It was when the terrorists came uncomfortably close to home,in the summer of 2005, that I began to wonder if there was anything I could doto prevent what occurred on that fateful morning of 7/7.
On that day, suicide bombers had exploded four bombs in thecentre of London, three on Tube trains and one on a bus, killing 52 people.After careful consideration, I decided that I would try and warn theauthorities in advance in the hope of preventing the attacks.
The Metropolitan Police had an anti-terrorist hotline, whichI phoned at 7am on the morning of the attacks, nearly two hours before thefirst bomb went off.
I had planned very carefully what I was going to say. Ineeded to sound credible and convince them that this was a tangible threat. Forall I knew, they might get dozens of calls a day from paranoid members of thepublic or hoaxers. I needed to ensure that they didn’t think I was one of them.
I made the call from a phone box, one of many that seemed tohave sprung up on the streets recently. I’d never seen anyone using them,everyone had mobile phones. Maybe that was why so many of them had disappearedin the future.
They suited me very well for my purpose that day, though. Iwanted anonymity to avoid any awkward questions later on.
So, when I rang, I also gave them a false name because Ididn’t want to be tracked down after the event. I calmly and concisely gavethem the exact details of where and when each bomb would be set off, and thenames of each of the bombers.
When pressed on how I’d obtained this information, I toldthem I’d overheard two men discussing it in a pub in London the previousevening. When the questions began to become more probing, I put the phone down.Had I done the right thing? It wouldn’t be long until I’d find out.
I went home, called the office to say I would not be comingin, and took Stacey to school. I hurried back home and switched on the 24-hournews channel.
As the news of the attacks broke, I was dismayed to discoverthat my call had achieved nothing. Everything had happened exactly as it haddone before my intervention. Why hadn’t they listened to me?
There was worse to come. Just before lunchtime, there was ahammering on the front door, accompanied by a shout of “Open up, this is thepolice.”
Before I could even get to the front door to open it, theysmashed it down and came in, armed to the teeth, grabbing me and spreadeaglingme against the wall.
I don’t know how they had tracked me down. If theirsurveillance operations were as sophisticated as those I’d seen on TV, Iguessed it hadn’t been that difficult to find me.
I was cuffed and taken off in the back of a van forquestioning which wasn’t what I’d had in mind at all. I’d tried to do a goodthing, now I was being treated like a suspected terrorist myself.
These were not ordinary police, as I soon discovered as Iwasn’t being taken to the police station but to a high-security unit somewherein London. Where, I had no idea as I had been handcuffed and led into the backof a van with blacked out windows.
On arrival, I was then taken into an interrogation room andquestioned. I was seriously shitting myself at this point. I had just recentlyfinished watching the latest series of 24 on DVD (backwards like mostseries I watched) and I was uncomfortably aware of what they did to terroristsuspects to extract information, at least according to that show.
Thankfully, things did not go that far, but they did ask mesome pretty hard-hitting questions. I stuck to my story that I’d overheard twomen talking in a pub and eventually they seemed to accept it. I didn’t fit themould of the average terrorist who they probably had in their minds.
I had no doubt that my white skin and lack of any links toterrorist organisations had saved me from some more intensive methods. Wouldthey have been as gentle on me if I’d been a Muslim of Middle Eastern origin?
I didn’t really want to think about it, the amount ofprejudice in the world seemed to be getting worse as I travelled back throughtime, and I’d heard suggestions that in the past it had been rife within theauthorities.
At 9pm, exhausted, I was released and I vowed never again totry and get involved in global events. I had saved no one and earned myself anextremely unpleasant day for my troubles.
When 9/11 rolled around four years later, all I could do waswatch helplessly as the Twin Towers fell, knowing there was nothing I could doto prevent it.
Ibiza
April 1999
I was at the hospital again, this time for what most wouldconsider a happy event. For me, it was anything but. I was sitting by Sarah’sbedside, awaiting the birth of my daughter. It seemed that it was to be thelast time I would ever see her.
“They grow up so quickly” was a cliché I had heard manytimes over the years. If that was true, then so was the reverse. It seemed likeno time at all since Stacey had left home to live with David and now here shewas, back in her mother’s womb, preparing to emerge.
I had enjoyed growing younger with her at first: helping herwith her homework, building sandcastles on the beach, and all the other thingsthat had filled my life with joy on a daily basis.
The best times had been when she was around four or fiveyears old. She was so cute and clever, amusing me no end with her observationson the world in the way that only a wide-eyed, open-minded child could. But asshe’d grown younger still, I’d begun to find the whole process quiteheartbreaking.
I’d watched as she’d lost the ability to write, and then toread. Her speech became progressively less coherent, and as she approached twoyears of age, I found myself changing my first nappy.
It was not
