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‘Alice and Katy Bowness are us. Those were our names before they were changed. We were, we
are, Alice and Katy Bowness.’
Clemo briskly pulled something from between the pages of his notebook. It was a newspaper
cutting.
If he hadn’t showed it to me there and then I’m not sure that I’d have believed any of them. I’d
always been told that my parents died in a car accident. You could tell the story in an instant and I’d
been doing that for years: our parents died in a head-on collision with a lorry. It had been nobody’s
fault, just a tragic accident. The steering on the lorry was proved to be faulty. My parents were
cremated and their ashes scattered. There was no headstone. End of story.
Except that apparently it wasn’t.
I wasn’t who I thought I was, and nor was Nicky.
Clemo handed me a photocopy of a newspaper article from 30 March 1982, thirty years ago. There
was a photograph of a couple that I recognised as my parents. My Aunt Esther had had one
photograph of them on her mantelpiece and this grainy image showed the same two people. The
difference was that in this image they were with three children.
I recognised my sister. She stood beside our mother. I could see a baby, a chubby little thing of
about one year old in a smocked dress, and I supposed that she could be me. I didn’t recognise the
boy who sat in the middle of the picture. Around four years old, he was so like Ben it took my breath
away. He had the same messy hair and balanced features, the same posture and the same grin, the one
that could light up your day, and the same smattering of freckles across his nose. He was nestled
between my parents. It was a lovely image, a perfect family.
The headline beside it told another story:
BATTEN DISEASE FAMILY IN FATAL DEATH LEAP
I scanned the article, snippets of it jumping out at me: ‘Local couple Andrew and Naomi Bowness
leaped to their deaths… driven to the act by lack of support for their terminally ill son… no
grandparents surviving… friends and neighbours expressed surprise… had coped so well… feel
sorry for their two surviving daughters… wanted to end his suffering.’
I looked at Nicky who was watching me, stricken.
‘They killed themselves?’
‘And Charlie.’
The way she said his name, the tenderness in those two words, the loss, told me that it was Charlie
who she mourned above all.
‘But what about us?’
Nicky looked away.
‘Why did they leave us?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve been asking myself that all my life?’
‘And why didn’t you tell me?’
She didn’t answer.
I looked at the article again, and stared at the photograph.
Clemo cleared his throat. ‘There was a report from the coroner. Would you like to know what it
said?’
‘I’ve read it,’ said Nicky.
‘I want to know,’ I said.