Amanda Foy and Kevin Hogg, whose mothers were both murdered when they were toddlers, have fallen in love and plan to marry. They talk to Sarah Foster about their special bond.

THE couple sit close together on the sofa, she peeking shyly from beneath a baseball cap, reticent, he more talkative. She is playing with her pink mobile phone, fidgeting with the strap, and I remark on how nice it is. This instantly enthuses Amanda, who launches into a story about how she loves pink and when she saw the phone, just had to have it. She persuaded Kevin to buy it for her 18th birthday, this Thursday, but couldn't wait until then, so covered the house with Post-it notes saying, "Please can Amanda have her phone?" Worn down, Kevin agreed - but only if she took the notes down within 30 seconds.

It's an endearing anecdote, highlighting the couple's youthful sense of fun, and they themselves are endearing, with their coy affection and constant teasing banter. They seem like any other teenage couple caught up in the headiness of first love, and yet the single defining incident of both their childhoods has forever marked them out as different. When they were small children, both Kevin and Amanda's mothers were murdered.

The similarities between the two killings are uncanny. Kevin's mother Julie Hogg, and Amanda's, Michelle Foy, died in the same year - 1989 - within a few miles of each other on Teesside. The women were roughly the same age and Kevin and Amanda, their first born children, were both aged three. Pizza delivery girl Julie was killed by Billy Dunlop, who hid her body behind a bath panel at her Billingham home, while Michelle was strangled by her husband Peter after admitting to an affair.

Following their mothers' deaths, Amanda went to live with her nana, Stella Carman, in Norton, Stockton, and Kevin stayed with his father Andrew. Like Amanda, he remained close to his maternal grandparents, Anne and Charlie Ming, and eventually went to live with them at their Norton home. It was the two nanas who brought the teenagers together, taking them along to the February meeting of Support After Murder and Manslaughter (SAMM), a group to which they both belong.

"They knew that we both wanted someone to talk to. I was only told on the night. My nana just said, 'Get ready, we're going out,'" says Amanda. "Kevin had a suit on because he had just been to work and I thought, 'What a geek'."

The pair started chatting and found they got on well but it was not until April, after prompting from colleagues at the Internet supply company where he works, that 18-year-old Kevin asked Amanda out. "I phoned Amanda up and asked what she was up to and if she was seeing anyone. When she said no I just blurted out, 'Will you give me a date?' She said, 'Er, yes'," he says.

Kevin spent two evenings at apprentice joiner Amanda's flat watching DVDs, then the pair stayed overnight in Scarborough. "We stayed in a hotel and Amanda said, 'I would like you to be romantic.' I bought 24 red roses and champagne," says Kevin. Weeks later, in only the second month of the relationship, he said he loved her for the first time. That same month, Kevin moved into Amanda's flat. "It's the quickest relationship I've ever had," he admits.

At first, the couple were wary of discussing their mothers' deaths - Kevin says he feared upsetting Amanda by broaching the subject - but after a while, as trust was established, they began to confide in each other. While there were crucial differences in what had happened to them, they found there were many similarities in how they felt.

"It was hard because Amanda had known about her mam all along but I only found out when I was 13. I was told that my mam had slipped in the bath and hit her head. When they found her I was downstairs and I knew there was something wrong in the bathroom but my dad didn't want me to know. He told my nana and granddad he would tell me when I asked," says Kevin.

After years of hearing whispers he finally went to the school social worker and said, partly bluffing, that he knew the truth, prompting his family to at last tell him the whole story. He spent the next 14 weeks at home, trying to come to terms with it. "A lot of things were going through my mind. Some days I wanted to be in a crowd and other days I just wanted to be by myself. Some days I would just stay in bed all day and not have anything to eat. I was grieving for my mam. I was depressed and I was going for counselling," he says.

Yet despite having to cope with such a bombshell, Kevin bore his family no resentment for keeping him in the dark. "I understood why they didn't tell me. I thought, 'What three-year-old is going to understand?'" he says, with remarkable maturity.

While she grew up at least knowing the truth, Amanda had to live with the fact that her father had killed her mother. She used to visit him at Stockton's Holme House prison with her paternal grandparents, brother Carl, 17, and sister Sammy, 15, but has now severed all ties. "I just used to go to keep my nana and granddad happy. I stopped going when I was 14 because I was sick of keeping everyone happy. I don't want contact with him because of what he did to my mam. I'll never forgive him for that," she says.

Both Kevin and Amanda say that although they have no memories of their mothers, their grandparents have built up pictures of what they were like. But neither has found it easy to share their feelings with their family. While Kevin has two half-brothers, they are not Julie's children, so he feels unable to confide in them, and sensitive to his grandparents' own grief, he hesitates to burden them with his.

Amanda, too, says that in the past, she has felt isolated in coping with her mother's death. "My sister was only two months old so it was different for her. She's always looked at my nana as her mam. My brother was always for my dad," she says.

Both teenagers have grown up feeling different from other children, with Kevin citing being picked up from school by his dad, a lone figure among all the mums, and Amanda recalling her jealousy when her friends went on family holidays. For both, the loss of their mother is an ever-present sadness. "I think about her every day and I wish that she was here," says Amanda. Kevin echoes this, saying: "My 18th birthday was quite bad. Your parents are always there and my mam wasn't."

He channels some of his grief and anger into supporting his grandmother Anne in her campaign to scrap the double jeopardy law, which, although he has now admitted it, prevents Billy Dunlop from being retried for Julie's murder.

Kevin says that in Amanda, he has found a true soulmate. "Talking to her is better than going to counselling and them telling you that they understand when they don't," he says.

After first telling their families that they were engaged as a ruse, then Amanda jokingly proposing, Kevin asked her seriously to marry him. "I got a text message from Amanda saying, 'Will you marry me?' I replied, 'Are you being serious?' Amanda replied, 'No' and I texted back saying, 'I am. Will you?' Amanda said yes," he says, boasting that she could not resist his charm. Their two families were delighted and the couple are now saving for their own home.

Following the early fast pace of their relationship they are wisely slowing down, and plan a long engagement. "I don't want to get married at this age," says Amanda. "We are concentrating on our careers - then marriage, then a family. In that order," adds Kevin earnestly.

In the meantime, they're content to just enjoy their new-found happiness. "We've had so many negatives throughout our lives and this is just a positive for a change," Kevin says.