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My life in a suitcase

8/ 5/2008

WHEN Margarita Re jetted off to start a new life in Australia she took everything she owns in a single suitcase.

Retired secretary Margarita, 66, had built up a lifetime collection of possessions, mementoes and keepsakes she intended to take with her.

But they were all destroyed in the blaze at the John Bradshaw warehouse, in Trafford Park, last month.

Margarita, of Didsbury, was one of 300 customers - who lost possessions in the fire. Many were storing all their belongings ready for moving house.

When she checked in at the airport this week she took with her a few clothes and a few ‘bare essentials’.

Before flying off to begin her new life, she said: "I lost everything. I have literally only got a suitcase of clothes.

"Pots and pans are replaceable. It’s the personal things that are so shocking. My late husband’s paintings and family letters have all gone - all my parents’ things. It’s a lifetime gone up in smoke."

Margarita had moved the contents of her three-bedroom semi on Ford Lane into storage while she waited to make her move to Cairns, Australia.

Her children, Alex and Anna, already live there and Margarita says she was keen to join them and their families.

She found out about the fire in a letter from the insurance company.

"I was speechless for two days when I heard about the fire," she said. "I was absolutely devastated. I had lost absolutely everything."

Margarita even visited the site of the blaze in the aftermath of the fire to see if any of the treasured paintings by her husband had survived.

She said: "I did go and see the place.

"I thought maybe I would see one of my paintings leaning up against a wall, but there were just huge mounds of black burned goods. Seeing that for me was closure. People have been ever so good.

"They have found a couple of my husband's paintings from elsewhere. And they have been through their archives of old photographs for me.

"That has given me a bit of my history back."

Despite losing so much Margarita says other people have suffered more because of the fire.

She said: "Some families aren’t as lucky as me because they didn’t have insurance."

Now she is trying to put the tragedy behind her and focus on her new life: "I am quite a resilient character. I have a mind that this is a new life and I have to put my best foot forward.

"I am going to join my children and that is what I am looking forward to. I am looking forward to a new life.

"Nobody has died. At the end of the day it is just things."

Kent-based International Claims Agency has been appointed to deal with claims from customers on behalf of the insurers. Meanwhile investigations are continuing into the cause of the fire.

Sixty firefighters and tenfire engines tackled the blaze, which spread rapidly fanned by strong winds and sent up a column of black smoke, visible for miles.