He watched them drive away at dusk that day, down the hill, with the twins in the back turning to wave goodbye.
That summer, when he thought about it after all these years, had passed without the formation of any real memories. He recalled hardly anything from it. The geography research trip to the Brecon Beacons was a blur, the memories malformed, half formed, and not like memories at all but something more akin to a person being aware of experiences that took place in a previous life.
The first time he became aware of a plane crash was when his professor came to get him for the phone call, though even this was unclear.
The plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Manaus and had come down in the rainforest. A remote voice from the ether was telling him – directly, one to one – that 150 souls had been lost. There were just four British nationals on board and all belonged to Sam’s family: his mother, father, Steven and Sally.
It was an impossible thing, hearing this, impossible to grasp the information in the message. He remembered more emotions than events, sitting with the phone at his ear, a physical kind of shock, electric, as though a surge of power had flashed through him, then a feeling of disbelief, the familiar numbing, then panic, horror, anger; all hustling to get front and centre. All these feelings would revisit him later, and for longer periods, but he felt them all in those first few moments, a carcinogenic bubbling tumescence before disbelief won out; they weren’t really on the flight, they had bailed out and were safe in the rainforest, there had been an awful mistake, it was mistaken identity, it was an elaborate prank.
But none of these were the case. They were on the flight and they had all perished. The plane had entered a zone of turbulence and was struck by lightning, igniting a fuel tank, blowing a wing off, and causing catastrophic failure across the whole vessel. It fell seven miles to Earth. Sam had read the reports because his capacity for hope, back then, was undiminished. He devoured article after article, looking for clues as to his family’s survival. Many of the bodies were unidentifiable and some completely vaporised by the fires. And if this was the case, and a true body count was impossible, then surely some people might conceivably have survived and walked away. There were rare cases where people had survived mid-air plane crashes by simply falling out of the thing before it hit the ground. It was rare but it was possible.
The local press took a melancholic angle on the story, focusing on Sam, lonely Sam Holloway who had lost his whole family. Cut adrift. He didn’t reply to any of the offers for an interview. It was all pointless anyway; his family would eventually return.
Even after the funerals he couldn’t bring himself to believe it was true, that they were truly and eternally gone. He pictured them trekking through the Amazon jungle, his mother identifying the plants and animals, Sally quietly digesting the information, Big Steve feeling the texture of waxy leaves between his thumb and forefinger, his father foraging for their meals, a real Swiss Family Robinson adventure. They were easy thoughts, benevolent, a kindly offering from his mind to his soul. It couldn’t be true that they’d burnt to death in a falling aeroplane.
The reaction of his hometown was kind. His parents’ friends visited with cards and offers of help, and it was during these visits that Sam was thankful for the internal numbness acting as a great wall, deflecting everything the world threw at him.
At night though, when the phone calls stopped and the visitors left, the numbness would crack open and the fingers of truth grasped at him through the slits. A great hand was tugging at his centre. His entire family were gone and he was alone. Alone in the house, he watched his mother walk across the carpets, Big Steve sitting in the corners, Sally smiling at him, his father reading newspapers. The visions became so vivid, it was as if the images he superimposed on reality were actually happening.
Time after time he asked the same question: How could this happen? And the cruel, uncomplicated answer kept coming back: Because it just has. In one awful moment everyone he loved had been wiped off the face of the earth.
As he told her all this, Sarah said nothing. She put her hand over her mouth, and though tears lensed her eyes they didn’t break.
‘Sam,’ she said at last. ‘I’m so sorry. God . . . I – I don’t know what to say.’
He shrugged and reached for his wine glass on the table, but when he tried to lift it he realised he was shaking.
‘Are you OK?’
He couldn’t look at her all of a sudden.
‘Yeah I ju—’ He stopped himself. His voice had caught. ‘I’ve never told anyone this before. Sorry.’
‘Hey, don’t say sorry.’ Her voice a soft song.
She put her hand on the top of his arm, and he started. The wine sloshed over the top of his glass on to the table. Sarah jumped up.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll get a cloth.’
‘Shit, sorry,’ he said, upset. ‘I’m gonna just . . . Can I use the bathroom?’
He swung his head around and caught a glimpse of her and the two tears that had run down her cheeks, which she wiped away with the back of her hand.
In the bathroom he pulled on the light cord and took a massive breath. There was a tiny wood-framed window with a little spider living in a web in the corner. His breathing was erratic. He thought he could just tell her and it would be fine. It had felt right. He hadn’t expected for it to be like this. He thought he’d be able to handle it but he couldn’t. His mind was swimming.
In the weeks and months after the accident Sam had isolated himself. The house was making him sick but he couldn’t bring himself to leave it. Offers of counselling were rejected and after a time Sam had grown weary of people’s offerings of help. In his mind he was readying himself for dealing with what had happened, but he wanted to do it the same way he wanted to do everything: alone. He’d unplugged the landline and refused to answer the door. He’d switched off his mobile and didn’t use the Internet.
His friends had found it hard. Socially awkward, emotionally immature, they could not engage with his family’s death head-on. They showed their support by taking him to the pub, the cinema, board-game nights in the local community centre. But this just made him feel guilty, guilty for going on living when his family could not. And he hated how quiet he was, how unable to participate, as though his energy core had lost its fuel, and how he was nothing but a burden, a bore.
In those few weeks, with the latticework skeleton of family gone, everything else in his life fell apart. And now, having spoken about it out loud for the first time, everything felt weird. He felt untethered, but not in a good way. He splashed cold water on his face and inspected himself in the mirror. What would they make of him? His parents. How disappointed would they be by the coward staring back from the mirror?
Back in the living room Sarah had brought the bottle of wine over and refilled the glasses.
‘Hey,’ she said, looking at him over the back of the sofa.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Listen. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all that. I don’t know why I did it.’
‘Sam, don’t be silly.’
‘I think I’m gonna go.’
‘I’ve just poured you a new glass of wine,’ she said.
He smiled but didn’t move, and there was a long silence. He really couldn’t handle this. He reached for a way but there was nothing.
‘OK,’ she said, at last.
The whole thing seemed staged, somehow. The room shook with the passing of a train, and he thought of that day in his past when they’d waved to him from the back of the car as they’d driven away. Steve and Sally smiling, two little kids with so much love in their hearts. It had been the last time he’d ever seen them. Before his world broke in half.