At 8.20am on Friday September 15 my wife and seven-year-old daughter were part of what ISIS later called “a gathering of crusaders”. They were in the carriage in which a bomb nearly went off at Parsons Green Underground station.
I was at home about to leave for work when I noticed four missed calls (the ringer is switched off at night) from my wife Katherine, who was taking Mary to school. They nearly hadn’t taken the train. But they were running late and cycling takes longer.
I rang Katherine straight back. Sounding very upset indeed, she said there had been a bomb and her arm had been squashed during the stampede, but she was OK and so was Mary. By the time the next bulletin came on the radio it was clear that there had been an attempted terrorist attack.
At the suggestion of my brother-in-law, who used to work for a security company, they decided to get checked out in case it was a “dirty bomb”. I met them at the hospital, where the view was that this did not seem to have been a poison attack. A policewoman told us that bombs of that sort were difficult to make.
An X-ray of Katherine’s arm showed it wasn’t broken. Mary had been sick several times but the incredibly reassuring doctor thought this was just nerves. A man in a nearby cubicle, we gathered, had sprained an ankle during the incident, possibly when he accidentally trod on somebody in the mêlée.
A uniformed constable took Katherine and Mary’s statements. Then a large group of SO15 (counter-terrorist) officers materialised and a female officer in plain clothes asked more questions. At the other side of the room a man with bandaged fingers was being interviewed. Katherine overheard that, not surprisingly perhaps, the sequence of events as he described it did not quite match her chronology.
Katherine and Mary’s recollection of what happened is a fascinating mixture. They saw on the one hand bucketloads of British sangfroid, good humour and Dunkirk spirit, while on the other there was a lot of confusion – a good portion of the passengers were from abroad – as well as eyes-rolling, every-man-for-himself panic.
When “it” happened – the detonator, perhaps, or a partial explosion – Mary had been sitting on the floor by the door revising for a spelling test. There was an odd noise, a commotion, and everyone looked at the ceiling. Then passengers were leaping over each other and pushing people out of the way.
Mary was terrified that she would become separated from her mother. It felt to Katherine as if everything was in slow motion. Mary said she thought a wolf had come on to the train. In a way, she was right.
A foot came down on Katherine’s arm while she was stretching out to grab Mary. Meanwhile, a nice man with a bad hangover (“I shouldn’t even be here this morning: I usually get the six o’clock but I had too many beers”) helped Katherine. When it looked as though Mary might have been about to clamber on to the track, he warned her: “Don’t go down there; it’s live.”
Once the initial panic had subsided – at which point people took out their phones and started photographing the smouldering bucket bomb – Katherine retrieved her and Mary’s bags and they made their way out of the station. She offered her phone to a teenage schoolgirl who was crying. Later the girl’s mother texted Katherine back to say thank you.
Outside in the street by the ambulances an elegantly dressed English lady who had noticed Mary on the train came up to her and said kindly: “Did you learn your spellings in the end? Hopefully you’ll be let off the test today.”
Then the dazed passengers were ushered into the hall at Lady Margaret School at Parsons Green, where they were given cups of tea.
After the hospital we all went to a café for breakfast. As a souvenir I took away with me a large green plastic NHS bag with a “MAJOR INC” label on it. Katherine and Mary took the day off and went to church to say a prayer and light candles. I went to work.
The next morning, Saturday, I was reading the paper in bed and Mary was tucked in next to me. Over my shoulder she read the banner headline shouting that the bucket bomb was “packed with nails and Mother of Satan explosive”. I wondered what she thought about that. It is not something to dwell on. They were delivered from a terrible fate. Others have not been so fortunate.
What can you say except humbly accept what has been given to you? It is an unfathomable mystery. We place ourselves in God’s hands, for as it says in Deuteronomy, the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
Andrew M Brown is The Daily Telegraph’s obituaries editor
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