This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (15 page)

xxvii.  This section redacted at the request of the relevant security services.

xxviii.  This section redacted at the request of the relevant security services.

xxix.  The appellants’ chronology is inconsistent with the historical record here, although it should be noted that such confusion on the part of returning refugees is not unusual. It appears likely that the appellants spent a period of eight or nine years (following the five years in the area of Sangatte) in a series of displaced persons camps in the Netherlands. Their return to the former UK appears to have been prompted by the Dutch government’s declaration that the draft peace agreement was in force and that displaced persons would no longer be supported within the territory of the Netherlands. It is likely that the appellants’ return was via one of the cargo ships which was utilised for mass repatriation at this time, disembarking at Tilbury (which was held, under the terms of the draft peace agreement, by opposition groups).

xxx.  The following extract from a widely circulated public information sheet on internal travel, archived during the later stages of the period in question, may serve to illuminate this section of the appellants’ testimony: ‘
When declaring a lift-share request, choose a spot where approaching vehicles have both sufficient time to see you and sufficient space to stop safely. Consider routes leading away from the roadside in the event of possible threat. Make eye contact with passing drivers, but maintain a neutral expression. Be patient. Once a lift has been offered, briefly discuss your destination and that of the driver’s while assessing the condition of the vehicle and state of the driver and other occupants. Whilst in the vehicle, make light conversation as prompted by the driver, taking care to avoid politics, religion or the recent security situation. Familiarise yourself with the door and window mechanisms adjacent to your seat; if the central locking has been activated you may still be able to effect an exit using the window.
’

xxxi.  This section redacted at the request of the relevant security services.

xxxii.  This seems likely. Assuming the appellants’ lift-share arrangement left them deposited at the Newark/Winthorpe junction, Bassingham would have been approximately ten miles distant, well within the scope of a day’s walk if taking a route via Stapleford Wood and Norton Disney. However, given the changes in the local landscape (felled trees, demolished or partly destroyed buildings, new and significantly enlarged watercourses, earthworks, embankments, etc) which would have taken place during the fourteen years of the appellants’ absence, the complex access-rights situation, and the expansion of military bases in the area, the appellants’ claim that this journey took three days is presumed valid for the purposes of this appeal.

xxxiii.  Reference to the military training area which spreads north from the A17 along both banks of the River Witham.

xxxiv.  Aerial surveillance records have confirmed that on this date there was in fact a house on the northern outskirts of Bassingham to which banners and ribbons had been fastened and in which an irregular number of persons had gathered. Haddington, of course, was not habitable at this time.

xxxv.  Note that in common with many appellants and their dependants, a confusion has arisen here between military personnel and host officers from the security services. Records confirm that interception in this case was carried out by the latter.

xxxvi.  This section redacted at the request of the relevant security services.

xxxvii.  The appellants appear unaware at this point that further appeal against the secure relocation process has been refused.

xxxviii.  This section redacted at the request of the relevant security services.

xxxix.  This section redacted at the request of the relevant security services.

xl.  Disputed by Prisoner J.

Thoughtful

Newark

She threw her pint glass across the garden and told him to just shut up. She threw the ashtray as well. Bloody just shut up, she told him. He looked at her. He didn’t say anything. He moved his drink away from her side of the table. She stood up and went to fetch the pint glass and the ashtray, tucking them both under her arm while she plucked the cigarette-ends from the damp grass and collected them in the palm of her hand.

She was thoughtful like that.

The Singing

Thurlby

She lay very still, trying not to let the sound of the singing slip away. It was so vivid, and yet so distant. This kept happening. She could never make out the words, if there were any, nor even quite a tune. She wasn’t sure, really, whether it could properly be called singing. The sound was almost beyond hearing, but it seemed to bear some relation to falling drops of water, or to something molten. Something whispered, or filled with breath. She thought it was probably beautiful, and she missed it as soon as it was gone. This was what happened. She lay very still. She listened. She could hear her own breathing. The sound of the hot water in the central-heating pipes. The rush of passing vehicles on the road. A tractor in the fields. Nothing that sounded like a song. It was gone already. It would bother her now for the rest of the day, she knew. Her chest ached from the effort of holding it still. Her eyes felt as though they’d been weighed shut, pressed down with balls of cold dough and pennies. She tried to move her fingers. They felt rigid. She heard her breath like a whisper. She felt her blood moving thickly through her.

She had expected days like this, to begin with. That would seem to be the way things were. But she hadn’t expected these days to continue for as long as they had, or to come so often and with such weight. She had thought she would find a way to accommodate this. But instead it had only seemed to grow.

She stood at the window. The light outside was thin. The cars on the road came one at a time, with great spaces between them, moving too quickly, and the sounds they left behind were like smears. The light seemed to tremble in the distance, towards the horizon, where the day had already begun. She could see dust rising behind a line of tractors, where they were ploughing in the stubble. She could see birds heading out towards the sea. She thought she could see flames from a burning barn or haystack, but she couldn’t be sure.

She turned back into the room. It was quiet. There were so many things to be done, and no one now to do them for.

Wires

Messingham

It was a sugar-beet, presumably, since that was a sugar-beet lorry in front of her and this thing turning in the air at something like sixty miles an hour had just fallen off it. It looked like a giant turnip, and was covered in mud, and basically looked more or less like whatever she would have imagined a sugar-beet to look like if she’d given it any thought before now. Which she didn’t think she had. It was totally filthy. They didn’t make sugar out of that, did they? What did they do, grind it? Cook it?

Regardless, whatever, it was coming straight for her.

Meaning this was, what, one of those time-slows-down moments or something. Her life was presumably going to start flashing in front of her eyes right about now. She wondered why she hadn’t screamed or anything. ‘Oh’ seemed to be about as much as she’d managed. But in the time it had taken to say ‘Oh’ she’d apparently had the time to make a list of all the things she was having the time to think about, like, ie
Item One
, how she’d said ‘Oh’ without any panic or fear, and did that mean she was repressed or just calm or collected or what;
Item Two
, what would Marcus say when he found out, would he try and find someone to blame, such as herself for driving too close or even for driving on her own at all, or such as the lorry driver for overloading the lorry, or such as her, again, for not having joined the union like he’d told her to, like anyone was in a union these days, especially anyone with a part-time job who was still at uni and not actually all that bothered about pension rights or legal representation;
Item Three
, but she couldn’t possibly be thinking all this in the time it was taking for the sugar-beet to turn in the air and crash through the windscreen, if that’s what it was going to do, and what then, meaning this must be like a neural-pathway illusion or something;
Item Four
, actually Marcus did go on sometimes, he did reckon himself, and how come she thought things like that about him so often, maybe she was being unfair, because they were good together, people had told her they were good together, but basically she was confused and she didn’t know where she stood;
Item Five
, a witty and deadpan way of mentioning this on her status update would be something like, Emily Wilkinson is sweet enough already thanks without a sugar-beet in the face, although actually she wouldn’t be able to put that, if that’s what was actually going to happen, thinking about it logically;
Item Six
, although did she really even know what a neural pathway was, or was it just something she’d heard someone else talk about and decided to start saying?

Item Seven
was just, basically, wtf.

Meanwhile: before she had time to do anything useful, like eg swerve or brake or duck or throw her arms up in front of her face, the sugar-beet smashed through the windscreen and thumped into the passenger seat beside her. There was a roar of cold air. And now she swerved, only now, once there was no need and it just made things more dangerous, into the middle lane and back again into the slow lane. It was totally instinctive, and totally useless, and basically made her think of her great-grandad saying God help us if there’s a war on. She saw other people looking at her, or she thought she did, all shocked faces and big mouths; a woman pulling at her boyfriend’s arm and pointing, a man swearing and reaching for his phone, another man in a blue van waving her over to the hard shoulder. But she might have imagined this, or invented it afterwards. Marcus was always saying that people didn’t look at her as much as she thought they did. She never knew whether he meant this to reassure her or if he was saying she reckoned herself too much.

Anyway. Point being. Status update: Emily Wilkinson is still alive.

She pulled over to the hard shoulder and came to a stop. The blue van pulled over in front of her. She put her hazard lights on and listened to the clicking sound they made. When she looked up the people in the passing cars already had no idea what had happened. The drama was over. The traffic was back to full speed, the lorry was already miles down the road. She wondered if she was supposed to start crying. She didn’t feel like crying.

Someone was standing next to the car. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. He peered in at her through the hole in the windscreen. He looked like a mechanic or a breakdown man or something. He was wearing a waxed jacket with rips in the elbows, and jeans. He looked tired; his eyes were puffy and dark and his breathing was heavy. He rested his hand on the bonnet and leaned in closer. ‘Bloody
hell
,’ he said again, raising his voice against the traffic; ‘you all right, love?’ She smiled, and nodded, and shrugged, which was weird, which meant was she for some reason apologising for his concern? ‘
Bloody
hell,’ he said for a third time. ‘You could have been killed.’

Thanks. Great. This was, what, news?

She looked down at the sugar-beet, which was sitting on a heap of glass on the passenger seat beside her. The bits of glass were small and lumpy, like gravel. She noticed more bits of glass on the floor, and the dashboard, and spread across her lap. She noticed that her left arm was scratched, and that she was still holding on to the steering wheel, and that maybe she wasn’t breathing quite as much as she should have been, although that happened whenever she thought about her breathing, it going wrong like that, too deep or too shallow or too quick, although that wasn’t just her though, surely, it was one of those well-known paradoxes, like a Buddhist thing or something. Total mindlessness. Mindfulness. Just breathe.

‘The police are on their way,’ someone else said. She looked up and saw another man, a younger man in a sweatshirt and jeans, holding up a silver phone. ‘I just called the police,’ he said. ‘They’re on their way.’ He seemed pleased to have a phone with him, the way he was holding it, like this was his first one or something. Which there was no way. His jeans had grass-stains on the knees, and his boots were thick with mud.

‘You called them, did you?’ the older man asked. The younger man nodded, and put his phone in his pocket, and looked at her. She sat there, waiting for the two of them to catch up. Like: yes, a sugar-beet had come through the windscreen; no, she wasn’t hurt; yes, this other guy did phone the police. Any further questions? I can email you the notes? The younger man looked through the hole in the windscreen, and at the windscreen itself, and whistled. Actually whistled: this long descending note like the sound-effect of a rock falling towards someone’s head in an old film. What was that?

‘You all right?’ he asked her. ‘You cut or anything? You in shock?’ She shook her head. Not that she knew how she would know she was in shock. She was pretty sure one of the symptoms of being in shock would be not thinking you were in shock. Like with hypothermia, when you take off your clothes and roll around laughing in the snow. She’d read that somewhere. He looked at the sugar-beet and whistled again. ‘I mean,’ he said, and now she didn’t know if he was talking to her or to the other man; ‘that could’ve been fatal, couldn’t it?’ The other man nodded and said something in agreement. They both looked at her again. ‘You could have been killed,’ the younger man said. It was good of him to clarify that for her. She wondered what she was supposed to say. They looked as if they were waiting for her to ask something, to ask for help in some way.