Chris Cleave - Incendiary

They reckoned what happened was that 11 of your men got into the ground with bombs under their Arsenal shirts. They had season tickets for seats in the East Stand. When van Persie took his shot on the volley everyone in the East Stand jumped up. The real Arsenal fans were shouting YES! but your men were shouting ALLAH AKBAR! The police played the TV pictures back frame by frame so they could read their lips.

Your men pulled the triggers on their bombs. 6 of them were wearing fragmentation bombs and the other 5 were wearing incendiaries. It had never been done before the experts said they were the most terrible suicide bombs ever used in the history of the world. They must of looked huge under those Arsenal shirts but nobody would of said anything except maybe oi you fatty guess who ate all the pies. There’s a lot of beer bellies in the Gunners fan club you see. Well I suppose there’s a lot less now.

They reckon maybe 200 people died straight away blown to bits by the fragmentation bombs. I hope my husband and my boy were part of that 200. That’s a funny thing to say isn’t it Osama? When I was growing up in the East End me and the other girls used to push our dolls around the streets in tiny little prams and pretend they were our real babies. I don’t recall us ever wishing they would get blown to bits by fragmentation bombs. I don’t think that was how the game ended ever. But that is what I hope. I hope my chaps died straight away. One second thinking YES! and the next second thinking nothing much. Because the 200 people who died straight away didn’t have to suffer. 803 other poor sods didn’t have it so easy.

After the first blast anyone who could still run did run. There was a stampede. People were legging it in all directions. Even the ones who had small bits blown off them like noses and hands and whatnot. There was phosphorus raining down all around. It set fire to the seats. To the stands. To the clothes and skin and fat of the fallen bodies. There was an inferno. They reckon maybe 500 people were crushed and burned to death while fire rained down on the East Stand. And that left 303 people still to die.

The hospital porters said that after the first ambulances started to arrive they had to borrow rubber boots from the operating block. They would swing open the ambulance doors and the blood would be an inch deep on the floor. They said some of the things that arrived on the ambulance stretchers didn’t really look like anything.

Only 2 people died not at the ground or walking away from it or in the ambulances or in the hospitals. Quite near the stadium they found a couple of Chelsea fans hanging from a big old Victorian lamppost. They were strung up very high with electrical cord around their necks. You must of seen them Osama. They were in all the papers swinging very slow and peaceful in their blue shirts against the blue sky once the smoke had cleared. They stayed up there for the whole of that long sunny May evening. The authorities had to clear away all the abandoned motors before they could bring in the cherry-picker crane to take them down. While they were waiting for the crane to come the police sent a marksman to shoot the seagulls that wanted to eat the dead men’s eyes. Nobody ever found out who strung those men up there.

It took a few weeks before it wasn’t just May Day on the radio. Then some of the normal programmes came back but even the normal programmes weren’t normal any more. Every day they put The Archers on in the ward but even The Archers kept banging on about May Day. It’s funny Osama but the first time I realised May Day was actually real was when I heard Eddie Grundy sitting on his tractor and moaning about it.

By that time anyone who was going to die had died and now it was time for us that were left to get better. I had a broken knee and a broken hand but the doctors said it was my internal injuries meant I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. So I lay there day after day watching the relatives coming on to the ward to visit their loved ones. Some of the relatives looked happy when they visited but some of them were heavy with sadness and you could tell their next visit was a grave. Then there was a third kind of visitor and they were the unhappiest of all because they weren’t visiting anyone in particular. They were looking for a relative that was listed missing. They came like ghosts outside normal visiting hours and their eyes stared very hard at each of us ladies on the ward. You could see them patiently trying to turn our faces into the ones they were missing. Even through all the painkillers it made me cry Osama I would of given anything to look like their missing relative just for 1 second just to give us all a moment’s hope.

The day they told me my husband and my boy were definitely dead was the day Prince William came to visit. The nurses were excited. They ran up and down the ward changing our sheets. Men in suits came with mirrors on sticks. They went along the whole ward looking under our beds for bombs. A photographer came and he put a gadget up to my face.

—What’s that?

—It’s a light meter madam, he said. You’re too pale.

—My husband and my boy are missing. You’d be pale too.

The photographer ignored me.

—Please can you get this one some makeup? he said.

A leggy girl came over. She had a long plastic case like the box my husband used to keep his fishing tackle in. She put it down on my bed and opened it up. There was a whole makeup studio in there. She gave me some foundation and then she did my eyes and my lips.

—There, she said. You look lovely. Fit for a prince.

Now 2 men on ropes came down the outside of the building. They washed the windows so clean you couldn’t tell they were there. A doctor wheeled in some big shiny medical contraptions with lots of flashing lights. He put one next to each of the beds on the ward. When he plugged in the machine next to my bed I propped myself up on my elbow to look at it. The doctor blinked at me.

—What does that do?

—It shows that the NHS is fully equipped for the 21st century, he said.

—Are you going to connect me to it?

—Not unless you’re planning on having renal failure, he said. It’s a kidney dialysis machine.

The doctor nodded at me and went off to install the next machine at the next bed. The nurses were frantic by now. They kept popping off to the night station to do their own makeup. They forgot to give us our painkillers. 4 coppers in uniform came on the ward. They stood by the doors. They had curly wires going into their ears. Their eyes were all over the place. Everyone went quiet. Now we were just waiting for Prince William. Then a woman came. She walked straight over to my bed with everyone’s eyes following her. This woman wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. She was wearing an ordinary tweed suit it made me nervous. She pulled the modesty curtain around my bed.

—Hello there, she said.

—What are you pulling that curtain for?

—Well, she said. I’m doing it because I have some news I’m afraid. I thought you might appreciate a little privacy.

—Is it my husband and my boy? Have you found which hospital they’re in?

The woman shook her head. She was middle-aged. 50 maybe or 60. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

—They’re not in any hospital, she said.

—Well then. Just tell me where they are. I’m nearly better. I should think the doctors will let me go home soon. My boy’ll be missing me and I bet he’s not eating properly. I mean he’s a good eater but you have to cook his greens just right or he won’t touch them. Kids eh?

I laughed but the woman didn’t. She just looked at the floor. She swallowed. She looked back up at me. Now she looked 500 or maybe 600 years old.