The playground murder: Trauma, loss and a love that endured

When Diane Watson was stabbed to death in the playground of a Glasgow school in 1991, her best friend Pauline was standing by her side.

Pauline watched as 16-year-old Diane collapsed after the knife attack by another pupil and then helped to carry her across the road to the arms of her parents who lived in an upstairs flat within view of the school.

Diane's murder would not only devastate her family, her friends and the local community, its shockwaves would go on to be felt for decades.

Warning - this story contains descriptions of violence, death and suicide.

Thirty-five years later, Pauline Love Thomson has spoken for the first time about the trauma of that April morning when she was just 16.

In a new BBC Scotland podcast, Crime Next Door: The Playground Murder , she relives the day 15-year-old Barbara Glover came to Whitehill secondary school in Glasgow's east end armed with a large kitchen knife.

Pauline describes how a large crowd of schoolkids gathered round as Glover shouted at Diane while waving the knife - and the chilling moment she dealt the deadly blow.

"She actually let out a growl when she stepped forward," Pauline says.

"She stabbed her and people started just moving away. Everybody just vanished.

"I went over, I just put my arm around her [Diane's] shoulder because I hadn't actually appreciated the damage that the knife would have done. It was a big knife."

Pauline tried to help her bleeding friend get home to the flat across the road she shared with her mum, dad and brother Alan.

It was only a short distance to the flat but Pauline felt her friend slumping even before they reached the school gate.

With the help of two other girls she got Diane across the road but by the time she reached the entrance to the flat, she collapsed.

Her father Jim, who had been alerted by another girl battering on his door, ran down and took his daughter in his arms.