Page 97 of Hope and Happiness in Bluebell Wood
Callum sits quietly on the sofa, while I watch a couple of blackbirds and a pigeon picking the last of the day’s food off the ground around the bird table. A robin joins them in the garden, but instead of pecking at the ground with his fellowfeathered friends, he sits on the edge of the bird bath. He looks at me, his head cocked to one side as if he’s listening intently to what I’m about to say.
‘I was working in London on the day of the attack,’ I say suddenly, not looking at Callum but still watching the birds, who have now been joined by a couple of sparrows that hang off one of the feeders. ‘Usually I’d be in my office, but we had an event on at a large hotel just off the South Bank. I’d been planning this one for ages; it was for an international finance company, so we had people attending from all over the world. This was the last day of a three-day conference, and I have to admit I was secretly congratulating myself that everything had gone so smoothly.’
I glance at Callum; he nods his encouragement, so I turn my attention back to the robin, who’s still watching and listening. It felt easier to tell him than talk directly to Callum.
‘While one of the seminars was going on in the main conference hall, I stepped out for a moment to take an important call. I couldn’t get a good signal so I had to go a little way along the corridor to pick one up. It was then I heard the first scream. I thought it was someone outside in the street messing about, but then there were more screams, and a noise that gradually built until it felt like there was a tidal wave of sound about to crash towards me along the corridor. Suddenly, accompanying the sound was a mass of bodies, they streamed down the corridor in a huge panicking mess of pushing, shoving, shouting and screaming.’
I pause to take a deep breath. Just the memory of that day was making my heart race faster, and beads of sweat begin to break out on my forehead. I was forcing myself to return to a place I never wanted to visit again, and it was painful both physically and mentally.
The birds outside suddenly start chattering. Something has spooked them and they all fly off in different directions. A jackdaw has swooped down and landed in one of the trees. All the birds have left except the plucky robin; he simply waits patiently for me to continue from his perch on the bird bath.
‘I had no choice but to join them in their panic,’ I continue again. ‘I was carried down the corridor in a sea of people. I didn’t know why they were panicking, no one was stopping to chat, everyone just wanted to get out of there as quickly as they could. There were no alarms going off, so I knew it wasn’t a fire. I thought perhaps there had been a bomb scare, but I’d been in a large building before when that had happened, and although there had been a sense of fear, the majority of people had been much calmer and in control. The feeling here was just total terror. Eventually we reached the foyer at the front of the hotel – at last we can get to the exit, I thought. It was hot and stifling in the crowd, everyone was breathing heavily, and it was beginning to feel like there was no oxygen in the air – even I was struggling to breathe normally.’
I pull at the collar on my dressing gown, trying to loosen it a little, but I still feel like I’m beginning to suffocate, so I ease open the French window to get some more air. I expect the robin will fly away like he had when Robin had done the same, but he doesn’t, he just sits and waits patiently, while I draw in welcome breaths of fresh air.
‘Are you all right?’ I hear Callum ask. ‘If it’s too much for you—’
‘No,’ I interrupt him. ‘I want to tell you. Just let me take a minute.’
I’d only ever relayed this story to one person before, and that was my therapist. But even then, I’d cut corners and missedout bits so I didn’t have to relive the full horror all over again. Now it felt important that I share everything with both Callum and my feathered friend outside. So when I feel a little calmer, I continue my story.
‘I can see the exit now,’ I say, dropping right back into that awful day. ‘On the other side of the elegant art deco foyer. It’s a huge ornate revolving door that’s seen thousands of people come and go in its time. But everyone wants to get through it at once right now, and they can’t. There’s pushing and shoving, and people are shouting for others to calm down, but they don’t, they just keep pushing forwards.’
As I talk, I can feel those hands and bodies pushing into me, the heat and panic in that hotel foyer as hundreds of people tried to escape at once.
‘Someone shouts that the emergency exits are open on the other side of the hotel, and so half the people decide to head for them. This creates even more chaos because now some are trying to push against the crowd still surging forward towards the revolving door; not everyone has heard the new message, and many of the people are foreign and simply don’t understand. And still I don’t know why everyone is panicking, why everyone is so desperate to escape, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
‘I see an old lady sobbing near me, and then her husband, who has been knocked to the floor and can’t get up. Some people are trying to help by creating a human barricade around them, but others are still pushing into them, selfish, not caring that someone has fallen.
‘I don’t know what to do. Do I stop and help? Do I continue trying to get to the revolving door, or do I heed the advice still being shouted above our heads to head to the emergency exits?’
I open the French window a little further; at least I could control this exit if I needed it.
‘Then I start to feel even hotter, and my head starts to spin. I think for one awful moment I might pass out in this sea of bodies, that I too might get trampled underfoot. But then something happens: there’s a burst of fresh air, and we all move again, but this time towards the front of the hotel, and suddenly before I have time to think about it, I’m outside on the pavement. There are still people everywhere, now they’re trying to find friends, colleagues and loved ones as everyone spills out of the hotel to safety.’
I can feel my own breathing begin to calm as I take in the cool evening air from the garden, just as I’d done on the pavement that day.
‘Once we’re outside, police officers are trying to calm everyone down. I can see barricades in the distance stopping people coming near us. We’re being filed one way down the street, for some reason we’re not allowed to go in the direction of the bridge.
‘I’m walking next to a man in a black suit who I recognise as one of the hotel concierges. “What’s going on?” I ask him. “What happened?”
‘The man turns to me with an ashen face. “Attack,” he says slowly, as if he can’t quite understand it himself. “In the hotel . . . just rushed in and—” He shakes his head and begins to sob.
‘I stop walking. In the middle of the sea of people all heading in the same direction. People knock into my shoulders as they pass, but still I don’t move. My feet feel like lead, but my head feels light, too light, and I begin to sway.
‘“Hey,” a man says, putting his hand supportively onmy shoulders this time instead of knocking into me. “Are you okay?”
‘He helps me along in the crowd, until we get somewhere we can stop and rest, then we sit down on a low stone wall by the Thames.
‘“What . . . what happened?” I ask him. He too looks pale and drawn, like the concierge had.
‘“From what I can gather a man rushed into the hotel with a knife and began stabbing people at random.”
‘“Oh God,” I say, as my hand shoots up to my open mouth. “Where?”
‘“Some conference that was being held,” he says. “I don’t really know. I was just checking out of the hotel when it happened. Next thing I know there’s screaming and suddenly the whole foyer is rammed with people trying to get out. But apparently the main exit was blocked by the police because the guy was still on the loose outside. I believe they’ve taken him out now.”
‘“Taken him out as in . . . ?”
