Читать книгу Sun On The Water - The Brilliant Life And Tragic Death Of My Daughter Kirsty Maccoll - Jean MacColl - Страница 8

It had been a great evening at the theatre. As soon as I arrived home, I was on the phone to my old friend and close colleague John Dalby to tell him about it. My friend Denise Keir and I had been to see the ballet The Car Man, a new production based on the Carmen story, and it had exceeded all my expectations. Later, after making myself a cup of tea, I noticed the shopping list of vegetables Kirsty had left for me when she went on holiday – along with her instructions not to get them too soon. I smiled to myself. Perhaps she thought that, in my enthusiasm for a family Christmas, I would buy them too early. Although she’d written her phone number in Mexico at the top of the page, I decided I wouldn’t ring her just then.

She had been busy promoting her latest CD, Tropical Brainstorm, and had only just returned from a lengthy trip to Cuba, where she had been preparing a musical history of the island for the BBC. She had gone away with her two sons – Jamie and Louis – and her new partner, James Knight, and she had earned those few precious days. They were holidaying on the Mexican island of Cozumel and there would be time enough to share our news.

The night before they flew, I joined them for supper and Kirsty ran me home. Our last words had been ‘I love you’.

Lost in my thoughts, I was suddenly brought up by the telephone. Surprised that anyone should ring me so late, I spoke with James, Kirsty’s boyfriend. I immediately felt a slight pang of unease – why hadn’t she rung me herself? Perhaps she was busy cooking and had just asked James to place the call for her. But he wasted no time.

‘There’s been an accident – Kirsty is dead, but the boys are all right.’

‘No – oh, no… Tell me Kirsty is just injured…’

‘No. Kirsty is dead. The boys are all right. A powerboat hit her while she was in the water.’

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. What I do remember is that I screamed, once, from the terrible well of grief that had opened up under me. I tore at my earrings and threw them down. If only she had just been injured, I could cope with that – but ‘dead’ was so shocking, so unexpected. Beautiful, witty, talented Kirsty – her life cut short by some dreadful accident.

I needed to tell people who were close to me. I was immediately back on the phone to John, to whom I had only just been speaking after the show, and he promised they’d be right over.

Denise, who had just returned home to Croydon, said she would drive over.

How could it be that I had sat through and enjoyed an evening at the ballet while my daughter had lost her life? Why had I not felt anything, sensed no inkling of this tragedy? I tried to ring Hamish, Kirsty’s brother, who was then living in Stroud, Gloucestershire, but the line was engaged. I knew that the news would soon break, so I rang my nephew to warn my brother Pip and inform the rest of the family. Then John arrived with his partner John Thompson; we could only hug one another. They made more tea, taking my now-cold mug away – containing tea made long ago, it seemed, when the world had been a very different place.

It was a long time before I finally got through to Hamish. His phone had been engaged because he’d been on the internet.

‘Hamish,’ I said, ‘I am so sorry, sit down – I’ve got bad news.’

His relaxed manner changed in an instant.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m sorry, Mish, but Kirsty has been killed by a powerboat. I’m so sorry you are alone. The boys are okay.’ I don’t remember what, if anything, was said after that. All I know is that my other child, grown-up as he was, was left alone to grieve.

Before long, Denise arrived, prepared to stay overnight, and the two Johns left, promising to return the following day and to keep in touch by phone. Steve Lillywhite, Kirsty’s ex-husband and father of her boys, rang from New York sometime in the early hours to say he was flying out to Cozumel, where the accident had happened. Denise was by now asleep.

Switching on the TV, I caught the first public announcement of Kirsty’s death. I remember seeing ‘1959–2000’ on the screen, underneath Kirsty’s picture. Both then and in later broadcasts, and for weeks, even months, afterwards, I could not relate the two dates to each other. ‘1959’ was meaningful: it was my daughter’s birthday. But ‘2000’? Although I knew in my head that she had died, it seemed the sort of inscription to be found on headstones or in obituaries, and usually for old people, people of my own age.

I couldn’t bring myself to understand it. And it gave rise to the inevitable and futile wish in me that I should have died in her place. And now came the realisation that she would need her mother to make life tolerable for her own children.

The phone started ringing very early. I was told people were gathering outside the house and being politely asked to go away.

Someone called Sarah, who worked at Kirsty’s record company, rang regularly to inform me of what was going on. I had rung Ronnie Harris, Kirsty’s good friend and, as it turned out, one of those appointed executor for her, just as he was flying out to South Africa on his holidays. He said he would try to deal with things and, somehow, he did.

After the pathologist’s initial report (which ended with the words ‘this is an accident that should never have happened’), Ronnie arranged for Kirsty’s body to be flown back to Croydon immediately after Christmas. But meanwhile there was Christmas itself to get through.