The Pharmacist

Looking back on that most harrowing of times, so much of the detail is hazy. I remember breaking down and sobbing in Tom’s arms, shouting ‘no’ repeatedly and insisting that the police must be mistaken. Maybe it was someone else’s car, someone else’s family, not mine. These things happened to other people, we watched the reports on the news and shook our heads with sympathy, but it couldn’t happen to us! No, never!

Tom was the one to ask for details, but the officers were unsure as to precisely what had transpired and waffled about ‘blind summits’ and ‘sharp bends’ on what we knew was a notorious stretch of road. I didn’t believe them. James was a careful driver. He would never take risks, not with his wife and family on board – and my daughter, my Jenny. I didn’t want to hear their words, yet perversely I needed to know. My mind was suddenly spinning with horrific images of James’ car leaving the road, rolling over and over, of Jenny, Karen and Beth screaming in wild panic. It was too much. I couldn’t accept it, wouldn’t accept it – but the unmistakable presence of two burly police officers in my home told me that it was true. My daughter, sister and her family were all dead – I would never see them again!

When the police eventually left, we were faced with the nightmare of telling Rachel, who at nine, was old enough to understand what death meant. She would certainly realise that Jenny was never coming home, but how much can a child of that age process? Only time would tell, but I knew losing Jenny would be devastating for Rachel as it was for Tom and me.

Rachel was awake when I went into her room and looked at me with wide, knowing eyes. Whether or not she’d heard the police officers impart the news, I will never know, but her reaction was far from the one I anticipated. Her pale little face reminded me instantly of that baby who’d first come into our lives nine years earlier. She didn’t cry or ask questions but simply turned her face towards the wall and lay utterly still and disconcertingly silent. When I tried to hold her, she stiffened and pulled away from me. I asked her to come downstairs, but she ignored my words.

I left her room, sobbing, and Tom took over, gently explaining to our daughter that we needed to visit her grandparents to tell them the terrible news. Rachel rose then and came downstairs, her eyes glazed and an expression on her young face which I couldn’t fathom, a fusion of despair and anger – and perhaps blame too.

My parents were our next priority. They needed to hear the news from us before it reached them from another source. This unenviable task was perhaps the singular most harrowing undertaking of my life, knowing that their sense of grief would be every bit as acute as my own.

Relying heavily on Tom’s strength, I somehow managed to find the words to impart the awful news, to speak the unspeakable.

As expected, they were devastated – broken. Losing a child is not the natural order of life and in one brief morning, they were robbed of a daughter, a son-in-law and two granddaughters, undoubtedly too great a burden for anyone to bear.

The police employed specialist equipment to recover the charred car from the steep embankment down which it had fallen – a gruesome and delicate operation. My only hope was that the impact had been so sudden and severe that they all died instantly without time to consider their fate. Perhaps a naive assumption but one to which I clung, wringing out of it any possible comfort I could.

Naturally, we tried to protect Rachel from learning the distressing facts of the accident. It was enough for her to cope with the loss without adding to her worries. We, too, tried not to dwell on the detail but couldn’t avoid seeing the shocking images printed in the regional paper. The headlines proclaimed ‘Local GP and Family Wiped Out in Horror Crash.’ I tried not to look, but the photographs of the crash site drew my eyes like a magnet, and for days afterwards, I imagined my daughter inside that twisted, unrecognisable vehicle, taking her last breath without me by her side to hold and comfort her. Guilt became my constant companion, guilt that I wasn’t with her to protect her, and a deep, hollow regret that I’d allowed her out of my sight on that awful day.

As an inquest would be necessary, we feared we may not be allowed to plan a funeral for several weeks, a protracted period we dreaded. However, the coroner, satisfied that the cause of death for all four was the accident, gave permission to hold a funeral once the post mortem examinations were complete. The inquest to determine the cause of the crash would follow at a later date.

Thankfully, this decision was reached within a week and so began the horrendous task of making arrangements to say farewell to our precious, beautiful daughter, my sister and her family. Those first few days were ghastly and I think we all functioned on automatic pilot to get through each difficult day. Sleep refused to offer respite; my dreams were full of images of carnage which remained with me long after I woke.

We held one funeral service for them all, the blackest day of my life, and one I would not wish on anyone. As we walked up the church path, it seemed much longer than on my wedding day. No daffodils heralded better times ahead. They’d withered and died in the heat of summer, like the hope that once lived in my heart. The incline seemed to drag me down, my legs leaden, and tears soaked my cheeks.

In retrospect, the minutiae are blurred, but I do remember St Giles being packed. The whole of Matlock appeared to stand still that day, collectively holding their breath and silent in paying their respects. There was perhaps some slight comfort in feeling the love and warmth of the townspeople, many of whom I’d known all my life.

It was a tragedy like nothing the town had experienced before, and they came in great numbers to show their support. Afterwards, people expressed sympathy and commented on the ‘appropriateness’ of the service, whatever that meant. Yet to me, the singing of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ seemed inappropriate. We were saying goodbye to four of the brightest, most beautiful people I’d ever known. I couldn’t sing that day, nor could my mother, who was weeping inconsolably, or Rachel, who stood, dry-eyed and ramrod straight between Tom and me. It was the very darkest of days.

The inquest into the deaths was held three months later and returned a verdict of accidental death on all four victims. There were no witnesses and a subsequent examination of the wreckage failed to find any mechanical fault. It was nothing short of hell having to sit through the hearing and listen to the doctor describe the injuries that killed each member of my family. My parents were too distressed to attend, for which I was grateful. Learning the details would have devastated them and I certainly wouldn’t have got through it without Tom by my side.

After the summer break, Rachel became withdrawn on her return to school, and her teachers told us that she no longer interacted with the other children. Before Jenny died, she had very few friends and generally played only with her sister, but now it seemed that she wished to have no contact with the others in her class or any of Jenny’s old friends. We arranged counselling sessions, but Rachel refused to engage with the counsellor and their time together was mostly spent in silence. Eventually, we decided to suspend the counselling, hoping she would choose to go back when the time was right. It appeared that whatever we tried was futile. We simply couldn’t reach our daughter.

Tom and I coped by talking to each other. Our pain only fractionally eased in the process. Still, Rachel refused to talk about her sister and went about her life seemingly emotionless, a mundane existence that our love could not begin to penetrate.

We consoled ourselves with the hope that time would heal our daughter. After all, Jenny had brought her out of isolation before; perhaps something or someone else would do the same in the future. There appeared to be little else we could do other than being constant in our love and hope and pray for a miracle.

During one of the lowest points in those dark days after the accident, Tom, who tried so hard to remain strong for Rachel and me, actually verbalised something I’d often thought and for which I’d hated myself. It was early evening, Rachel was upstairs in her room as usual, and Tom and I were clearing the detritus of the evening meal when he suddenly banged his fist on the kitchen table and said, ‘Why did it have to be Jenny who died? Why our own flesh and blood?’ His sudden outburst shocked me as his words fell heavily into the atmosphere. He sobbed bitterly then, tears of shame and guilt – of frustration for being unable to make things right for his family. I wasn’t so much surprised at the words themselves but that he would actually speak them aloud. The very same sentiment had played through my mind on so many occasions since Jenny died, compounding my feelings of inadequacy and guilt. A little voice at the back of my mind repeated frequently, ‘If only it had been Rachel who died that day, and not Jenny…’ but I’d never actually verbalised my unworthy, disgraceful thoughts. To allow them to come out of my mouth would prove, without a doubt, what a wicked person I was. I loathed myself for even thinking them. It appalled me! But no matter how many times I tried to banish the thought, it crept back into the secret recesses of my mind, taking advantage of my weakest moments to pop into my head and fill me with shame and disgrace. I truly was a dreadful mother!

I held my husband then, as silent tears fell from us both, we would get through this, and we would do our best for Rachel. Somehow, we would reach her.