I would also like to honor another beautiful, and extremely talented and gifted soul who committed suicide at the same age of 15.
To those around her Eleanor Holmes was a brilliant schoolgirl and talented musician with everything to live for.
But she was secretly battling inner demons – and the only clue to what was troubling her so deeply came in a haunting song she wrote about a girl’s hidden worries about her looks.
Shortly after writing the song Eleanor, 15, killed herself, tormented by pressures to be thinner and prettier and to get on with all her friends.
The lyrics of the song Mirror, Mirror include the lines: ‘Mirror mirror don’t you see, What you show her is deadly, You killed that little girl.’
Her family had no idea anything was wrong and say she must have suddenly felt overwhelmed by her worries and snapped.
After her death they discovered that she had secretly browsed sick ‘pro-ana’ websites – which promote anorexia and bulimia – and had made herself sick after eating and had self-harmed in the days before her death on May 26.
Eleanor’s mother Leigh, 40, said her daughter had shown ‘no sign’ of depression and was filmed laughing in a family video hours before she died.
‘I don’t know why my loved, brilliant, popular, talented, funny baby made that decision,’ said Mrs Holmes, a teacher at an international school in China. ‘She left no note. She said nothing to the little brother she adored. No word to her boyfriend, or her close inner circle of friends.
‘There was no long-suffering depression, or slow descent into despair. The spiral into darkness seemed to occur over just a few short hours as her mind became overwhelmed and she simply snapped.’
'Mirror, Mirror' - by Elle Holmes
She added it was only through ‘forensically mining’ her daughter’s computer she discovered her hidden concerns.
‘Her secret internet history revealed many of the pressures of modern life, a desire to be skinnier, prettier, have different hair. There were secret accounts on pro-ana websites,’ she said.
Eleanor was a star student with dreams of becoming a child psychologist. She had taken GCSEs a year early, was captain of her school’s swimming, netball and football teams, played three instruments and had volunteered helping orphans in Tanzania.
She wrote and performed her own songs, often accompanied on the drums by brother Oliver, 13. Among them was Mirror, Mirror. On the night of her death, Eleanor – who was also known as Elle – received texts with a Gothic-style image of skulls and nooses from a friend and sent texts asking whether another friend whom she had fallen out with had ‘given up on her’.
Mrs Holmes said: ‘Elle appears to have started becoming distressed and began texting a friend, a blameless young artist who also was exploring her own demons, who could not have known the state of mind Elle was in from such short digital messages, carrying none of the nuance or body language of a real conversation.
‘We can only imagine what dark tunnels Elle’s mind took her down from there onwards, but roughly two hours later, my wonderful baby died – leaving me heartbroken.’
Mrs Holmes added: ‘Elle was a dream child: funny, mischievous, caring about her family, committed and openly loving to her mum and her little brother. But, clearly, she did have hidden demons.
‘If this could happen to my kid, it could happen to anyone.’
The family live in China because Mrs Holmes works at the British School of Beijing but are originally from Bootle, Liverpool. A Chinese inquest found the cause of death to be asphyxiation.
Mrs Holmes is now in talks with singer Anita Prime from New Zealand to record a version of Mirror, Mirror to help support girls struggling with their body image.
Family friend Sheree Brown wrote a blog warning parents of the dangers of technology, especially in teenagers’ rooms at night.
She said: ‘Mobile devices and the such allow too much into what should be their “safe place”.’
