Chance governs all

The bomb that gave me a novel

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  • Published 20261103
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-25-8
  • Extent: 196pp
  • Paperback, eBook, PDF

I WASN’T PHYSICALLY injured in the IRA bombing of London Bridge station in February 1992, but for some months afterwards I was envious of those who were. This, a psychologist later explained to me, is a common reaction among those who find themselves adjacent to a traumatic event, the desire to have a badge of some sort that explains – to themselves as well as to others – just how dislodged they feel.

Along with this unexpected feeling comes a large amount of guilt. What special kind of awful must I be, you can’t help thinking, to envy people who were actually hurt? You are not envying the injuries, of course; you are envying an explanation for how odd you feel, how unanchored from your previous assumptions of safety. All the same, when you think this way, the shame is real; and so, you overcompensate. You tell the anecdote with exaggerated self-deprecation.

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Slapton Sands

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.
Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.

Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.ON THE SOUTH coast of the United Kingdom, in the county of Devon, there’s a triangular sprawl of land that juts out into the English Channel. At its southern tip lies the wealthy sailing town of Salcombe, where a latte costs as much as it does in Shoreditch, and in peak season you’ll queue down the cobbled street for half an hour to get it. Approximately thirty miles up the coastline, there is one of Devon’s most deprived conurbations, Torquay, which sits at the heart of an area known without irony as ‘the English Riviera’. Halfway between the two is Slapton Sands.

Slapton Sands is not that easy to get to if you don’t have a car – the nearest railway station is Totnes, a three-hour train ride from London, and from there it’s a bus to Kingsbridge and another to the Sands. When you arrive, you’ll find that the beach is actually made of pebbles, but that’s not important right now.

You’ll also find a Sherman tank overlooking the water. Stay with me.

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