Brian Stuart drove the lorry that crushed my mum’s car. Did I hate him? Yes, I did. And then the inquiry said he was blameless. And I saw that photograph of him in the local paper. He didn’t look like he had got away with anything. He didn’t seem relieved or pleased or vindicated. He looked like it hurt him to be here, like he was thinking about what had happened every second.
The paper said which lorry firm he worked for and one day, a week after the inquiry, I went to their depot. I wanted to see him, to watch him. I stood across the road from the depot, at the bus stop, pretending to wait for a bus. I saw him almost straight away. He was sat in a Portakabin speaking on the radio. I watched him for a few days and saw that he would spray the lorries down when they came back at the end of a shift. He seemed very quiet. There was a lot of shouting from driver to driver but he never raised his voice. He didn’t join in. I never saw him speak more than a few words to anyone and I never saw him drive. He moved slowly, like his bones hurt, like he had flu. Quite a few times when I went down after school he wouldn’t be there at all. Sometimes I wouldn’t see him for days in a row. Then he would come back, even thinner and slower than before.
I stopped going after he saw me. One of the drivers had pulled into the yard and walked across to him in his Portakabin and they spoke briefly. They both looked out from the dusty window across at me. The driver left and walked to the depot and Brian Stuart carried on looking out of the window. After a few minutes he walked out through the door, into the middle of the huge yard and stopped. He stood with his arms at his side and tears running down his face. We looked at each other and he shook his head. I think I nodded. I was crying too. A bus pulled up and I got on. I didn’t know where I was going but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t go back after that.
When I found out he had killed himself, I cried. I was shocked but not surprised. He looked like he had to get out of his body, if that makes sense, like it hurt him too much to be here any more. He looked like my dad and that scared me senseless.