Part 4 (1/2)

I thought again about Robert and Louisa. I knew I should call someone to ask what had happened to them. I also knew that I didn't want to make the call because I was afraid of the answer. I went on lying on the floor.

I discovered from the television that, while I had been sitting obediently on my white plastic chair, wrapped in my red blanket, there had been much activity at the racecourse. The police had moved in en ma.s.se and had taken the names and addresses of all the thousands in the crowd. I had somehow been missed.

The racing had been abandoned and the 2000 Guineas had been declared void as half the horses had stopped during the final furlong while others had been driven hard for the line, their jockeys concentrating so intently on the race that they were unaware of the explosion until they pulled up after the finish. The television pictures clearly showed how one young rider's joy at winning his first Cla.s.sic had quickly turned to despair as realization struck that he had won a race that wouldn't be.

Speculation was rife as to who had perpetrated such murder, and why.

One television channel had a reporter situated near the Devil's d.y.k.e with the racecourse clearly visible in the background, the front of boxes 1 and 2 now covered by a large blue tarpaulin. He claimed that a police source had indicated to him that the bomb might have struck the wrong target. The racecourse manager, who was unavailable for comment due to ill health, had apparently confirmed to police that the occupants of box 1 had been switched at the last minute. The reporter, who I thought was rather inappropriately dressed in an open-neck striped s.h.i.+rt with no jacket, went on to speculate that the real targets had been an Arab prince and his entourage, who had originally been expected to be in box 1. The Middle East conflict has once again been brought to our sh.o.r.es, the reporter stated with confidence.

I wondered if MaryLou would feel better in the knowledge that she had lost her legs by mistake. I doubted it.

I called my mother, in case she was worrying about me.

She wasn't.

'h.e.l.lo, darling,' she trilled down the wire. 'What an awful thing to have happened.'

'I was there,' I said.

'What, at the races?'

'No, I mean right there when the bomb exploded.'

'Really? How exciting,' she said. She didn't seem the least bit concerned that I might have been killed.

'I am very lucky to be alive,' I said, hoping for some compa.s.sionate words from my parent.

'Of course you are, dear.'

Since my father died, my mother had become somewhat blase about death. I think she really believed that whether one lived or died was preordained and out of one's control. Recently, I thought that the collision with the brick lorry had been, in my mother's eyes, a neat way out of what was becoming a loveless marriage. Some time after his death, I had discovered that he had been having several minor affairs. Perhaps my mother believed that the accident was some sort of divine retribution.

'Well,' I said, 'I thought I would let you know that I was OK.'

'Thank you, dear,' she said.

She didn't ask me what had happened and I decided not to share the horror. She enjoyed her quiet world of coffee mornings, church flower arranging and outings to visit well-tended gardens. Missing limbs and mutilated torsos didn't have a place.

'Speak to you soon, Mum,' I said.

'Lovely, darling,' she said. 'Bye.' She hung up.

We had never been very close.

As a child, it had always been to my father that I had gone for advice and affection. We had laughed together at my mother's little foibles and joked about her political naivety. We had smiled and rolled our eyes when she had committed another faux pas, an all too regular occurrence.

I may not have actually cried when my father died, but I was devastated nevertheless. I wors.h.i.+pped him as my hero and the loss was almost too much to bear. I remember clearly the feeling of despair when, a few weeks after his death, I could no longer smell him in the house. I had come home from boarding school for a leave-out weekend and, suddenly, he wasn't there any more. The lack of his smell brought his demise into sharp reality he wasn't just out getting a newspaper, he was gone for ever. I had rushed upstairs to his dressing room to smell his clothes. I had opened his wardrobes and drawers, and I had held his favourite jumpers to my nose. But he had gone. I had sat on the floor in that room for a very long time just staring into s.p.a.ce, totally bereft but unable to shed the tears, unable to grieve properly for his pa.s.sing. Even now, I ached to be able to tell him about my life and my job, my joys and my sadnesses. I cursed him out loud for being dead and not being around when I needed him. I longed for him to be there to talk to, to soothe my hurting knee, to ease my troubled brain, and to take away the horrors in my memory. But still, I couldn't cry for him.

The one o'clock news programme started on the television and I realized that I was hungry. Apart from a couple of pieces of French bread at the racecourse and a chocolate bar at the hospital, I hadn't eaten since Friday night, and that meal hadn't got past my stomach. Now that I thought about it, hunger was a nagging pain in my abdomen. It was one pain that I could do something about.

I limped gingerly into the kitchen and made myself a Spanish omelette. Food is often said to be a great comforter, indeed most people under stress eat sugary foods like chocolate, not only because it gives them energy, but because it makes them feel better. I had done just the same at Bedford hospital. However, for me, food gave me comfort when I cooked it.

I took some spring onions from my vegetable rack, diced them into small roundels, then fried them in a pan with a little extra-virgin olive oil. I found some cooked new potatoes hiding in the rear recesses of my fridge, so I sliced and added them to the onions with a splash of soy sauce to season and flavour. Three eggs, I thought, and broke them one-handed into a gla.s.s bowl. I really loved to cook and I felt much better, in both mind and body, long before I sat down on my sofa to complete the experience by actually eating my creation.

Carl called sometime during the afternoon.

'Thank G.o.d you're there,' he said.

'Been here all night,' I said.

'Sorry, should have called you earlier.'

'It's all right,' I said. 'I didn't call you either.' I knew why. No news was better news than we feared.

'What happened to you?' he asked.

'Hurt my knee,' I said. 'I was taken to Bedford hospital and then home by taxi late last night. And you?'

'I'm fine,' he said. 'I helped people to get down at the far end of the stand. Police took my name and address, then they sent me home.'

'Did you see Louisa or Robert?' I dreaded the answer.

'I haven't seen either of them,' he said, 'but Robert called me this morning. He's all right, although quite badly shaken up. He was asking if I knew what had happened to Louisa.'

'Wasn't Robert in the box when the bomb went off?'

'He said that the bomb was definitely in box 1 and he was behind the folded back dividing wall in box 2 when it exploded and that protected him. But it seems to have left him somewhat deaf. I had to shout down the telephone.'

I knew how he felt.

'How about Louisa?' I asked.

'No idea,' said Carl. 'I tried the emergency number the police gave out but it's permanently engaged.'

'Any news on anyone else?' I asked.

'Nothing, except what's on the TV. How about you? Heard anything?'

'No, nothing. I saw the American woman organizer, you know, MaryLou Fordham, just after the bomb went off.' I could see the image in my head. 'She'd lost her legs.'

'Oh G.o.d.'

'I felt so b.l.o.o.d.y helpless,' I said.

'Was she still alive?' he asked.

'When I saw her she was, but I don't know if they got her out. She had lost so much blood. I was finally led away by a fireman who told me to go down.'