Sitting on my mum’s sofa, I was nursing a cup of tea and chatting to my cousin when I got the news. Two uniformed policemen arrived at the front door, reeling off a stream of words that didn’t make sense. ‘It’s your son, Joe… an accident… a train… it was fatal.’ I felt nauseous at that word. Fatal. Were they saying my son, my Joe, was dead? But how could he be?
That weekend, Joe and his brother James were staying at our home in south-east London and had planned to go out with friends to celebrate Joe’s 23rd birthday. My husband, Nigel, daughter, Annie, and I were heading to Eastbourne for a few days to stay with my mum.
‘We’ll be back,’ I’d joked, doing my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression as we