It Began as Just an Ordinary Day
Created | Updated Sep 7, 2006
It began as just an ordinary day. 6.00am and no need for any alarm to ring. Tom bounded into wakefulness, dragging his protesting parents behind him. No room for discussion. There were toys to be played with, breakfast to be devoured and two adults to be hugged so tight that they were left gasping for breath. And all of this to the accompaniment of the excited, high-decibel chattering that only a three-year-old can produce. Yes, it began as just an ordinary day.
An hour later, across the town, the morning arrived at a more sedate pace. Sunita awoke gracefully to the sound of her mother's well-modulated good morning and began to prepare for another school day. She was a good girl. Sixteen years old and the opportunities stretched endlessly. Conscientious. Her mother and father were proud of her academic achievements and lost no opportunity to tell their family and friends the detail of her many sporting successes. She looked immaculate in her school uniform as she went downstairs to breakfast, though she had a different outfit packed deep inside her schoolbag.
Just before 9.30am, Tom's mother walked him to his preschool class. Him wearing his new striped t-shirt and special pair of combat trousers. Blue Kickers on his feet. It was his first month of attendance and the family had devised a routine to ease him into his new life gently.
Each morning his mother would walk with him the three blocks to the school building and watch him trot to join his teacher, all the time nursing a potent cocktail of loss and pride in her heart. He meant the very world to her. She had taken a career break for the first four years of his life so as to spend time with him and had painstakingly poured her soul into his developing consciousness. She was going back to work in several months' time — part-time at first, but until then she would spend the mornings carefully preparing afternoon festivals of excitement for her homecoming son. This was a special time of life, and she wanted him to remember it for ever. Today she was making pancakes for his lunch. Tom loved pancakes.
Shortly after 11.00am, Sunita excused herself from school. She was feeling unwell, she said. Because she was such an exemplary pupil, no one doubted her story. Walking through the school gates, she turned left towards the town centre, heading towards the shops where she would change her clothing before spending the day with her new boyfriend, a student in the university. She had never done anything like this before, but he had been insistent. Sixteen was an age, she felt, for experimentation. For exploring whatever joys that life had to offer. Today would be memorable. She just knew it.
It was about a fifteen-minute stroll and she walked briskly. She was conscious of passing two pedestrians on her journey. They were interviewed later, but could give little information about her appearance and knew nothing at all about her many achievements.
At 11.18am there was a special news bulletin on the local radio.
'We interrupt this broadcast to inform you that in the last few minutes there has been a fatal explosion in town. We have little information, except to say that the blast appears to have occurred in a street of residential houses just streets from the East Park centre. Police say that there have been an undisclosed number of casualties and that there has been extensive damage to property. Early information received from sources suggests that there may have been a gas leak. We will bring you more news as it breaks.'
6.00pm and the compelling image on the television news was of a small curly haired boy dressed in striped t-shirt and combat trousers. He looked about three years old. Holding the hand of a man whom the reporter identified as his father, he was picking through the pieces he used to call home. Searching for the pieces he used to call Mam. They said that he was in his first month at preschool.
Meanwhile, across the town, another house echoes to the retching and gulping of a mother weeping. A stunned father tries to piece together the fragments of a story he cannot comprehend. She was such a good girl. So conscientious. And she's never coming home.
It began as just an ordinary day.
