The Turkish doctor managed to remove most of the shrapnel but he told me there was one sliver that was almost impossible to get to. I didn’t care. I was alive; I could cope with an injured knee. The rest of the camp wasn’t so lucky. The whole of the north-west side was obliterated in the blast. I had been on the southern edge of the camp by the fence, well away from the centre of the explosion. Even so, it had still lifted me off my feet and I was knocked unconscious. I remember coming to and wondering where I was. In those first few moments I was sure that I was dead and I’d somehow emerged in an apocalyptic afterlife. But as I staggered to my feet and looked around I saw that this was real and it was worse than any hell I could ever have imagined.
My knee was bleeding badly as I limped towards the remains of the camp, calling out for someone, anyone. But the silence of the dead burned like a gas and rose in smoky plumes from the centre of the camp. Body parts were scattered across the smouldering field and an emaciated dog, following the scent of fresh blood, had begun to feast on the remains of the dead. It looked like the end of the world.
I stood for a moment watching a group of men who had just arrived on the scene. They started sifting through a mound of shredded canvas – all that was left of the tents. Their faces were twisted with exhaustion as they searched for survivors.
I should have stayed. It was the right thing to do, the decent thing to do, but I knew I had to get out. I’d known it in the moments before the explosion when I heard my mother’s voice. This was not my battle now. I was needed elsewhere. As I stepped across the remains of the clinic I heard a child screaming for its mother, but it wasn’t coming from the camp. It was coming from inside my head, from the place where memory is lodged.
Something evil was festering in that house. I’d sensed it, heard it, seen it with my own eyes. My poor mother had done the same. And both of us thought we were going mad. I knew as I stood in that field of death that I needed to follow the child’s screams and try to put things right.
Miraculously Hassan had missed the bomb too. He had been delivering aid to a district on the east side of the city when it hit. He returned and found me dazed and wandering around in circles through the dust. When I saw him walking towards me I thought he was a ghost, and I collapsed in a heap by his feet. He picked me up, put me in his car and at my insistence drove me to the Turkish border. We arrived at sunset and he took me to a medical centre where he urged me to get my leg treated. At the hospital I made Hassan promise me that if anyone asked he would tell them I’d been killed in the blast. I knew I would have to fall off the radar if I had any chance of returning to Herne Bay. I handed him a pile of my things: notes, Dictaphones, my press pass, and told him to send them on to Harry and tell him they were found in the ruins. It had to look like I was dead. Poor Hassan stared at me as though I were mad, but when I told him I was doing this to save my family, he asked no more questions. For Hassan, loyalty to friends and family is all. He got me some clothes to wear – traditional Islamic dress – and arranged for a contact of his to smuggle me back through Turkey and on into Europe.
‘For now,’ he said as he waved me off, ‘Kate Rafter is gone. I tell them you’re Rima. I give you my mother’s name. For luck.’
I stand up and slowly make my way to the station exit, making sure I keep my hood low over my eyes. The place is quiet. Just a smattering of people, mainly tourists, congregate inside the ticket hall. As I pass the newspaper stand I see my photograph staring out at me. I stop and pick up a copy.
HERNE BAY REPORTER NOW PRESUMED DEAD, screams the headline. It is an odd sensation to read of your own death. My stomach feels hollow as the enormity of what I have done dawns on me.
I go into the toilet and read the piece. In it Harry is quoted as saying I was the finest foreign correspondent of my generation and even Graham bloody Turner gets a look in, describing me as ‘Brilliant and brave. A reporter who never lost her nerve.’
‘Bastard,’ I mutter to myself as I shove it in the toilet bin and head for the exit. He wasn’t saying that a few weeks ago when he went crying to Harry, saying I was a liability. His testimony could have got me incarcerated and I will never forgive him.
As I step outside I take a moment to decide what to do. I haven’t thought beyond this moment – arriving in Herne Bay. If I had a key for my mother’s house I could go there to wait and watch but I gave it back to Paul when I left. Part of me wants to go straight round to number 44 and confront Fida and her husband, but is that wise on my own? No, the best thing to do is to find Paul. I have to trust that he won’t tell the police I’m back until we’ve done what we need to do. He’ll probably be at work at this time of day, though, and it’s miles away.