Becky

I suppose you could say it all started when the London Eye fell. Unlike the usual somewhat theatrical tendencies that went alongside Acts of Terror, the great mass of a metal wheel splashed into the Thames at 3.52am on August 17th 2017 and no one was there. Only a few people noticed straight away; the early morning joggers, the pissheads, the pigeons. And then the authorities. It was all over the news first thing of course, spreading across all of London like it was trying to push the perimeters of the screens wider with its importance. This was vast end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it type news.

I think I first caught it on the BBC around 10. I'd had a lie in cause of a late shift the night before. I was living in a warehouse at the time and woke up with a stronger than usual imagined smell of coffee in my nostrils. I followed the craving to the kitchen and there it was. All of my "housemates" were gathering around the TV like a shrine. It was the most silent we had all collectively been. Tina's usually on page 2 of her "I haven't prepared it, honest!" stand-up routine by now. But today her hands were glued over her mouth, her dark morning eyes wide, staring. I have never seen her eyes look truer with the pure unprepared emotion of utter fear.

They played CCTV footage on loop of the slow motion (painfully slow) fall of the Eye. Someone told me once that the money invested in it was made back every four rotations. Mad. So it wasn't just the structure or the economical loss we were mourning, it was the uneasiness of this ambiguous act. No one had died, it hadn’t happened in the middle of the day on a crowded summer Southbank. Why? What were they doing? It was almost more unnerving the prospect of a twisted plot in the making. It felt like a warning.

After twenty minutes or so there was no new information. I largely kept silent. People have a tendency in a crisis to become absolutely identical. What use is it to say "terrible news!", "3.52 in the morning?" and "thank God no one was hurt"? These were all incredibly obvious reactions. Not that I'm suggesting these aren't universal truths, but don't bother saying them. So I watched the news, looked somber, had my coffee, and got ready for work.

Five months later I was still working at Somerset house as a gallery coordinator. Hilarious job title. I'm one of those people that stands in the corner of the room looking bored and sporadically staring at you until I freak you out. It's a pretty dull job, but flexible and allows me to write songs in my head all day. Some days though, nothing will come or you don't want to be imaginative and that's when those hours really drag. They're bad ones, and it's very hard to shake yourself out of them.

I had moved the November before to a three bedroom flat in Balham. One girl I knew vaguely from a few years ago, and the other her friend. The days of finding it fun and hip to live with fifteen other arty annoying people were done. I'm 28 now, I wanna have my coffee and granola in the morning in peace. Yes I eat granola. With almond milk. Go ahead, judge me.

So it's February 8th, I'm walking up the Strand to work from Charing Cross and it's bearable because it's 11.00. The perfect time to miss the rush hour morning and the rush hour lunch and ease into the day feeling smug you don't play to any of the normal people's time frames. And not feeling as smug walking past Topshop knowing you could only afford a pair of practical but inevitably “funky” and “fun” pop socks.

It's very cold, seeing as we've apparently passed through the worst of the winter months. I thought I was being clever with my apparel today, wearing for the first time a snood my Aunty Cathy bought me for Christmas. They're "very in" she'd told me at the time, as I incessantly searched for the ends and the tassels. No tassels. It just goes round and round. So cold was it (even on the tube) that I had wound it one too many times. Now it had gone past any kind of possible fashionable label and looked more like I had an incredibly thick stiff lilac neck. At one point, I had a macabre thought that the snood was in fact completely holding me up, and once I unwound it, my head would simply flop off. Smiling at the secrets in my head that no one could get to, I picked up the pace and soon clocked in at work.

11.30 brief meant doing lunch breaks. Over quickly this shift, but you spend a whole day's energy and earn... too depressing. Fred was on, he's always a laugh if occasionally slipping into the  irritating sector of my unforgiving brain. And Anna as well. Anna never said much but was one of those people I just intrinsically liked. Couldn't tell you why. We were given our rotations, a quick brief and off we went. Fred was being very friendly today, and had that annoying habit of still talking, joking, shouting after you when had actually had to walk away. So awkward that, I really didn't wanna be rude, but I had to go and do my job now. Breathing a sigh of relief as I turned the corner and was released from laughing and "yeah"s, Anton stood looking broodingly at the floor. I tried to arrange my face imperceptibly on the thin line between sultry and warm.

"Hiya Anton, I'm here to save you," I said, determined to pass some cheer on today.

"Thanks Becky" he said.

Have I told you my name's Becky? Sorry, I have a habit of missing important details out of stories. Not that I'm particularly important, snood or no snood. But yeah, Hi, I'm Becky, back to Anton.

"Been busy?"

I hate myself for asking such a mundane, obvious question but I kind of have an absurd crush on Anton so wanna keep him chatting. Absurd in that the future would us be never talking and feeling awkward, so not quite the ingredients for life-long happiness. Damn that intriguing brooding quality which is so attractive and ultimately completely useless. My downfall over and over.

"It's been fine, yeah" he said. Not a sniff.

"Great, I look forward to my half an hour in the red room then!"

"What?"

"From Jane Eyre. You know when she's... Banished to the red room. Cause - all the photos in here are kind of red..."

"Oh right yeah"

"Good book"

"Not read it"

"Cool."

I think he thought I was gonna say something else, but I'd admitted defeat that the above had definitely been our incredible world-changing full of sparks and fireworks converse of the day. When he left, I breathed a sigh of relief that I couldn't fuck up anymore. Well, at least not for another 30 minutes. It's so much safer being on your own.

The red room (I giggled to myself at my own genius) was pretty small, pretty grim.  I didn't really know much about photography to be honest, I just fell into here and it seemed no better or worse than anywhere else. So yeah. The first ten minutes of my shift passed calmly, I even came up with a half decent melody for a chorus of a folk song I'd been thinking about. As always when this happens, I reached for my pen and paper at the speed of light to get it down. Ideas are slippy and you've got to focus and write incredibly quickly.

When I looked up again there was a boy in the room. It made me jump slightly cause I hadn’t seen him come in, but I don't think he noticed. I say boy - he was probably about 16 or so.

I smiled at him as I like to do. My little triumph at making everyone feel included in the arts and challenging pre-conceptions. It's the little things for me.

He didn't smile back. He stared at me for a moment too long with a  purposeful look in his eyes. Just before he broke the gaze, there was a subtle but unnerving look of the crazed about him.

He looked at the first photograph. I could tell from his back that he wasn't looking at it at all. I see that kind of back all too often. Young couples on early dates, old couples happy to be out the house, children dragged along by fiercely cultured parents. Always the inert back, as if standing really still will actually help them be affected by the art in front of them.

I was on edge and I couldn't tell you why. I was annoyed at myself for being on edge, following my own stupid judgements I judge so much in others. But I watched him very carefully, all dreams of remembering the folk melody gone. That could have been my breakthrough hit, I laughed bitterly to myself.

He walked fast and sharp to the next photo. Did the same absent stare. Took out his phone. It was only when I saw him hold his phone that I saw how much he was shaking. His hands were a slightly grey-ish brown, and the tremor was unmistakable. He reached into his bag.

"Don't do it"

He physically collapsed into himself at the sound of my voice. It looked like the vertebrae of his spine slid out one by one and he could only just keep himself up.

He turned around to face me, and then I must admit, I felt fear like I'd never known.

His face. His poor young petrified face. His hair was dipped in sweat, his cheeks sallow and his eyes threw themselves into every angle of the room. I had never seen a face so scared, so desperate.

"Don't do it," I said again in a gentler tone.

What 'it' was I didn't dare to think about, but I knew. I was in history right now. This was an Act of Terror and it was my job to stop it. How I had made this unflinchingly bold conclusion you may wonder. I have no answer for you. I just knew. I suppose if you'd seen this boy's eyes, maybe you'd have just known too.

"I am dead now," he said in a voice I don't like to think about too much. Describing it would bring it too far forward in my mind, which I can't handle, so imagine it yourselves.

"No no no" I had no idea what I was saying "no, you're not. You've done nothing. I will protect you." What on earth I thought I could have done I will never know. Words spilled out and I hoped they were good ones. I hoped they were enough. "I promise you, I will help you, the police-"

"Not police. Them. I am dead."

I rushed over to him. To do what? To hold his hand, tell him everything would be OK? This was a scale of trauma and life that my mini Bradford-born brain couldn't fathom. But I had to help him. That's all I knew.

A snapping sound. He died incredibly quickly, when I was only about a meter away from him. The scream that came from me fell out of every single pore. I looked around. There was no one there. He fell onto a photo and took it with him, the red of the print flowing seamlessly into the real darker than red blood now making a lake across the floor.

Other staff ran into the room. Apparently I kept screaming. A 16 year old boy had just died in front of me, by some mechanical remote group of people who had the power to flick a switch, stop his heart, and down he fell. For some reason I couldn't accept that he had died. I didn't know this boy, but he seemed to represent that I'd failed. Later, people would tell me that I'd saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. I couldn't find peace in that. This boy, I felt sure, had endured terrible hardship, pressure, stress, poverty, loss of family, maybe indoctrination, maybe brainwashing, torture, I don’t know. It's hard to know.

But his voice. There has never been a voice more filled with remorse and fear as well as a deep longing for a painless peaceful life. The grit of an acceptance of heart-break, the wobble of the child he could never be, the low tones of a happier life he could never even bare to imagine.

There. You've made me describe it. Are you happy?

A lot of people talked about why they didn't set off the bomb remotely too, instead of (or as well as) killing him. They clearly had the power to do so. I don't know if we'll ever know why. Timing, or the element of surprise, or letting something else build.

I moved back to Bradford. London was too much for me after that. I talked about it a bit too much, my mum said, but I thought that was a positive thing. Maybe it was hard for her to hear it all the time, in various degrees of description depending on the day.

I thought about trying to find out more about the boy. But after all the press and police and stress and move, I needed to try and move on. I couldn't help him. And it wouldn't help me to keep re-living the past. My failure.

But at least I wrote this story. This one's for him.