Smash all the Windows

CHAPTER ONE

GINA, 2016

As the court steward opens the door, Gina’s scalp prickles. It’s as if an electrical charge has entered the air. She gives the framed photograph of her son – her Ollie – one final look. Her hope has been that, held upright in her lap throughout the second inquest, it would remind both witnesses and jury that her son was a person with a life every bit as vivid and complex as theirs – just how complex, she’d had little appreciation of. But it has become more. Something to sing her silent lullaby to when she could no longer bear listening to the witness testimonies. Hush Ollie, hush Ollie, hush Ollie. When, at last, she was forced to confront the moment of his death. Hush Ollie. Now, Gina is jolted by stark realisation: had he lived, he would turn twenty-nine next Thursday.

It seems impossible.

A second jolt. Her forearm is grabbed. Mum! Tamsin’s breath brushes her cheek. It’s time.

Not impossible, she reminds herself as she squeezes her daughter’s hand. Two years and three months separated Ollie and Tamsin. Unbridgeable then, now the gap would seem insignificant. Tamsin might even have gained the upper hand.

Gina rallies because she must. She slots the photograph inside her handbag, which she stows under her seat.

Just in time.

Here they come. The members of the jury. Feet shuffling. Eyes purposefully downcast. Expressions impenetrable. Not a glance towards the families. Acutely aware that Tamsin is looking to her for reassurance, Gina reaches again for her daughter’s hand.

Damn you, Bill! You should be here.

Though her ex-husband began the drawn-out process of leaving on the day Ollie died, he’s still Tamsin’s father. But Bill wanted nothing to do with the second inquest. The failure of the class action finished it for him.

Even if we finally get to the bottom of what went wrong, unless someone’s brought to task, it won’t change a bloody thing.

Gina couldn’t allow herself to believe that.

Get over yourself, Bill. You can’t continue to hide behind Jackie and the baby. Even now, at this defining moment, bloody Jackie is in their midst. The last person Gina wants to think about. She pushes her aside, reminding herself why they’re here: to erase injustices, to clear the names of their loved ones, please God. The point isn’t blame. It’s the reverse.

With a scrape of chair legs, the jury sits. A second hush falls, deeper than the first. As Gina inhales, doubt fills her lungs. For over thirteen years the search for truth – for the undoing of injustice – has eaten up everything. Marriage, friendships, family, health, career, finances. Now she isn’t sure she can bear to listen to the jury’s interpretation of how hundreds of almost indistinguishable elements collided and went tumbling, tumbling, down. She’s afraid of what comes next; afraid of what Tamsin is about to hear. Already, images will be imprinted on her retinae that no sister should ever have to see. But Gina can’t waver, not now. Everything she was, she has invested in this.

She risks a sideways glance at the Chapples. A combination of determination and vulnerability, Maggie Chapple has made the journey each excruciating day of the eighteen-month inquest. At the start, her curls were sleek chestnut, and soft. Now her hair is wire wool.

Look, there she is, all on her own.

Who?

Gina had given a slow, measured nod in the direction of the woman wearing the smart suit. I’ll just go over and pay my respects.

Why the hell would you do that? How quick Bill was to write Maggie off.

Because she’s lost a child, like us –

She’s nothing like us! She’s got a bloody nerve showing her face!

This version of her husband was a stranger, his anger new and startling, but Bill wasn’t alone in his thinking. When Maggie took a seat that first day in the row reserved for family members, resistance was tangible. Maggie must have felt it, must have been wounded. At times, given the revelations about Ollie, Gina has wondered if anyone else would want to sit next to her. It was Maggie who made sure she never had to find out. Gina draws strength from this unlikely friendship of theirs.

The way Maggie’s face moves suggests she’s chewing the soft inside of her cheek. She’s gripping the hand of her husband, Alan – a quiet man who radiates quiet strength in a way Bill never could. She’s holding on for dear life. Gina reaches for her right hand and feels a twitch of surprise before Maggie glances up. In a moment’s eye contact, Gina offers her a silent promise. To see this through together.

As Gina turns back towards her daughter, Donovan acknowledges her with a nod. You aren’t the only one without a partner here to support you. In all this time, she has never met Donovan’s wife. Quite why is never spoken of, but the fact that it’s not a subject for discussion is an understanding of sorts. Donovan raises the hand in which he has Tamsin’s right hand. I’ve got her. A swell of gratitude washes through Gina. She hopes something of it is transmitted through the chain they’ve formed. The rows of bereaved, devastated, wrecked family members.

Movement. All eyes turn as the spokesperson for the jury stands. Nobody dares breathe.

The Coroner clears his throat before addressing her: I’m going to go through each of the fourteen questions in turn, and you will answer with a simple yes or no. Do you understand?

The poor woman wets her lips, nods. It isn’t a role Gina would wish on anybody.

Do you agree with the following statement, intended to summarise the basic facts of the incident? On 22 August 2003, following the admission of a large number of passengers, fifty-eight people died in the disaster at St Botolph and Old Billingsgate stations after falling on or from the escalators.

The spokesperson’s voice quivers. Yes.

Though Gina’s limbs are perfectly still, her blood is restless.

Was there any error or omission on the part of station management or staff, for any reason whatsoever, on 22 August 2003, which caused or contributed to the dangerous situation that developed?

Yes.

Several rows behind Gina, someone is already weeping. Whatever Gina has to endure, it will be ten times worse for the Chapples. Whatever Ollie was or was not, unlike Rosie Chapple, he wasn’t supposed to have been in charge.

Around her, an eruption of wonder, joy, tears. As the spontaneous applause directed at the jurors peters out, the families turn to one another. We did it! they repeat in disbelieving voices, and, Finally. Words spool without registering. The crowd was not responsible! Gina repeats this to herself, clasping one hand to her mouth. She’d always hoped, of course she had, but this is a moment she has barely allowed herself to imagine.

What just happened? Beside her, Tamsin sits back down and grips the edge of her seat as if she risks falling off. Her head drops forward and hair curtains her face.

Gina squeezes her daughter’s shoulder but struggles to remember anything after the Coroner’s third question. The isolated phrase unwiped truth swims towards her, unmoored from its context. We won, she says with a swirling eddy of emotions. I can’t quite believe it. But a shadow passes through Gina as Ollie looks up from somewhere deep within Tamsin’s dark eyes. He shouldn’t have been one of the fifty-eight. Why, oh why, did you have to try and be a hero? Take all the time you need, she manages.

It’s not just Gina who has received what others will call good news. Behind her, Alan is murmuring to Maggie. I should say something. But Gina must wait for Alan to release his wife from his embrace. He gives the slightest nod over Maggie’s shoulder and steers her around.

Disorientated, Maggie reaches out her arms. Gina. My God. I never thought I’d be so glad to hear Rosie called a victim… This is… Her unlikely friend falters.

The victims have been referred to as the fifty-eight for so long, it will be tough for Gina to adjust her thinking. The corners of her mouth twitch into a lopsided smile. At a loss for something appropriate to say, the idea that anyone would want this… She goes to hug Maggie, who claims the words for the first time.

Rosemary Chapple. Victim fifty-nine.

CHAPTER TWO

GINA, 2016

Through the double doors, release. One hand on her daughter’s arm, it’s unclear who’s steering who. Outside, a surreal ambush. Flashing bulbs, camera crews, lorries topped with satellite dishes. Gina shields her eyes against the sensory onslaught, narrowing the view through her fingers to a slatted-blind arrangement.

Delivering up to the minute breaking news, we bring you the reactions, live, from outside the court.

Penned in on the courtroom steps, a growing atmosphere of expectation has turned her insides to liquid. If only the rest of her body could complete the process, pooling onto the granite step and trickling between the polished shoes of those standing in front. Instead, every tortured smile, every anguished frown, will be transmitted into living rooms the length and breadth of Britain. This knowledge magnifies each tiny tremor at the corner of Gina’s mouth, each blink, each pore. Just as their loved ones were declared the property of the Coroner, just as politicians and priests laid claim to the disaster, the press believe the public is entitled to the families’ churned-up emotions. Thirteen years ago, it had been just the same.

You have to expect it.

Expect it? What we need right now is privacy. Privacy to grieve.

Though she’d thought his anger justified, Gina held Bill back. Second only to grief, hatred of the press is the thing that unites the families. What journalists do, what they’ve done in the name of ‘truth’, is indefensible. It would take little to convince Gina that their own Chuck Tatum had constantly dreamt up new ways to prolong their ordeal in order to come up with tomorrow’s feelgood headlines. Triumph over adversity sells newspapers.

Someone stumbles into the narrow space Gina had deliberately left between herself and the next person. As an elbow scrapes Gina’s arm, she looks accusingly at a jacket sleeve.

Merde. Unmistakable. A Gallic growl, only one syllable but not a letter wasted, the final emphasis on the ‘d’, a springboard. It’s Jules Roche, unwitting poster boy for the disaster, then a young man cradling the head of his infant son. Reluctant to embrace the success that came about as a result of the disaster, he gained a reputation as something of an enfant terrible. Forgive me, Gina, he says. It is so crowded.

Don’t worry. She forces the smile that’s expected, at the same time reassuring herself that the toes of her shoes haven’t strayed too close to the edge of the step; that she’s in no danger of falling and pulling Tamsin with her. But it’s Tamsin who tugs on Gina’s arm, her expression bewildered.

They won’t expect us to say something, will they? Mascara has left a slight smudge under her right eye.

Gina’s only certainty is that her need to break free of the crush is rising. Just let one of them try and shove a microphone at me, she erupts.

Look at them. Jules nods. Each after his pound of flesh.

Just then, amplified words in a familiar voice: They say that anything is true if enough people believe it. And why wouldn’t people believe what so many newspapers printed as ‘fact’?

Gina squints as she looks about for the speaker, locating the back of Sorrel Carwood’s head. Their solicitor has positioned herself between the families and television crews, a welcome buffer.

"Pound of flesh. Pfff!" Jules adds with ruffled intensity. What kind of saying is that?

But repetition alone doesn’t make lies true. Today, the families have been vindicated.

These words demand that Gina stands to attention. As Tamsin hisses, Merchant of Venice, she turns to hush her daughter. Again it hits home. Tamsin is a grown woman, more than capable of deciding for herself what is and isn’t appropriate. As for Jules, he’s an artist; immune to what others think. And his son, that small child whose head he was cradling in the shot that appeared on all those front pages – the enduring image of the tragedy – he must have reached Ollie’s age… Ollie’s age when…

She brushes the corner of her eye. It will always be like this, see-sawing between pride in her daughter and profound sadness at her son’s absence. There cannot be one without the other.

Always it is Shakespeare or the bible. Jules speaks across Gina. My Evelyn would tell me off for not remembering. She try her best to educate me.

How casually he mentions his wife. As if she’s just stepped out for a few moments.

Thirteen years after the 2003 tragedy, the jurors have contradicted previous findings, deciding that the behaviour of commuters did not contribute to the disaster.

A cheer goes up. Eric’s face stands out among the cameras and sound-recording equipment. The real hero of the hour. This result is the culmination of his years of research, his burnout, his breakdown. His mouth is moving, as if he’s transmitting words to his wife.

Though it wasn’t on the scale of Bethnal Green, Aberfan or Hillsborough, the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster will form part of the nation’s collective memory.

It moves Gina to know that they rehearsed for success. But there was never any doubt in Eric’s mind. Today’s verdict was another of his inevitable outcomes.

Someone who’s aware of the connection between Eric and the families’ solicitor comments on how refreshing it is to see a man who’s happy to let his wife take the limelight. The record will show that today’s victory was Sorrel’s. Gina is among those who will remember it differently.

No single community had to absorb the shockwaves. The families – those you see here today – briefly, Sorrel’s serious profile comes into view, were spread out all over London, its suburbs and beyond. Some of the victims were tourists, simply passing through. Thirteen years later and the identity of one man has yet to be discovered. He is known only as Victim Thirty-four.

Time for reflection. Insulated inside the head-bowed silence, Gina recalls how Eric first turned up on her doorstep, barely able to make eye contact, fiddling with the file he held in front of him, nails bitten to the quick. Six years later he still resembles the fidgety youth who begged for fifteen minutes of her time, but he, too, is changed.

That lack of community has been particularly tough on the families. They haven’t had the kind of support that comes from knowing your neighbours have been through the same as you.

Desperate to convey something of what she feels – overwhelming gratitude mixed with something bordering on maternal pride – Gina wills Eric, Look at me for just one moment. But he doesn’t, and that’s fine. He has a mother of his own.

Nonetheless, the families are members of a club they can never leave. Today’s outcome was the result of their dogged persistence. A refusal to be dismissed and ignored, a refusal for their loved ones to be vilified. Sorrel punches the air. The crowd was not responsible!

A roar of approval goes up. Sharp bursts of Come on! Though her firm might have preferred a verdict of unlawful killing, Sorrel represented the families’ wishes. Integrity like that will bolster her reputation. It saddens Gina to think that it should have bolstered Eric’s.

We should feel ashamed that people who had already lost so much have been put through this further unnecessary ordeal. How many more times must someone stand here and say, ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’?

Cheers erupt. From Gina’s vantage point, she spies a trestle table, on it a dozen green glass bottles. Champagne. Now that the journalists with their lenses and recording equipment part to let them pass, Gina desperately wants to stay put. The sight of Tamsin in high heels, striding down into her own shadow, makes her uneasy. She finds herself falling into step with Jules, but the mechanics of walking feel unnatural, as if dictated by the ranks of cameras massed before them. Champagne! Can you believe it? she says.

You prefer gin?

Should she tell him? ‘I’m an alcoholic.’ He’d be the last to judge. But he’s only teasing. She tempers her reply with sarcasm. It’s not from you, is it?

"You think I have a crystal ball? No, Gina. The champagne, it is from one of the big newspapers. He raises his eyebrows as if shrugging the journalists off. They want their photo. They want to make loose our tongues, Jules continues. But I have other plans."

Are you heading straight back to Paris?

"Not for a few days, non. I have business over here."

Gina struggles to think of sculpting as a business. Though outdated, her image of a solitary craftsman chipping away at a block of white marble stubbornly persists. Anything interesting?

I have a piece being shown at the Whitechapel Gallery but, he pauses and gives an awkward smile, there is another possibility.

Oh?

I cannot say anything yet. Perhaps it come to nothing.

The pounding of feet. Jules! Jules Roche!

They have found me out. He gives her a gentle push. I think you will want to go ahead.

You don’t have to talk to them, you know.

He shrugs. I could stay away but I choose not to. Go! I will find you.

She agrees readily, then stops. It’s as if she’s gone upstairs to fetch something and can’t remember for the life of her what it was. Tamsin. She scans the scene, looking for her daughter.

Champagne?

Already, a scattering of people are clutching the stems of champagne flutes. God knows, Tamsin could murder a drink. She imagines knocking back the first one and holding out her glass for a refill. But she won’t accept a thing from the bastards who printed those lies. She has other plans.

As she waits in line, a television reporter close by speaks into a microphone: The families and survivors were systematically bullied, intimidated, manipulated or used for personal and political gain.

Impatience clogs Tamsin’s throat. You’ve changed your tune. Bloody hypocrites, the lot of you.

Here we are, the waitress says, sounding a little too pleased with herself.

Mum constantly tries to impress on Tamsin how much she adored Ollie, dismissing their teenage spats as a phase that would have quickly resolved itself. But it’s as if the data has been wiped from her hard drive, and each reminder of this failing produces fresh agony. Not today. Today, she has the opportunity to make up for it.

A final glance at the camera crew, Tamsin stages herself as she would a prop. Her chin is high as she takes the delicate stem of the glass. (It’s a good weight; the waitress hasn’t skimped.) She turns and, as she knew she would, finds several lenses trained on her. The same camera crew who, if the families had lost today, would have recorded that arrogant bastard saying, ‘There comes a time when you have to accept that, no matter how many different ways you find to ask the same question, the answer will still be no.’ Well, he’s just had a few of his assumptions turned inside out. Tamsin smiles directly into a camera lens and raises her glass. What she’s about to do requires no script. She won’t give the fuckers words.

Fill your boots, Ollie, this is for you. She tips her champagne flute. The balance shifts. From behind Tamsin comes a collective intake of breath. Conversations halt. The sound of champagne hitting tarmac is deeply satisfying. ‘Like someone having a wazz,’ she imagines Ollie saying and, for the briefest of moments, he’s here with her. They aren’t at each other’s throats, Mum isn’t having to say, ‘I don’t care who started it, I’ll finish it!’ They are simply sharing the moment.

Liquid pools near her high-heeled patent-leather shoes.

‘New shoes, sis?’

‘Clarks – but don’t tell anyone.’

‘The shame!’

‘I know.’

‘Remember how we –?’

The reduced weight, the twist of her wrist, tells Tamsin her glass is empty. When she staged this moment in her mind, others joined her in one united gesture. Dangling the upside down champagne flute in one hand, Tamsin watches the last few drips with a kind of fascination, hoping that a camera will capture them, glistening and jewel-like. Ollie is gone. They are back to not talking to each other. Headphones on. The Keep Out sign on his bedroom door. And she is back in the real world.

From between the shoulders of the camera crew, observing her daughter’s performance, it’s as if Gina has been looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. How did Gina miss Tamsin’s transformation into this marvellous defiant creature? I mean, she always was defiant. But that was before.

Tamsin has sought out Gina’s gaze, seems to be seeking her approval. Gina tightens her mouth, nods. Yes, I saw. Everything. Their exchange doesn’t go unnoticed. A camera is turned on Gina. No, thank you. She shields her face from the lens, irritated by her own politeness as she sidles out of the way.

Would Jules call her daughter’s lone protest ‘art’? And where’s Maggie? Did she see? Gina weaves backwards. Lord only knows where all these extras have appeared from. The press corps have multiplied. She spots Crisanto, one of the so-called ‘fortunate ones’ who took the witness stand to have all those memories dredged up. The twenty minutes or so when he waited to be pulled from the pile of bodies, head locked, chest pinned, desperate sounds all around. Someone praying. Someone praying Lord, kumbaya. It was begging really, begging to some unseen force. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. He didn’t seek comfort in the psalms. Into Crisanto’s mind drifted his grandmother’s voice, bringing tales from a distant childhood. Aponibolinayen, a mortal who marries Ini-Innit, the Sun. Aponibolinayen, wrapped in the vine and the vine carrying her upwards until she reaches the sky. But Crisanto wasn’t wrapped in vine. He was wrapped in tangled limbs and, as time went on and people ran out of air, they grew quieter, deathly quiet. He saw bodies that would later be marked ‘not to be viewed’, where identification had to be made through the contents of wallets and handbags, dental records, fingerprints; in one case, a helium balloon tied to a broken wrist. It’s something you never escape from, he told the courtroom, close to breaking. That, and the fact that you lived, while they…

Again, Gina is struck by how irrevocably affected he is by the suffering he witnessed. Other survivors told of chaos, confusion, things done in moments of panic, things that would have been unrepeatable were they not under oath. But no one else spoke of blackened and swollen tongues, faces such a deep shade of purple that you could barely tell black skin from white. Even now, Gina shudders at the sight of Crisanto’s raw, slightly manic look.

All these years, I’ve lived with the idea that the behaviour of ‘the herd’ – yes, that’s what they called us. He folds one arm across his body and supports it, as if it’s in need of a sling. "They made it our fault. I heard it repeated so often I came to believe it."

They must see he’s in no state to go on. But the ringmasters want his distress; the tremor of his chin as he struggles to retain dignity. These are the kind of wankers they’ve been forced to deal with over the years. Yes, I do mean wankers, she answers the critic inside her head. That’s exactly what I mean.

It’s not as if I told them anything different this time round. Shame on them for refusing to listen all those years ago!

Speedily convened, speedily concluded, that’s what Sorrel said about the public enquiry in her summing up. Not that Gina thought so at the time. All she remembers is the overpowering sense of betrayal. Now Crisanto is backed up against a broadcast van, microphones thrust at him like blunt weapons. While her thoughts are changing from someone should rescue Crisanto to I should rescue Crisanto, her mobile buzzes. She twists to sift through the contents of her handbag. Hello?

I take back everything I said. They actually did it. In the midst of this madness, the familiarity of Bill’s voice offers comfort.

She reminds herself that she’s supposed to be angry with him. I tried to tell you. Conviction like Eric’s goes a long way. At the time, shining through the paper-thin casing of his nervous exterior, it meant everything to Gina.

I was so mad at you for going against me. I thought he was looking for something to beef up his CV.

He’s never taken the least credit.

I know that now.

Gina’s emotions shift. On top of everything else, what is as close to an apology as she’s likely to get is too much to bear. She has no idea how to hold herself, how to stand, how to breathe.

Are you still there?

I’m here. I just… I don’t know. She turns on the spot. It doesn’t feel the way I thought it would.

You can’t rehearse for something like this. You feel the way you feel. That’s it.

Irritation creeps under her skin. Now you find the right thing to say. There’s no way to rewind the clock and Gina doesn’t want Bill to try. The need to finish this conversation transforms itself into an urge to move. I’m… I have to go now. She begins to walk. I’m wanted.

Wait! Is Tamsin with you?

Not right this minute, no.

Tell her I saw her on television… Tell her I’m proud of her, will you?

She should hear that from you, Bill. Just swallow your pride and call her!

Gina spots Maggie. More accurately, she spots Maggie’s hair. She feels the need to vent: Bloody Bill never thinks of anyone but bloody Jackie and the bloody baby. But that will have to wait. Maggie is standing beside Alan as he reads to camera from a sheet of paper. Never having heard him say more than the odd sentence before, Gina weaves closer.

Time and time again, we’ve been asked, ‘Why are you here? This isn’t your daughter’s inquest’.

Echoes of Bill’s words. He wasn’t the only person to voice them but unlike the others he isn’t here to take them back.

Suddenly Eric is by Gina’s side, serious, nodding. She says his name, Eric, condensing such feeling into that one word. She cannot help glancing at him from time to time as Alan continues.

"No, it wasn’t our daughter’s inquest. At the start, based on what the families of the fifty-eight had been told – the lies they’d been fed –