One month ago, mother of two and businesswoman, Ria Sookdeo, kissed her children goodbye as she dropped them off at school.
Minutes later, she was snatched by two men, bundled into a waiting vehicle and taken away. It was the last time Ellena, nine, and Torres, five, saw their mummy.
At their Raghoo Village, Debe, home yesterday, the youngsters and their father, Mark, spoke fondly of happier times with Ria and opened up about how they have been coping with her disappearance since September 22.
“Prayers and hope,” Mark said simply.
“That’s all that keeps us going...every night before we go to sleep, we say our prayers one by one and listen to gospel music until we fall asleep.”
Torres, who is five, is hailed as the one to lead the family in prayer, Mark said. “He has one prayer he recites every night for her...he knows it by heart.”
With the worry over whether his wife is alive and well now etched on his face, Mark held Torres close and said, “We pray and ask that she find her way home safely, that whoever took her returns her to me and to our children. Our children need their mother.”
He said in the days following her kidnapping he shied away from media attention, as he tried to focus on being there for his children.
“I didn’t know how to find her and I put my trust in the police, that they would do what is right and what is necessary and I have to say, they did not let me down.”
He said before Ria went missing, the family led a normal, quiet life.
“She didn’t go out much, I was the one who would more socialise for work. We would spend time as a family, playing games, cooking, just keeping to ourselves and being happy.”
Since the abduction, he said, police have been providing support and counselling for him and the children. But Ellena still doesn’t sleep through most nights.
“If I get up to use the washroom in the middle of the night, by the time I come out of the bedroom, she is following me...I have to stop and take her back to bed. She wakes up scared and on the verge of crying most days.”
Sitting close-by with an overstuffed album of family pictures on her lap, Ellena chimed in, “Tell them about the visions, Daddy.”
Her father explained, “She says she sees her mother watching her, watching her sleep, watching her in school and at home. She often tells me ‘Mommy is watching us.’”
When nothing else can calm his children, Mark plays them ‘Mummy’s song’, which is Enrique Iglesias’ 2014 hit Bailando.
“Mommy and me used to dance to this song all the time,” Ellena said. “It was her favourite song and it is my favourite song too.”
Mark has not been back to his job since Ria went missing but the children have started going to school again.
He said while he did not have plans to commemorate the one-month anniversary of Ria’s abduction, he did plan to clean her hairdressing salon, which has not been touched since the day she went missing.
“We wanted to clean it out for her, so when she returns home she’ll be happy and comfortable.”
He firmly believes Ria is alive and with the weight of his children’s stares and unanswered questions on his shoulders, Mark sent out an emotional plea to his wife’s abductors, “Please, please, these are innocent children and they need their mother, they have been grieving for her. Please just let her go, let her come home to us.”