THE 2,000 GUINEAS was the third race on the card, due off at three-fifteen. The excitement of the afternoon built towards the big event, with jazz bands and street entertainers helping to raise the pulse of the crowd. I could have done with a jazz band in the kitchen just to keep me awake.

As the time of the big race arrived, I went back to the boxes where Louisa and Robert were clearing the tables. Finally, all the guests had left their chairs and were crowding onto the balcony, or standing inside up against the windows, trying to get a good view of the horses as they approached along Newmarket’s famous Rowley straight mile.

I picked up some dirty coffee cups and glanced up at the television set on the wall. The horses were running down into the dip, and the jockeys were jostling for position, ready for their final effort up the rise to the finish. So tired was I that I decided not to stay and watch. I could always see it later on the replay. I turned to take the cups out to the kitchen.

That decision unquestionably saved my life.

3

T he bomb went off while I was crossing the corridor.

I didn’t understand immediately what had happened.

There was a great blast of heat on my neck, and it felt like someone had hit me in the back with a sledgehammer.

I crashed into the kitchen door upright and fell, half in and half out of the room.

I still couldn’t understand what was going on. Everything seemed to be in silence. I couldn’t hear. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t hear myself either. I shouted. Nothing. All I could hear was a high-pitched hissing that seemed to be in my head; it had no direction, and was unchanged when I turned my head from side to side.

I looked down at my hands, and they seemed to be all right. I moved them. No problem. I clapped. I could feel my hands coming together, but I couldn’t hear the sound. It was very frightening.

My left knee hurt. I looked down and noticed that my black-and-white checked trousers had been torn where they had hit the doorframe. The white checks were turning red with my blood. What’s black and white and red all over…? My brain was drifting.

When I felt with my hands, my knee appeared to be in the right place, and I could move my foot without any increase in pain. It seemed that the blood was from superficial damage only.

My hearing came back with a rush, and suddenly there was a mass of sound. Someone close by was screaming. A female, high-pitched scream that went on and on, breaking only occasionally for a moment as the screamer drew a breath. An alarm bell was ringing incessantly somewhere down the corridor, and there were shouts from some male voices, mostly pleading for help.

I lay back, and rested my head on the floor. It seemed that I was like that for ages, but, I suppose, it was only for a minute or two at most. The screaming went on; otherwise, I might have gone to sleep.

I became aware that I wasn’t very comfortable. As well as the pain in my left knee, my right leg was aching. I was lying on my foot, which was tangled up underneath my rear end. I straightened the leg and was rewarded with pins and needles. That’s a good sign, I thought.

I looked up and could see daylight between the walls and the ceiling where a large crack had opened up. That was not such a good sign. Water was pouring through the crack, I thought lazily, probably from some burst pipe above. It was running down the wall and spreading across the concrete floor towards me. I turned my head and watched it approach.

I decided that, lovely as it was to lie there and let the world get on without me, I didn’t fancy lying in a puddle. The floor was cold enough without being wet as well. Reluctantly, I rolled over and drew my knees up under me so that I was kneeling. Not a good idea, I thought. My left knee complained bitterly, and the calf muscle below it began to cramp. I pulled myself up to a standing position using the doorframe and surveyed the kitchen.

Not much seemed to have changed, except everything was covered in a fine white dust that also still hung in the air. I was wondering what had happened to Carl when he appeared next to me.

“Bloody hell,” he said, “what happened?”

“Don’t know,” I replied. “Where were you?”

“Having a pee in the gents’.” He pointed down the corridor. “Nearly shit myself when that bang went off.”

I clung on to the kitchen door and felt unwell. I didn’t particularly relish going to see what had become of my other two staff and the guests in the boxes, but I knew I must. I couldn’t just stand here all day while others might need help. The screaming had lessened to a whimper, as I gingerly made my way across the corridor and looked in.

I hadn’t expected there to be so much blood.

Bright, fresh, scarlet red blood. Masses of the stuff. It was not only on the floor but on the walls, and there were even great splashes of it on the ceiling. The tables had been thrown up against the back wall by the explosion, and I had to pick my way over broken chairs to get through the door and into the room that I had so recently vacated with ease.

When I had been a child, my father had regularly complained that my bedroom looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Like every other little boy, I had tended to dump all my stuff on the floor and happily had lived around it.

However, my bedroom had never looked like the inside of the two glass-fronted boxes at Newmarket that day. Not that the boxes had remained glass-fronted. The glass in the windows and doors had now completely vanished, and, along with it, large chunks of the balconies and about a third of the end wall from the side of box number 1.

I thought that if the blast could do such damage to concrete and steel, the occupants must have stood no chance.

Carnage was not too strong a word for the scene.

There had been thirty-three guests at lunch, two others having unexpectantly failed to appear, much to MaryLou’s frustration and displeasure. Then there were my two staff. So there must have been at least thirty-five people either in that room or on the balconies when the bomb exploded, not counting any people who may have been invited in to watch the race after lunch.

Most of them seemed to have disappeared altogether.

A whimper to my left had me scampering under the upturned tables to find the source.

MaryLou Fordham lay on her back close to the rear wall. I could only see her from the waist up, since she was half covered with a torn and rapidly reddening tablecloth. The blood that was soaking into the white starched cotton was an exact color match with her bright scarlet chiffon blouse that had fared rather badly and now hung as a tattered mass around her neck.

I knelt down beside her on my right knee and touched her forehead. Her eyes swiveled round in my direction. Big, wide, frightened brown eyes in a deathly pale face, a face cut and bleeding from numerous shards of flying glass.

“Help will be on the way,” I said to her, somewhat inadequately given the circumstances. “Just hang on.”

There was a lot of blood below her waist, so I lifted the tablecloth a little to see what damage had been done. It was not easy to see. There was not much light under the blood-soaked cloth, and there was a tangle of broken chairs and tables in the way. I shuffled down to get a better look and only then did my confused brain take in the true horror. Both of MaryLou’s lovely legs were gone. Blown away.

Oh my God, what do I do now?

I stupidly looked around me, as if I could find her missing legs and snap them back into place. Only then did I see the other victims. Those who had lost not only their legs and feet but arms and hands too, and their lives. I began to shake. I simply didn’t know what to do.