a party.”
Remembering Gruntie
Four years on, Grant is still in the hearts of his family and friends.
Torry Academy has a bench in his honour. Here, people can sit and reflect on the time they had with him, remembering their son, their boyfriend, their friend.
Mr and Mrs Ritchie visit his grave most Sundays, and soon they will scatter the ashes of Grant’s pet lizard nearby.
“It just died last week,” said Jane.
“It lived nearly 20 years and they don’t normally live that long, even the lady in the pet shop said they only live 10-15 years.
“We had it cremated and we’re just waiting to pick it up and we’ll scatter the ashes.
“It will blow away, but at least it was his and it’s just a wee tribute.”