Paul Stephens isn’t looking forward to Christmas. Just as he no longer looks forward to birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or New Year’s Eve. “They should be special days,” he says, “but without Ashley, they’re just constant reminders of what happened.” Stephens, 51, has been a firefighter with the Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service for 28 years. His eldest son, Ashley, couldn’t wait to follow in his footsteps. Both knew the dangers of the job, but took comfort from the fact that Paul’s many years of call-outs had been trouble-free.

All that changed on the evening of Friday, November 2 last year. Stephens, the watch manager, and his six-man crew, including 20-year-old Ashley, were among over 80 firefighters called out to a huge warehouse blaze at Atherstone on Stour in Warwickshire. In an attempt to get the fire under control, a small group of men entered the building. Four of them would not live to tell the tale.

But the intensity of the blaze only increased, and large parts of the warehouse collapsed. By 11pm, one man was already dead; three others were trapped inside the inferno.

His shift over, Stephens made his way home to tell his family that one of those missing was Ashley. “We were desperate to rescue our guys,” he says, “but the sheer scale of the fire made that impossible. Walking away from that fire, knowing my son was still in there, was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life… That, and having to tell my wife.”

The Atherstone on Stour fire has been described as the darkest day in the history of Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service. Four firefighters lost their lives — Ian Reid, 44, died in hospital that night; the bodies of Darren Yates-Badley, 24, John Averis, 27, and Ashley Stephens were recovered several days later. An ongoing investigation into how the men died, and who, if anyone, was to blame, prevents Stephens commenting on events surrounding the accident. Meanwhile, he’s had to contend with appalling tabloid headlines. “What do you do when you read, ‘Fire chief sends son to his death’?” he asks. “What possible reason did they have for writing that? Surely the only purpose was to hurt me and my family.” On the other hand, he says, the kindness of the public kept the men’s families going in the early days; a fund set up for them has raised almost £1m.

Stephens doesn’t know how he got through the last part of 2007. “But life doesn’t stop just because you’ve suffered a bereavement. There were bills to pay. So after the New Year we did our best to get back to normal.” Both Paul and Ashley were classed as retained firefighters: they have full-time jobs elsewhere, but are fully trained and available for emergency calls. Many rural stations are manned this way. Paul hasn’t been on call since last November. “But I know Ashley would want me to carry on. One day I’d like to think I could go back.”

Stephens returned to his day job — he has his own company installing soft furnishings — in January. The work takes him all over the country and he found the anonymity helpful. It was harder for his wife, Sharon, a customer-service manager at the local supermarket. “Her job was to talk to people,” says Stephens, “and she had to change jobs. With the best intentions, people wanted to talk to her and offer their best wishes. But what do you say to somebody who’s just lost a son? I remember at the funeral someone asking me if Ashley had made plans for when he died. I said, ‘Course he hadn’t! He was only 20!’ ”

One plan Ashley did have was to move in with his fiancée, Emma, and their three-month-old son, George. “Having George around has helped keep the family together this last year. But there’ve been ups and downs. We all still shed a few tears. I think about him every morning. I think about him every night.

“I was the last person to speak to the lads before they went into that warehouse, you know. The last person to speak to my son. I’ll carry that pain for ever. As far as I’m concerned, those lads will always be heroes.”

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