The cord had embedded itself deeply into the flesh beneath Robbie’s chin, and two puffy circular ridges of skin had risen around it. His face was already swollen and had turned an unnatural greyish purple and his tongue lolled obscenely from his mouth. His eyes, his lovely pale-blue eyes, were wide open, bulging only slightly and staring straight at me.
There was an unpleasant smell in the room. I recognised what it was at once, and registered, in a distracted sort of way, that Robbie must have lost control of his bowels.
Behind him his computer, his treasured iMac, lay on the floor, the glass of the screen shattered into pointed shards, as if it had been swept carelessly and with some violence from the desk. That desk, so lovingly constructed by his father, must have been moved across the room. It was now positioned directly behind the spot where Robbie was hanging.
It seemed logical that Robbie had stood on the desk, in order to attach the rope to the beam and to his neck, and had then jumped off. His head was at an acute angle, almost resting on one shoulder. I knew at once that his neck was broken. This was somehow quite abundantly clear even to a woman like me who had never before witnessed anything remotely like it.
Indeed, I took in the whole terrible scene in a matter of seconds, absorbing it, at first, in a curiously clinical fashion.
The implication of what it actually meant took some seconds more. The fact that my beautiful boy hung dead before me was, perhaps, almost too much for me to grasp.
When the brutal reality finally hit me my whole body slumped into a state of muscular collapse. My fists, clutching the two mugs of tea, involuntarily opened. The mugs fell to the wooden boarded floor, smashing into many pieces. Scalding tea gushed onto my feet, burning my instep and toes through the felt material of my slippers.
I could hear myself screaming, though. Not from pain, but out of pure unadulterated desolation. Florrie ran right through my legs and raced down the stairs at even greater speed than she had ascended. She could not possibly have understood what she was witnessing but was suddenly quite desperate to get away.
I just screamed and screamed and screamed.
My life, my world, was over. Hanging from a beam which I knew had once formed part of the hull of a ship that had sailed to America, attached by a length of rope which had anchored a tent against the winds of Dartmoor, swaying grotesquely in the cross-draught caused by my opening a door opposite windows already flung asunder to the unlikely mellowness of a sunny autumn day.
My boy was dead.
Two
I have no idea how long it took me to stop screaming. When I did, I used Robbie’s iPhone to dial 999. It too had fallen onto the floor, and lay there alongside his broken computer. I had to reach past him to get it, and in so doing I brushed against his body, making it sway a little more. My hand touched his deathly cold one. I felt sick.
I tried to bend down to pick up the phone but my legs gave way. I was kneeling when I made the call. Later, that always seemed appropriate somehow.
My voice when I spoke to the emergency services sounded as if it belonged to someone else.
‘Ambulance,’ I said, ‘I need an ambulance. It’s my son. Please. Come quickly, quickly...’
And yet I knew there was no need for speed. I was already aware that Robbie was beyond help.
I continued to kneel as I waited for them to come. I wanted to leave that room. And I wanted to cut my son down from that obscene hanging position.
I couldn’t do so. The emergency services operator had told me not to touch anything, but I didn’t care about that. I just didn’t have the strength to move. Barely a muscle. I closed my eyes. I could not look at Robbie’s body. It was almost as if by shutting out the image of him I thought I could make the whole thing go away. But even with my eyes shut I could still see him hanging there.
I was aware now of burning pains in both my feet where the hot tea had landed. I didn’t care about that either. It really didn’t matter. Nothing mattered much. In fact, I doubted anything would ever matter much again.
However, there was something I knew I had to find the strength to do.
I had to contact Robbie’s father. I had to give Robert the terrible news and I had to do so swiftly, even though I knew he would be destroyed by it. Perhaps more than I already had been. If that were possible.
I couldn’t phone Robert when he was on a rig — there were no mobile signals — but all the Amaco platforms had Wi-Fi. Robert and I spoke frequently on a Skype video link, his laptop to our computer in the office downstairs, or sometimes my iPad. And if I needed to get in touch with him unexpectedly, the routine was that I sent an email and he called me as soon as he could, either on my mobile or our home number, via Skype.
Ironically, Robert was actually due home at the weekend, two days later. Meanwhile, I had little choice but to email him. I was still holding Robbie’s phone in one hand. I hesitated for just a moment or two, trying to find the right words, which was, of course, impossible. I could not tell the man his son was dead by email. Instead I settled for tapping out a brief message asking him to call me urgently and giving no further information.
An ambulance crew arrived within about half an hour, I think. I heard them knocking on the front door and calling out. I did not move from my crouched position on the floor. I still couldn’t do so. Without any response from me the crew entered the house. I hadn’t locked the front door; we rarely did until bedtime. I could hear their footsteps on the stairs. I had been asked on the phone where in the house my son was. The crew must have been given that information. They climbed straight up to Robbie’s room and found me there, half kneeling, half lying by then, on the floor at my son’s feet.
I was vaguely aware of reassuring voices and someone putting a blanket around my shoulders. Strong arms helped me upright and I was led, limping as the pain from my feet began to hit me, out of the room. I complied meekly, but I think I cried out as I looked again at Robbie’s body. I’m not sure.
Two police officers, a man in plain clothes and a uniformed woman constable, turned up just as we reached the bottom of the stairs. I was by then leaning quite heavily on the shoulder of a small female paramedic, who’d told me she was called Sally and I wasn’t to worry about anything. Whatever on earth that meant.
I hadn’t asked for the police when I made my emergency call, but apparently they always attend a sudden death. Particularly of such a young person.
I vaguely heard Sally the paramedic tell them, yes, the boy was dead all right. And the body was upstairs. Then the male officer muttering about the SOCOs being on their way. Better get everything checked out before moving the body, just in case, he said.
I knew what ‘SOCOs’ were, of course. Didn’t everybody nowadays? Scenes of Crime Officers. Brought in to collect and evaluate forensic evidence. But why were they needed here? Surely Robbie’s death was suicide. A hanging like that always is, isn’t it? Even in my state of total shock I’d just assumed my son had killed himself, although, in my wildest imaginings, I could think of absolutely no reason why he would have done such a thing. But I’d read about unexplained suicides among young people. They seemed frighteningly common. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking straight. Far from it. But, perhaps surprisingly, I was just beginning again to at least think.
‘What’s going on?’ I heard myself ask. ‘Why are you bringing the Scenes of Crime people in? You don’t think a crime has been committed here, do you? Surely we know how my son died, don’t we? Don’t we...’