Holly was staying in a French villa when she drowned in the pool during a party. From a mysterious nose bleed to missing evidence and unhelpful witnesses... NICOLE LAMPERT reveals unanswered questions still tormenting her parents

Published: 00:33, 7 July 2026 | Updated: 00:33, 7 July 2026 Sometimes Jo Woodcock and her husband Lee have the same dream. Their daughter Holly appears as if nothing has happened. She is standing there in their front room looking beautiful, her cheeks glowing with health. In her version of the dream, Jo is astonished and asks her: 'How are you here? You can't really be here.' Holly responds: 'Mum, what are you talking about?' To which Jo replies: 'But I have the death certificate.' It is almost exactly two years since Holly, a 20-year-old student at Manchester Metropolitan University, mysteriously drowned while staying with a friend's family at their picturesque villa in the Pays de la Loire in western France. Jo, 57, was the last of the family to see Holly's body before she was cremated. 'I couldn't say goodbye,' she says. 'I told her, 'I'll see you later.' At home in south London, Holly's bedroom is just as she left it. The bed unmade, as if she'd just climbed out. Clothes and socks are strewn across the floor, evidence of last-minute packing decisions as she got ready for the week-long break with a school friend and her family. Jo Woodcock's daughter Holly mysteriously drowned while staying with a friend's family at their villa in western France Holly aged six hugging her mother. At home in south London, Holly's bedroom is just as she left it – with the bed unmade, as if she'd just climbed out  Jo goes in there often to smell her daughter's clothes – and to cry. Lee has only been in there once. It is too painful. Downstairs sits the suitcase of Holly's clothes from the holiday she never came back from. No one wants to unpack it and accept the finality of what that means. Close by, in the living room, is the urn containing her ashes. It is difficult enough to lose a child in any circumstances, but for Jo and Lee, the pain – the indescribable nightmare – is double because they still don't really know how their kind and confident, messy and fiercely independent daughter, who was always losing keys and AirPods, came to be found at the bottom of a swimming pool. That is why we are speaking today in a small cafe not far from a bereaved parents' group in north London, which has been a rare salvation for Jo, who was diagnosed with cancer nine months after her daughter's death. Jo and Lee are appealing to Sir Keir Starmer – and whoever replaces him – to help pressure the French police into holding a proper investigation into what happened to Holly. They don't know if foul play led to her death, but they need to be able to rule it out. The facts are these: at the end of July 2024, Holly went to stay with a school friend – whom we are not naming for legal reasons – at her family's villa in St Hilaire-la-Foret near the west coast of France. The friend's parents were there, as were several siblings, their friends and an aunt. Altogether there were about ten people staying at the villa, with the younger people packed into bedrooms. It was Holly's second time at the villa, and the plan was for a week of rest in the sunshine after a raucous two-week trip to Ayia Napa in Cyprus. She had worked hard in her first year at university, where she was studying English and multimedia journalism, and was having a fun-filled single girl summer with her many friends, supplemented by bar and hospitality work at home. As well as Holly, the friend whose family owned the house also had a university friend there as part of the group. On August 1, the party went to the nearby beach. Jo's last exchange with Holly over text was her asking: 'What are you doing today?' Holly responded with a photograph of the beach. That evening, the parents hosted a few neighbours. There were 14 for dinner, and people had drinks. Then the visitors left and the parents went up to bed while the young people stayed up. The Woodcocks understand there was a mixture of men and women in their 20s, all having fun, and just before 1am, photos were taken of Holly dancing around the central kitchen island on her friend's phone. Despite the late hour, the group made a plan to go swimming. According to the Woodcocks' French lawyers, who have surveyed all the witness statements, the 'girls went to change but the memories are very hazy'. Holly should have been with the others – either indoors or beside the pool. But at 1.25am, Holly's friend sent her a Snapchat message asking where she was. Events now become confused for, just five minutes later, at 1.30am, Holly was found dead in the pool by her friend's older brother, who struggled to get her out of the water. She was wearing her swimming costume and her shorts were neatly folded up by the side of the pool. One of the people in the house was a doctor and, having been woken up, immediately started resuscitation. But emergency services were not called until 1.44am. Why, ask the Woodcocks now, did it take 14 minutes to call for help? And how was it possible that Holly was alone for long enough to drown? Witness statements are contradictory on some aspects and two of those questioned said they could not remember where they were or what they were doing. But others seem to point to Holly being with others until just minutes before she entered the pool. What's more, since the villa opens up to a seated area with the pool immediately behind that, whatever happened that night should have been in view – and certainly within earshot – of those both inside and outside the house. Holly had gone to stay with a school friend at her family's villa in St Hilaire-la-Foret near the west coast of France Jo says their journey to France after the news of Holly's death 'felt so surreal' and added she 'couldn't understand' that her daughter wasn't alive As the Woodcocks learnt more, further questions stacked up. If Holly's death was an alcohol-related accident, as the police seemed to think, how was this messy young woman sober enough to fold up her shorts? And why, as an emergency doctor who attended the scene told the police, did she have a nose bleed – could that have something to do with why she drowned? Why, they ask now, do some of the stories not add up? Meanwhile, two of the older adults in the house did not give witness statements at all. Almost all of the house guests left the country to return home to the UK within 24 hours of Holly's death. Throughout that horrendous night, Jo and Lee slept peacefully, unaware of what had happened. They woke to missed calls on their phones and a message about a 'terrible accident'. Jo remembers at first being 'strangely calm', but Lee, who is sitting with us, tears running down his face for almost the entire two hours, remembers it differently: 'You were collapsed on the table.' They struggled to get hold of the household in France. And when they finally did 'I remember seeing Lee kind of crumble', recalls Jo. She also remembers going on to autopilot. 'We got our older son Henry up and told him. I didn't cry – I was in this weird, automated, cold place. We knew we had to get to France, but because of the Olympics, all the flights were booked up. 'Eventually, we got a Eurostar ticket, and then we had to think about who we needed to phone: the Foreign Office. Our local MP.' She remembers that terrible journey. She says: 'I had a little cry on the train, but it just felt so surreal. I couldn't understand that she wasn't anywhere. That she wasn't alive.' At first, it seemed like the police had it all in hand. They explained there would be an inquest and said they had taken statements. 'The Foreign Office told us how professional the French police were. I feel we were naive to believe them,' says Jo. Even as the police were interviewing her about Holly, she grew increasingly concerned about the direction they were taking her in. She says: 'They just wanted to talk about Holly and alcohol. The questions were all about her drinking habits.' The Woodcocks received the toxicology results almost two months after their daughter died. While Holly did have alcohol in her blood – an uncontroversial finding since all the witnesses agreed this had been a small party where drink was consumed – the report stated that a separate investigation needed to be done to examine exactly how much. This was because the water in her lungs made the usual tests more difficult. The coroner's report added that the exact cause of death had not been determined: the most likely cause was drowning, but a traumatic cause had not been ruled out. Other samples of tissue had been taken, including fragments of heart and brain, and gynaecological samples, which might have helped to explain her death. Could she have had a heart defect, for example? However, incredibly, the samples and even her swimming costume were destroyed by the French police. Someone failed to properly read the coroner's request for a second examination into how much she'd drunk and simply disposed of it all. It seems they had already made up their minds. Jo and Lee were in deep grief and shock in a strange country where they had to depend on the kindness of strangers, and yet they were let down by those they had expected to help them. The British consulate kept sending them links for websites – booking.com for hotels to stay in; legal firms for lawyers who might speak English; online advice on what to do when a loved one dies abroad – when what they really needed was someone to be there and hold their hand. Even retrieving the jewellery Holly was wearing when she died proved traumatic. At first, in the chaos of the small-town police station, the officers couldn't find the items. Then they tried to show Jo a photograph of her daughter's body to check it was the right jewellery before handing it over. At the time, Jo, a school administrator, started writing letters to Holly in a book. It was her way of processing what happened. Before we meet, she re-read some of it and describes how, in the immediate aftermath of Holly's death, she fantasised about ending her own life. 'I remember we were walking to a farmhouse and we saw a white car in the lane, and I was thinking, 'If I jumped in front of it, I'd be with her.' Those feelings haven't entirely gone away. Jo says: 'The first Christmas. Her birthday. You get those really dark feelings. 'You feel guilt about all sorts of things – I feel guilty that I put eyeliner on this morning. 'I've certainly felt guilty that I haven't had the courage to be with her.' Jo and Lee jointly decided to cremate Holly's body in France because they didn't want her to be alone in the plane's hold as she made her last journey home. It is an impossible decision for any parent to have to make - but also one they have had cause to bitterly regret, as it means there can never be a second inquest. In the meantime, their French lawyers, who were working pro bono, kept pushing the police for more information about their investigation. Within two months, the lawyers said they were concerned the case was going to be closed before it had even really been opened. Jo says the police in France 'just wanted to talk about Holly and alcohol' and all the interview questions were 'about her drinking habits' Apart from taking witness statements and holding an inquest, it seemed nothing much had been done. In November 2024, the French prosecutor in charge of the case said she could not give an update as she was too busy. And in February 2025, the case was indeed officially closed. Now the Woodcocks started on their campaign to get the Foreign Office to push their French counterparts to get it reopened. Last month, Jo wrote a letter to Keir Starmer, asking him, as one of his last acts as Prime Minister, to help. 'I wrote to him as a father, saying I didn't want special treatment but just the right thing to be done,' says Jo. 'The day after I wrote the letter, he resigned. He got emotional when he talked about spending more time with his children. I want to tell him that I don't have that privilege.' At the very least, they want the police to re-look at the witness statements and take some more. 'Your mind goes in all different directions,' says Jo. 'I don't want to think anything malicious took place. But I need to know what happened in that swimming pool. 'It just feels like something doesn't add up.' Since Holly's death, they have seen the friend she was with, but it has been too painful to probe her memories of that last night. As for the friend's parents, apart from meeting them in France, where they were shown the pool where Holly died, Jo and Lee have felt too broken, and too angry, to speak to them. Nine months after Holly died, Jo finally went to the doctor about a lump on her breast. She isn't sure exactly when she first noticed it amid her all-encompassing grief, only that one thought was: 'Not this as well.' She was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, which was locally advanced. She puts it down now to the grief, the trauma. And yet, strangely, in some ways the cancer saved her from going completely downhill. After her daughter died, she'd stopped going out – because every street corner in Erith, a village-like part of south-east London, held a memory of Holly – but now she was forced to go to medical appointments. 'Going to chemo became a distraction for both of us, weirdly,' says Jo. 'Suddenly there was something to do, to get me out of the house.' Her hair is growing back and while she is still being treated, her cancer is in remission. Lee, 55, is back at work as a construction project manager. In some ways life is moving on. But in many other ways, the couple are stuck. 'You learn to manage a bit more, you mask better, you still cry multiple times, but people see you looking better,' says Jo. 'But at night I can't sleep. Images of what happened haunt me. And all the time I have Holly in my head. 'I don't know whether right now she'd be saying, 'Oh God, Mum you are so embarrassing!' or maybe she is saying, 'Good! Please find out the truth.' Which is precisely what the Woodcocks intend to do.