The Last Minute
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DONNY: If there really was a threat. That’s another thing we’re hoping today’s official report will cover. The airline has been silent on this. Two men were dealt with swiftly at a magistrates’ court before their connection with the incident was publicly known. Both pleaded guilty, and their cases went unreported. They received suspended sentences.
PRESENTER: Have you spoken to them?
DONNY: I’ve tried. One is a foreign national who was deported, and has disappeared. The other, a British man, is suing the airline, and refuses to speak to me while that case is pending.
PRESENTER: But you see him as in some way responsible for your daughter’s death?
DONNY: It’s hard not to, though I know there are others more directly to blame. The thing is, I know his name. It’s easier to focus my anger on him than on any nameless suspect. That’s why so many of the parents of the children who died on the school coach are angry with Martin Knox, the teacher who should have been with them, but wasn’t. He’s left the teaching profession now, by the way. We’re all looking for somebody to blame.
PRESENTER: Of course, your daughter, Kate, was a suspect for a while.
DONNY: Those were my darkest days. Your listeners will know that the attacks on my family nearly broke me. I thought she was at school, but in fact she was distributing animal-rights literature in the High Street. Some of the survivors saw her doing it. They just assumed that she was to blame when the explosions went off.
PRESENTER: She was a militant?
DONNY: She may have fallen amongst dubious friends, but I have no reason to think that she was ever involved in violent protest. We have lost a dear, sweet diamond from our lives. I’m proud of her commitment, even though I don’t agree with her, and I wish to heaven that she had gone to school that day.
PRESENTER: You have our sympathy.
DONNY: Thank you. It was a nightmare when she was under suspicion. But we’re not the only family who suffered vilification in the press, and even on phone-ins to this station. Some survivors thought the white van I spoke about contained a bomb. All the evidence suggests that the driver, John Hardy, had simply run out of petrol at the wrong place at the wrong time. And perhaps even worse, one of the survivors, Farouk Osman, spent weeks in the burns unit surrounded by police officers waiting for him to come round. An eye-witness remembered his beard and his rucksack and interpreted this as ‘acting suspiciously’. It turns out that he tried to save some of the children on the burning coach. Let’s hope that his heroism is recognized in the report today.
PRESENTER: His actions are one of the few good news stories from those terrible events. Are there any more?
DONNY: Well, I think we were all cheered when Bernie Blackstock’s puppy, Ritzi, who had saved her master’s life by running away at the crucial moment, was found several hours later, safe and sound, thanks to an appeal on this radio station. And of course, there’s the story of our new MP, Anthony Dougall, who lost his wife and a close colleague that day.
PRESENTER: Yes, indeed – that famous photograph of his birthday cake lying among the debris has become one of the iconic images of the disaster.
DONNY: He refused to be beaten by the experience and carried on his election campaign. I’m sure that, now he’s in Parliament, he will fight for the full details of what happened at Heathwick to be made public in due course.
PRESENTER: And I hear he is happier in his personal life, too.
DONNY: Yes, he has just announced his engagement to one of our former colleagues, who has been working with him on a television film about the disaster, to be broadcast tonight.
PRESENTER: Congratulations to them both. And by the way, that film, Heathwick’s Day of Doom, is on BBC One tonight at nine p.m.
And while we’re plugging other people’s programmes, I should mention a three-hour special on the disaster here on Radio Heathshire from six p.m. It’s going to be presented by Stuart Penton, the young man who was on his way to a job interview at the Heathwick Echo when the disaster happened. As we know now, if the disaster hadn’t happened, Stuart would have arrived to find a locked office. The Editor was late for work – miraculously escaping the total destruction of the newspaper’s office, but also missing the biggest story of her career. Well, Stuart became a crucial part of the initial rescue attempts, and won all our hearts with his eyewitness accounts of what he saw that day. You all probably know that on the strength of that work he’s become chief reporter for a national newspaper. He joins us now to tell us more about this evening’s programme. Good morning, Stuart.
STUART: Good morning.
PRESENTER: So what do you have in store for us at six?
STUART: Well, too much to mention it all here, but we’ll have full details of the Commission report, of course; along with profiles of the teacher and the ten pupils from Heathwick School who died, and interviews with the team of counsellors who have been working with the staff and children there, to help them with their shock and grief. I’ll be talking to Dora Pilbury, widow of Frank, who has so bravely carried on the family undertaking business after her husband’s death – arranging the funerals first of Frank himself, and then of many of the victims of the tragedy.
Some of the survivors will give us their memories of the day, including people who, like me, had very lucky escapes. There’s Doreen Talbot, of Doreen’s Dreams bridal wear, who was lucky to have been called away from her shop just before the disaster. Some of you may have seen Doreen in a famous gossip magazine. She’s become quite a celebrity. I’ll be asking about those rumours that one of the cast of EastEnders has commissioned a wedding dress from her new shop. And the Reverend Jonathan Davis, who was such a hero on the day, will be telling us about the work that’s going on to repair the stained-glass windows at St Michael’s Church, which were blown out by the blast at the petrol station. That work, of course, is being funded in part thanks to the hugely successful auction of paintings by local artist Terry Potts, who died when the bridal shop collapsed.
The new bridal shop, by the way, is to be officially opened by the winner of Britain’s Got Talent.
PRESENTER: All this national interest in Heathwick – and it doesn’t end there. We’ve heard that the new edition of Savage Firebrands, the novel by our local author Noel Gilliard, who died in the tragedy, has reached the top of the bestseller list. What a shame he didn’t live to see his publisher re-issue it.
Mr Gilliard’s cat was never found, was it, Donny?
DONNY: No, and of course we still have the mystery of the true identity of the beggar who died outside the bank. I’m sure many of our listeners will recall how he used to sit there telling jokes and asking for money. Sad to say, it turned out that no one knew his real name.
PRESENTER: Perhaps that’s something that will come out in the report of the Commission of Inquiry.
DONNY: I doubt it. There are rumours, you know, that he was a stand-up comedian back in the eighties. His stage name was Dan Moloney. Someone’s put an audio recording of one of his old performances on YouTube. No one seems to know what happened to him since then. Maybe he’s nothing to do with our ‘Matey’, and perhaps he’s still alive. If so, the police want him to come forward so they can move on to other inquiries. Meanwhile they’re asking anyone who might have anything with Dan Moloney’s DNA on it to hand it in. They want to compare it with the DNA of the unidentified man. Perhaps if any of you have information on Dan Moloney, or the man who was known as Matey, you could ring us here at Radio Heathshire or send a text, a tweet or an email.
PRESENTER: You’re doing my job for me, Donny! I’d better let you go before you ask me to give you back the microphone. Thank you for coming to your old studio to tell us what to look out for in the Commission of Inquiry’s report this afternoon.
DONNY: Thank you, too. It’s good to be back.
For the full text of the interim report on the disaster visit www.eleanorupdale.com/minute, where you will also find an archive of Radio Heathshire and newspaper reports on the d
isaster, tributes to many of the victims, and other material relating to the events of 16 December 2011.
About the Author
Eleanor Updale has been writing books since the turn of the century. Before that, she worked in radio and television: mainly on news programmes including The World at One and Newsnight. She is a governor of the children’s charity, Coram, and a member of the Clinical Ethics Committee at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She also has a PhD in History. All those interests have influenced this book. Eleanor’s Montmorency series has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic.
Also by Eleanor Updale
Johnny Swanson
THE LAST MINUTE
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