“You are watching a BBC news special, where reports are coming in that several members of a terrorist cell thought to be responsible for the many attacks on schools, hospitals, and care homes in the city of London over the last six months have been shot dead by the Army’s Special Air Services Regiment, the SAS. The assault, said to be as a result of months of intelligence work, was intended, not only to eliminate the continuing terrorist threat to our national security but also to intercept weapons and explosives thought to be intended to mount the most serious terrorist attack in the country’s history. In all, sixteen men are known to have died, including one SAS officer whose name has not yet been released to us. We are joined now by our correspondent Katherine Aldlington, who is live from Downing Street where a statement is expected from the prime minster later this morning.”
For twenty minutes, we listened in silence as the BBC dragged out and laid bare the few facts they were able to confirm. The cell was thought to be a small radical splinter group of a much larger and well-known terrorist organisation, several of whom were understood to have been on the government’s watch list. The haul of weapons and semtex that were intercepted as part of the operation was thought to have been the biggest ever single seizure of illegal firearms and explosives in the UK. They dragged out every political analyst, every politician they could find, none of whom could confirm the one thing I needed to know. The name of the soldier killed.
“How could they possibly know?” Nan asked finally.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice sounding rusty and dry.
“It’s the BBC,” she said, lighting up a cigarette despite her shaking hands. “I mean, Facebook reports the news quicker than they do. If this thing was supposed to have gone down in the early hours of this morning like they said, how could they possibly know what happened already. It takes weeks for this stuff to come out. They’re already talking about how much has been seized. I mean, there’s no way the police would release that kind of information yet. And we’d have been told if it was Tom; we’d have been told long before the news was released to the media,” she ranted. Ash hung precariously from the end of her cigarette as she continued to shake, but I had nothing to say. I tuned back into the news report, starving for any detail I could get, desperate for that one scrap of information that would give me hope.
“Katherine, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut you off for a moment,” the news anchor said. “We have just received exclusive footage, thought to have been taken by one of the SAS operatives during the operation, which documents the events as they unfolded. These scenes may be harrowing to some viewers.”
Some reporter continued to talk intermittently over the top of the footage, narrating a play-by-play of events. It was grainy and filmed in night vision, but you could clearly make out long bursts of lights from night scopes darting through the air and hear the unmistakable popping sounds of rapid gunfire. I was practically kneeling in front of the screen as I tried to understand what I was seeing. Men were shouting at one another, though their words were indecipherable.
The person filming darted out from behind a shipping container to take more shots. Everything was happening so fast, the camera moving wildly with the person it was attached to. Finally, I realised it was a body cam by the way it was flailing and jerking all over the place. I had no idea what shipyard they were in, but it made sense that the assault would be there rather than a boat. They would have wanted to take the terrorists after the handover happened, just to be sure.
A soldier came into shot across the way, crouched behind another container, and I guessed he was one of ours. Covered from head to toe, it was impossible to know who it was, but I held my breath anyway. The camera at last became steady as the gunfire slowly ebbed, though focused now on the last of the targets. In the periphery of the screen, the kneeling soldier leant further forward to take a shot when he was yanked sharply backwards in a move that literally saved his life. As the last shot rang out, sounding a death knell to the terrorists who’d been responsible for taking so many innocent civilian lives, the rest of the team seemed to realise what I already knew. The rescuer, the guardian angel who’d ripped his teammate away from the path of certain death, had exposed himself to make the ultimate sacrifice, saving his friend’s life at the expense of his own. Soldiers darted in front of the camera again, and a few more indistinguishable voices called out before the silence. The excruciating, insufferable, tormenting silence, broken only by the clear voice that cut through the darkness like a scythe, ripping a hole through my heart as it did.
“Man down.”
“It can’t be him,” Nan protested.
I looked down my palms. Clear as day, I could picture how his big hands engulfed mine. How the callouses felt as he traced his large digits over my own, entwining our fingers together before slipping away and twisting them around to do it all again. They were so warm, his hands. Always so warm. I’d have given anything for just thirty seconds more, even if I had to close my eyes. I’d sacrifice his voice in my ear and the sight of his face, the smell of his skin that made me feel so safe and warm. I’d trade it all for just one more moment of his hand in mine, or the feel of his big arms around me as he held me close. I’d taken so many embraces for granted, throwing them away like hellos and goodbyes. Like confetti into the wind. And now there would never be another.
I worried, but I never truly believed anything would happen to him, my iron man that everyone convinced me was infallible. I never believed he would die. If I had, I would’ve hugged him even harder. I might never have let him go. Because the tragedy of it all was that you never really knew which hug would be your last.
I clenched my palms tightly, ignoring the fact that they were icy cold. The ghosted memory of Tom’s last touch hidden away in my heart as I steeled myself for what was to come. My grief would have its time. But it had no place at his mother’s feet.
“It’s not him! I’m telling you, it’s not him! Someone would have come to see us by now. Someone from Hereford would be here. You’ll see! He’ll call later today, telling us to put the kettle on,” she protested.
I’d heard that shock and denial were the first stages of grief. If Nan was in denial, perhaps I was still in shock. I thought it was more likely that my heart had taken as much sorrow as it could for one lifetime and was hardening like cement, drying in the sun. When the cheerful chime of the doorbell rang brightly through the house, she sobbed. This anchor, this monolith, this sassy tower of unending strength, cried as though her heart was broken. The painful, brutal sob of a mother faced with the inescapable realisation that she’d just lost her child.
I stood on shaky legs and stopped to grasp her shoulder. Her face buried in her tissue, her smouldering cigarette languishing in the ashtray, she reached up to squeeze my hand before releasing me to do what needed to be done. I opened the door to two officers, resplendent in their full dress greens, their chests so covered with medals I was sure they blinded people in full sun.
“Miss Tatem, my name is Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Davies, and this is my colleague, Major Robert Munroe. May we come in please?”
I nodded in reply, and led them to Nan, my voice croaky as I introduced them to her.
“Mrs Harper, I regret that we didn’t meet under better circumstances, and I am deeply sorry to be the bearer of such bad tidings. But I must unfortunately confirm that at approximately 4.20a.m. this morning, your son was shot twice, and despite our best efforts, we were unable to save him. He was a hero who gave his life in service of his country, and his sacrifice will not be forgotten.”
Sarah
“What happened?” Nan asked, tears still streaming from her eyes as she discreetly wiped them with a tissue.
“As I explained, Mrs Harper, he was shot—” Lieutenant Colonel Davies said.
“I heard that bit. But what happened with the SAS operation? We’ve seen the news report, but I want the truth about exactly what happened. I�
�m owed that at least,” she said.
Davies and his cohort shuffled around uncomfortably, looking painfully uncomfortable as he answered.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Harper, but Lieutenant Harper was not part of the twenty-second Special Air Service Regiment. He served with the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment and was killed in a live-fire training exercise last night,” he said, looking pointedly at me, daring me to argue with him. We both knew full well that I’d signed a confidentiality agreement with the Ministry of Defence. I’d be surprised if Tom hadn’t as well, so technically Nan shouldn’t know anything other than the fact that he was in the army. Preserving an illusion was one thing, but to lie to her now, so brazenly, seemed like such a slap in the face. An insult to her intelligence and Tom’s memory.
“Get out!” she said venomously.
“Excuse me?” he said, seeming a little taken aback.
“I said, get out of my house! I’m not interested in your army bullshit. If you can’t honour my son’s memory by giving me the truth, get out of my house,” she shouted. She was absolutely distraught, but seeing her backbone shocked me out of my stupor.
“I think you should leave now,” I said, my croaky voice a quiet authority.
“Very well. If you think that’s best,” he replied stiffly. “I really am very sorry.”
Either Nan didn’t hear him or she didn’t care for his false platitudes. I showed both men to the door before confronting them.
“Would it really hurt to have told her the truth?”
“Miss Tatem, while you may be privy to certain matters of national security, you’d do well to remember that the success of our regiment depends entirely on discretion and secrecy. How many families of our soldiers would be endangered if what they did became public knowledge? It’s for their safety and the safety of their loved ones that we conceal the identities of those who work for us,” he explained.
“But what possible difference could it make now that he’s dead?” I pleaded.
“And what of the lives of his friends and colleagues? Do you really feel that Mrs Harper or any parent could lie about something like that when they’re about to put their child in the ground? Do you think it’s fair of us to even ask? And whether you agree with my reasons or not, I don’t think I need to remind you of the consequences of divulging certain truths in breach of the secrecy agreement that you signed of your own free will,” he replied. Stern and unrelenting, he only softened when he saw the tears welling up in my eyes.
“He’ll be buried then?” I asked, the image of my beautiful man lying in the cold, hard ground was burned into my brain.
“As his next of kin, that’s up to his mother. A visiting officer will attend in due course to discuss matters further, but for now, if there’s anything we can do, just have her call me,” he said, passing me a card. I nodded as I took it, but held the door open in a silent invitation for him to leave.
“Look, Lieutenant Harper admitted to me that you were in a relationship of sorts, so I understand just how difficult this is. But the best advice I can give you is to move on. You’re young with your whole life ahead of you. Don’t live it shackled to the memory of a man you hardly knew. Now, I’m informed that Mr Masterson of MI5 will be contacting you soon. I would ask that you listen to what he has to say with an open mind. Losing Tom was a terrible tragedy, but he knew the risks and his mission was a success. The public will never know, but both of you have saved countless lives. Now I implore you to move on with yours. We both know it’s what he would have wanted.” With that, he left.
Walking back in the living room, I turned off the television and perched on the footstool next to Nan.
“What a stupid old fool you must think I am,” she said, drying her face. Giving Lieutenant Colonel Davies a bollocking seemed to have calmed her a little.
“Ask me anything you want to know, and I’ll tell you,” I said calmly. I was about to commit treason. I was breaching the Official Secrets Act. I could go to prison for the rest of my life, but I didn’t care. That bullshit blanket rule of Davies’s might have a solid foundation, but I knew that Nan would take my secrets to the grave. If it wasn’t for me, Tom wouldn’t have been anywhere near that operation. I wasn’t delusional enough to convince myself that I was the reason he was dead, but I did know that I owed Nan a debt I couldn’t hope to repay. If the truth was her price, I’d gladly give it.
“How did you meet him?” she asked. And so I told her. The long, unbelievable story of how a children’s book illustrator of modest means became a millionaire embroiled with international terrorists and Russian gangsters. When I got to the end, I thought I’d actually shocked the speech out of her.
“I’ll get you some tea,” I said, leaving her to digest everything. When I put a cup down in front of us both, she warmed her hands before bringing it to her lips and chuckling.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
She pointed to my mug which read, “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she’s going to be until you put her in hot water.”
“I can’t cry,” I admitted to her shamefully. “It’s like being submerged in water, completely in limbo. I can’t scream, and I can’t cry. I’m just numb. What does that say about me? That the man I love is dead and I can’t shed a single tear?”
“I’ve loved and lost enough men in my life to know that you will. Your heart can only take so much grief before it shuts down. And then, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll be doing something mundane, like the dishes or filling the car up with petrol, and out of nowhere, like a tsunami, it will hit you. A wave of grief so powerful it will bend you in half. And everyone will stare at the crazy lady crying in the supermarket car park and wonder what happened to make you lose the plot. Maybe some of them will even come over and offer to help, but that will just make the pain so much worse, because you realise they can’t help. The man you love is gone, and he is never, ever coming back.”
The future she spoke of was a living hell, and she was right. I couldn’t cope with it, so I shut down. A future without him was more than I could comprehend. We’d both done the right thing, we were supposed to get our happy ever after. Surely we’d earned it? There were no answers to the questions rattling around in my head, and so I stopped looking for them. All I wanted was to curl into a ball and pretend. Pretend that they were wrong. That the news had been intended for someone else. That if I closed my eyes tight enough, I’d be able to feel his arms around me as I slept.
We sipped our tea in morbid silence, neither of us knowing what to do with ourselves. The fight seemed to have left Nan with Davies’s departure. His loss was like a constant pain in my hollowed-out chest. It was so bad it hurt even to breathe.
“Do you know, all I can think about is the day I first heard him laugh,” she said wistfully as her mind took her back to the memory. “Not long after my husband died, I wasn’t in a great place. Tom hadn’t been with me all that long when it happened, and I felt guilty that I should have been focused on what he needed, but in reality, I was consumed with my own grief. When I think back now, I honestly don’t know how I’d have got through that time without him. But anyway, I’d grown sick of just staring at the four walls at home, so I dragged him out with me to grab some dinner. It wasn’t anywhere fancy, but it was pretty busy when we got there.
“We started chatting about how school and sports were going, and we got so caught up that I hadn’t remembered to take the onions off my burger. Well, onions are a big no-no for me. They repeat on me something terrible, and we were waiting for the cheque to arrive when I just had an overwhelming urge to burp. I knew the waitress was going to be back soon, and remember this is back in the day when you needed a signature to pay by card, so I couldn’t leave Tom to deal with the bill while I nipped to the bathroom. Anyway, the restaurant was full of kids, so it was pretty loud, and I figured a little burp would probably go unnoticed. So I let it build, and just at the moment it was about to come out, the music goes off a
nd the waitress walks out with a birthday cake for the table of kids.”
By this stage in her story, I was already giggling because I had a pretty good idea where this was going.
“Just as they were about to start singing, this burp came out, and it was pretty tame, but without any idea what else was building, I let out the loudest fart in the history of mankind. I mean, this thing was so loud I’m sure even the table shook. Everyone, and I mean everyone, turned to look at me. The entire place was silent, and I was just sitting there, dying, wishing the ground could swallow me whole. And Tom looked at me and just laughed. He wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassed, but he was laughing so hard he was almost doubled over, which got me going and, of course, the more I laughed, the more I farted. Pretty soon the both of us were in a flood of tears.”
She was laughing so hard as she retold the story, and I got carried away too. But then of course there was that moment, when we both remembered why we were there, and the laughter died as the happy tears became sad once more.
“You know what? That was the last time I ever held it in around him. And I don’t just mean the farting. I said what I thought and I gave him shit, but I was real. And in return, I got a son,” she said.
“He got you too, you know? I mean, you both gave each other shit, but it was plain as day how much he loved you,” I said, reaching out to cover her hand with mine.
“We got each other, and what a screwed-up pair we were. Same as you two. Neither of you made a lick of sense, but you worked.”
“And now he’s gone,” I whispered.
Neither of us had much to say after that. Nan went to have a lie down, and I found a spot as far across the house as I could, slid down the wall and, burying my face in a pillow, sobbed until I was almost sick. The more I cried, the worse I felt, until there was quite simply nothing left. The rest of the day came and went, and it was nearly three in the morning before we found ourselves together again, sharing another cup of tea, the stereotypical response of any British woman in a crisis.
City Under Siege Page 22
