Page 54 of Right Place, Right Time
I hesitate, but then I reach out and put my hand on his arm, as Annie did for me, hoping it will have the same comforting effect.
Adam looks surprised at my gesture and he gazes at my hand. But then he looks gratefully up at me. ‘It’s nothing. Silly, really. I shouldn’t be bothering you with it.’
‘If it’s made you look like this, then I’m pretty sure it’snotsilly and itisworth bothering me about.’ I continue to hold on to his arm.
Adam nods slowly and deliberately. ‘You’re right,’ he says, and he takes a deep breath. ‘The thing is … I have PTSD,’ he says quickly, as though he’s allowing it to escape from him. ‘It’s not due to anything brave or heroic. I’ve never been in the armed forces or anything like that.’
‘You don’t have to have been in a battlefield to have PTSD,’ I say knowingly.
Adam looks at me. Right at me, as though he’s looking deep into my soul. For a moment I think he’s going to ask me how I know, but to my relief he doesn’t. He turns away and stares in front of him as if he’s watching something play out on an invisible screen.
‘It should have been me,’ he says. ‘Not her.’
I wait, but he doesn’t immediately continue. ‘What should have been you?’ I ask gently.
Adam turns his head slowly towards me.
‘It should have been me that died that day. I shouldn’t be here now. I should be dead.’
16
For a moment I simply stare at Adam, trying hard to comprehend what he’s saying.
‘What happened?’ I ask gently.
Adam shakes his head. ‘Aargh, I feel so stupid after what you were talking about with Luca, Annie and Ed.’
‘Why?’ I continue in the same gentle voice. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
I’m desperately trying to piece all these events together in my head.What did we talk about that triggered this level of reaction in Adam? This is obviously why he left the pub so abruptly.I’m just trying to run through our conversation in my head when Adam says, ‘It wasn’t a Second World War bomb or anything dramatic like that. It was still an explosion, though.’
Ah, right, now it’s making a little more sense.
‘It was when I was in the band,’ Adam continues. ‘We were on a UK tour as the support band for another group. We’d played a huge arena gig in Newcastle the night before. And I’d had this one-night stand with a girl I barely knew – pretty standard for me back then, I’m ashamed to say. I’d met Kate the night before in a bar. I’d stayed the night at her house, which was in a quietlittle place just outside of the city. I wanted to get away as quickly as possible the next morning so I didn’t get in trouble with our management. But right before I left, we had an argument …’
He pauses to remember, so I sit quietly and wait for him.
‘She caught me trying to sneak out early. She didn’t see it quite the way I did – as a one-off – and quite rightly she was upset and angry. I was furious she’d called me out on my behaviour; I thought I was God’s gift back then because I was in a band.’
He glances at me to see my reaction, but I remain silent.
‘Anyway, I stormed out with the intention of catching a cab. I was used to London, where you could step outside and hail a taxi immediately. This was of course before the days of Uber.’
He looks at me again. I nod.
‘But I’d forgotten we were in a little village in the middle of nowhere. So there was nothing, not even a bus back to the city, for a few hours. Kate followed me, trying to make it up with me. She said she was going to work soon anyway and if I came back inside, she’d give me a lift back to my hotel on her way. I agreed and went back to her house. Kate went upstairs to get ready for work and told me to help myself to anything in the kitchen. I was going to make some coffee, I wasn’t big on breakfast then. But there was a smell in the kitchen that turned my stomach. I thought I was just hungover so I called up to her that I was going to have a cigarette outside instead – I smoked then, but I was trying to give up.’
He thinks for a moment.
‘But before I could light up, Kate called down to me from the upstairs window to ask if the kettle was on.When I said no, she said she’d pop down and put it on herself. So I headed to the bottom of the garden where there was a little bench. Her little dog had come outside with me …’
Adam stops again. ‘Sorry,’ he says after he’s paused for a moment. ‘This is the tough part.’
‘Take your time,’ I tell him. And I put my hand on his arm again. This time I pat it gently with my fingers.
This small gesture seems to encourage Adam. ‘But before I could sit down on the bench, there was this tremendous booming sound and I remember being thrown backwards against a garden shed. I hit my head and I think the glass from the shed window must have smashed, because I was covered in tiny shards of glass. When I sat up, I saw that the whole of the top of the house had disappeared in front of me; it had simply collapsed in on the ground floor, and there was smoke and flames beginning to come from the inside. I could hear a whining sound from under some of the rubble that was now in the garden, so I just went into a sort of automatic pilot. I pulled myself up and shook as much of the glass off me as possible, then I ran towards the whining. Somehow the dog had got trapped underneath some of the timbers that had been part of a wooden pergola attached to the back of the house. How he wasn’t crushed, I don’t know – they seemed to have fallen in a sort of crisscross pattern that had protected him instead of crushing him. I began pulling the timbers carefully away from him – it was like doing a gigantic Jenga, but one that meant life or death if it collapsed.’
He pauses, but I simply nod for him to continue.
