I remember the exhaustion, the regrets and the determination of Jane's mother 19 years ago as she sat in her Onehunga bungalow with her memories spread before on the kitchen table a photograph album, poems, a Mother's Day card, the exceptional autobiography Jane wrote for a fifth form (Year 11) school project.
The lesson that day besides how life can go so wrong was that cliches are a barrier to deeper understanding.
In the case of Jane Furlong, the cliche worked like this: a school dropout, a prostitute, a druggie, a teen mother, a nobody, a loser.
True, she started selling sex aged 15, became pregnant at 16 and was a drug user. But there was so much more.
She was exceptionally bright, frighteningly self-aware, smart enough to quote Sigmund Freud in her autobiographical essay (albeit one of his blacker observations: "The goal of all life is death") but ultimately unable to steer a course away from peril.
As a senior detective who investigated her disappearance noted, being a kerbside prostitute is a "risky occupation". She was one of several sex workers snatched from K Rd and murdered in the space of a few years.
Yet Jane's essay was honest, disturbing, funny, tragic and, at its conclusion, optimistic.
"Where do I go from here? I think everyone should have dreams and goals which they can work for, however high they may seem," she wrote.
"My main ambition in life is to become a child psychologist. It's something I know I'll do well at and I'm willing to work hard to achieve my goal ... I feel better, now that my attitude has changed.
"I no longer want to die. I want to live and fulfil my every dream. I want to make my mark in the world."
Her project scored a perfect 20 and glowing praise for its maturity and perception. "You have certainly experienced too many bad things for your age but I am pleased to see you are able to grow from these experiences," her teacher wrote.
The talent she showed in that project somehow makes what happened seem sadder. So does the fact that she wanted to become what she may have most needed.
The teacher again: "Your goal of a child psychologist seems an excellent one and I am sure you will succeed."
But by the time it came to sit School Certificate, Jane was long gone and already in the drug and prostitution scene of K Rd.
Perhaps it was no great surprise. Her autobiography is a map of a troubled young life: broken home, a state children's home, foster care, boarding school, truancy, rebellion. There is the hint in one of her poems of possible sex abuse.
She was 4 when her parents separated, 6 when Judith (unable to cope raising three children and paying two mortgages on the domestic purposes benefit) put the kids into care; 8 when placed into a foster home; 13 when her first boyfriend ("I loved him") committed suicide; 14 when she ran away from Whangarei Girls' High where she was a boarder.
She nominated S. E. Hinton's novel about marginalised youth, The Outsiders, as a favourite.
For someone who stood just 1.55m tall in her bare feet and weighed only 43kg, she was feisty (she got into her share of catfights) and staunch. She wouldn't let anyone give her aggravation, Amanda, a friend and fellow sex worker, told the Herald.
Those characteristics may have made her determined to give evidence in three serious court cases. She was a witness to a vicious assault on K Rd, a complainant in an incident where a crossbow was fired and a complainant in a case against an Auckland businessman who was later jailed for 16 years for a string of violent sex attacks on eight women.
The businessman was in prison at the time Furlong disappeared and this week denied involvement or ever having met her. Furlong had picked the businessman out from photographs of a number of men shown to her by police.
During her short time at school in Whangarei, Jane would return to Auckland during holidays staying either at the home of a friend, her foster family, or her mother, with whom she was rebuilding a relationship after so many years apart.
She had also recently contacted her father.
It was as though she was lost, in that she didn't know where home really was.
And then, on May 26, 1993, she was lost into the night.
The writing and the snapshots she left behind show the huge potential that disappeared with her.
Can you help?
If you have information on Jane Furlong's death:
Phone police on 0800 675 263
Email furlong@police.govt.nz
Facebook "What happened to Jane"
Alternatively call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111
To watch a re-enactment of the last night Jane Furlong was seen on K Rd, go to http://tiny.cc/zhbagw
