I stay, staring down at the place, while emergency services arrive and the police begin questioning witnesses, wanting to know if anyone knew the identity of the occupants of the vehicle. I have a weird sense of shame, as though I’ve failed them. I lacked the power to stop them. I didn’t have their guts, their courage. I couldn’t live with either of them, or die like them. I am alive, I survived. I feel relief and guilt in equal measure and find I am crying, sobbing, and the tears will not stop. I see someone in the crowd point me out to a young policewoman. She comes over and asks me gently, ‘What happened to you? Were you involved in the accident?’
I nod, unable to speak.
‘Did you see what happened? Did you know the driver?’
I nod again, tell her my brother was also in the car. Tell her there is something else that they have to know.
She leads me by the arm to her senior officer. There’s an inflatable recovery boat being brought down to the water, police divers checking their equipment. I have to stop them, warn them about the bomb. I think they won’t believe me, but they take my warning seriously. The whole thing escalates from tragic accident to terrorist incident in an instant. Work is halted, the whole area is cordoned off, bomb disposal arrive. Divers are sent down. The car is brought up, it stands, shrouded in a white tent, the occupants still inside it, while experts work to defuse the bomb.
A paramedic sees to my cut, cleans me up, then I’m taken to the police station and questioned for a long time. I stick to my story that Caro was a hostage, we were both innocents with no idea what Rob was planning. No one will ever know for sure what sent them plunging into the river, but everyone believes that it was Caro, that she chose to sacrifice her own life to save others. It has turned her into a heroine.