They found out that they didn’t know. Or that they didn’t know enough. Or something like that. They decided that Mum’s death wasn’t definitely an accident and it wasn’t definitely suicide. But it might have been either. Or a bit of both. Maybe.
It didn’t matter that the two people who knew her best in the world were convinced that it wasn’t suicide. That was just hearsay and hunches. And that doesn’t count. What counts are length and direction of tyre marks, road conditions at time of crash, toxicology reports, vehicle reports and angle of impact. And all of these things, in the case of Megan Redridge and her red Vauxhall Corsa and the collision with Brian Stuart and his enormous lorry on Crofts Bank Road on April the 11th at 4.27 p.m. didn’t add up to anything conclusive. They just added up to two dead people and no explanation that could be written down. And when I heard I thought … OK … I see … right …
And I thought that everything would be fine because I knew that they were wrong and I’d already decided that it didn’t matter what was said at the inquest. So I wasn’t prepared for the anger that came later on that day when I was folding clothes away in my bedroom. It was a shock to me when it tore and spat into my blood and made me want to smash things until they were so small there would be no satisfaction in smashing them even smaller. This anger has dogged me since: it jumps out of cupboards and lurks behind trees and pounces at will. And every time I think I’ve managed to shake it off and balance everything cleanly and neatly and squarely in my head it floors me again and I have to stop whatever I am doing and take myself away to empty rooms and let it rampage its way around my head like a hurricane in a house. It leaves me frustrated and tearful and exhausted and still angry. I had no idea that a room full of strangers saying that they didn’t know would fill me with so much fury.