It was the first time I had been asked to do this and I was more than a little nervous. I just didn't want to mess it up. I knew the name of the girl, it was very much etched on my mind but to be sure it didn't escape me at the key moment I had scribbled it on a piece of paper that was now getting moist in my right palm.
Tom was with me. He would have done this a million times and I was thankful that when I stood on the front door step, my nuckles stinging from a combination of the freezing night and the bumpy frosted glass and my cap now two handed against my stomach that Tom was stood beside me. The same stance, the same expectant look, the same heavy feeling.
It took another knock for a light to go on. I looked round to see if I had disturbed anyone else. 3.15am, the very dead of night and the cloud cover keeping it dark to the point of black. A freezing fog hugged the ground, we had walked steps up to the front door to a house dug into a hill looking down on the silent police car. A second light went on. The house was 'upside down' in its design and I could make out a woman walking down steps from where the lounge and kitchen was on the first floor and her bedroom higher up still. I could make out flesh coloured legs sticking out of a white robe and she was hastily wrapping a tie round her waist. She paused to pull it tight before the door opened.
The woman was middle aged, maybe fourty something and her hair messed up enough to suggest she had been in bed a while. Her eyes were blinking, not yet accostomed to the light and quickly filling with surprise and confusion at the two police uniforms filling her top step.
'Can I help?'
'Sorry to disturb you, are you Mrs Evans?'
'Yes, yes I am, what's this about?'
'Mrs Evans, I'm here about Claire; I understand she's your daughter?'
Tom had told given me advice in the car on the way. Good advice. 'You can't beat round the bush' he had said, 'don't invite them to sit down, don't even ask to go inside. You've just got to make sure you have the right house and then tell them. Then deal with the fallout. If you delay people will jump two steps ahead of you and it will go bent'.
'Claire? Yes, but she's gone out'
I remember tensing my jaw, in truth it closed so tightly that for a split second it was like it was never going to open again. Like I wouldn't be able to tell her, I couldn't.
I did though. 'Mrs Evans' I said. 'I'm afraid Claire was involved in a road traffic accident earlier this evening' I paused a little, I had to be sure this was sinking in. I wasn't going to be able to tell her twice. It was Mrs Evans' turn to tense her jaw, she waitied for me to continue. 'I'm so sorry Mrs Evans, Claire died at the scene'.
And there it was.
Her 19 year old daughter had been snatched away from her and it felt like it was me who had done the snatching. I still struggle to describe what I saw next, it was mainly concentrated in her eyes, they just drained away; everything, the life, any signs of internal lights or emotions slipped away from the top down. With it went all of her colour, she became unsteady on her feet and Tom reached out and took hold of her arm. Her face slumped and then froze and I knew that it would never manage a smile again. Never a genuine one. Everything was gone, my words had taken it all away.
I was aware of steps creaking, a man in a vest quickly descending, his face angry at the disturbance and demanding to know the reasons. 'What's the matter?' he barked at his wife who's face was still fixed, the eyes that had locked forward were now fidgeting from me to Tom and back again, she was still being held up, her breathing had become shallow.
'Claire' She managed, a word made up more of breath than voice.
'What about her?'
Squat, balding and with a well established middle-age spread he looked me up and down. 'Mr Evans' I said.
'Yeah' his impatience clear.
'I'm sorry sir, I've come to inform you that Claire was involved in a road traffic crash a short time ago. She died at the scene. The ambulance staff did everything they could...'
Mr Evans took a step back, like he had just taken a blow to his torso. His face flushed red as anger roared up through him and he made fists with both hands and stepped back towards me 'you're fucking lying' he bellowed, his voice travelling out into the still night, shaking the fog.
'I'm not. I wouldn't' I pleaded, my chin dropping to my chest as I waited for the blow to land.
It never did.
'Maybe we can step in; you'll have questions' Tom offered, he stretched out the arm that was not still holding up Mrs Evans and rested it across my chest as some sort of barrier. The woman had now heard the news twice and the second time it had sunk in. Sobs very suddenly rose up from her heart and erupted from her face, then a scream like I have never heard before, like the last of anything good was leaving her body and just the sadness, the desperation and the emptiness was left. She let it all out, her legs gave way and she sunk to her knees on the doorstep; another scream long and breathy and then she sucked freezing air back in, taking with it the darkness from the night and she was silent. Her eyes fixed, face like it was clay; nothing left.
We walked up the steps to the kitchen, I took in a picture of a girl which clung to the wall; she was pretty and smiling in a school uniform. I had no doubt it was Claire, probably just three years ago or less. We got into the house and it was a case of riding it out. The father stayed angry; denial hit him hard and it took him a long time to get past this, to believe what we were saying. He needed to hear detail to know we weren't lying and I had to tell him.
'Your daughter had been for a night out. From what we can piece together at the moment she was walking home with two of her friends and she was walking along the side of the main road. There are no paths or banks, she must have stumbled out into the road. Claire was struck by a lorry. Her friends called the ambulance but there was nothing they could do'.
Gradually the mother's sobs returned, they had started as a whimper but built quickly to the point where we had to call a Night Doctor to administer a sedative. The father stayed angry for a long time but like the flick of a switch he moved onto a sort of acceptance and never once let any of us see him cry. A younger brother appeared, woken by the commotion he punched a wall, splitting plaster and his hand which shed fresh droplets of blood.
It was hell on toast.
To look back on it now it was the worse moment of my time in and out of that uniform. I said the words that ruined those people's life, I said the words that they will never truely recover from, I said the words that meant they would never see their daughter again.
Give your loved ones an extra squeeze when you see them. You can't wrap them in cotton wool or protect them against all that there is but you can make the most of them every time you are in their company. And if you ever have to suffer a late night knock from a police officer delivering the worst moment of your life then know this; it is quite possibly the worst of theirs too.
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