Louis was sitting next to me on the sofa. He asked me if I knew what had happened. I said I didn’t, but that I would be grateful to hear – but only if he wanted to tell me.
‘It will make you sad, Granny,’ he said.
‘I’m sad already, Louis,’ I replied.
It was then that he told me for the first time what had actually happened.
‘It was wonderful.’ Louis’s eyes lit up briefly at the memory of his first scuba dive. ‘Mummy loved the moray eels and the shells. I saw a lobster the size of my arm,’ and he measured it in imagination against his arm. ‘Then it was time to come up.’ They had all been given instructions by Ivan, the dive-master, and Kirsty had warned them to follow his rules precisely.
‘I was the first to come up,’ continued Louis, ‘then Mummy, and then Jamie. I looked at Mummy and she smiled and said, “Wow!” And I said, “Great!”’
Jamie had surfaced just as a warning shout alerted all four divers. Kirsty, with her back to the danger, turned her head to see the powerboat almost upon them. Louis said it was travelling at high speed and high enough out of the water for its propellers to be visible. Kirsty managed to push Jamie and Louis out of the way before the boat struck her. She saved their lives. Louis turned around and followed in the wake of the boat.
‘I was swimming in Mummy’s blood. I heard Jamie calling out, “Where’s Mummy? Where’s Mummy?” I told him not to look. “Don’t look, Jamie! Get back to our boat, look the other way!”’
That was all I could take in at the time. I was to find out later that Guillermo Gonzalez Nova, one of Mexico’s wealthiest businessmen, was the owner of the powerboat, and had been on board with his two grown-up sons. Witnesses later told me that my grandsons’ cries of distress were clearly heard as they were left bobbing in the water with their mother’s body. It was others who called for assistance: the first to do so was the captain of a fishing boat who had tried without success to divert the course of the powerboat. I thanked Louis for telling me, and we sat together for a while. It was to be several years into our investigation before I heard how the boys had been left alone, ignorant of what was going on.
Kirsty’s partner James had stayed behind to do some reading at their rented accommodation and, having been under the impression there had been a minor accident, he took the car to the harbour. When he arrived he was not allowed to go too close to the water’s edge. No one would answer his questions as to what had happened, and in desperation he had got out of the car and screamed, ‘What the hell is going on? Why doesn’t anyone tell me something?’ Hearing his voice, the boys suddenly ran into his arms, telling him that Kirsty had been killed, and Jamie cried, ‘What will become of us now?’
James took them home – but still no one came to tell them anything at all. (Presumably, it was at this point that Guillermo Gonzalez Nova was busy sending for his lawyers from Mexico City to fly in and give evidence on his behalf. Ivan, Kirsty’s diving master – not being a wealthy ‘Don’ – had to wait over 24 hours before being allowed to give his evidence.)
It was now almost midnight on Christmas Eve, 2000. Soon it would be Christmas Day, and I dreaded it. I looked for the large turkey we always had, thinking to prepare it for the oven and was surprised to find a box containing a smaller bird than I’d expected. It turned out that the butcher had changed the order after hearing the news. I went to bed. This turkey would only need a couple of hours at most.
The presents under the tree were handed out, as usual, at around ten o’clock on Christmas morning. I had two presents from Kirsty. The first was a large box which turned out to be a new portable hi-fi system. So that was why everyone had laughed the previous night: she had decided to replace my defunct machine and the boys had known about it. Her other present was a pair of non-slip socks for my tiled kitchen floor.
The television channels played ‘Days’, over and over again, in Kirsty’s memory and I felt comforted to know that other people cared. Somehow we got through the day, pulled our crackers, briefly wore the silly paper hats and raised a glass to Kirsty. Afterwards everyone disappeared, perhaps to try to catch up on their sleep.
On Boxing Day morning my old friend Joan Littlewood, godmother to both Kirsty and Hamish, came to see us. We had first met when I visited the Theatre Workshop company, which she and Ewan MacColl had founded – as its director and playwright respectively – in 1946. Both were fascinated by Rudolf Laban’s ideas on movement, and had written to Laban himself, asking if he might spare someone to train their actors. As his assistant, Laban asked me to visit the company. Joan and Ewan had been briefly married before the war, but when I met them, Joan had begun an enduring relationship with Theatre Workshop’s business manager, Gerry Raffles, and Ewan was unattached. He and I fell in love, and were married in April 1949.
Joan talked in typical fashion about everything except the accident – that was too hard for her to confront. She brought me a beautifully bound book on French dance. I knew that the book represented everything she felt unable to say in words. She had always, whenever possible, been there for Kirsty during her childhood, and had later chosen to spend a period of convalescence with Kirsty and Steve. Now 85 years old, she looked frail. I encouraged her to have a snack and a glass of wine, and then Steve offered to drive her home. By the time he returned, the boys’ friends were back for an overnight stay – I think they had organised a visiting rota among themselves.
Musician friends came and went over the next few days, during which the phone seemed to ring constantly – Sarah, from the music company, Ronnie, Kirsty’s friend and executor from South Africa, the funeral directors and crematorium, friends, many from overseas and an engagement in Chicago that had had to be cancelled. There were many loving letters and cards that had to be answered and many more, I’m afraid, that weren’t. The postman handed me his own bouquet of flowers.
January 2001
It was necessary to make preparations for the funeral, and Hamish and I decided to leave most of the details to James, who would know Kirsty’s closest friends, particularly those in the music world. We were able to help with relations and family friends who had been in constant touch over the years. It was during this time that I was informed that Kirsty’s body had been brought back to a funeral parlour in Croydon. With Kirsty’s co-executors Kieran and Annie, who were also the boys’ godmothers, I made the journey from my home in Ealing to Croydon on a cold, wet, dreary January day.
I went in alone. There lay my beautiful daughter, with her red hair surrounding her unmarked face. I felt the tears stream down my cheeks. As I gazed at the still figure, so unnaturally silent, I begged for a miracle, hoping for those lovely eyes to open and for her smile to return to me. But her spirit had flown elsewhere. I talked quietly to her, as I had done so many years before and in the silence of the room I promised to look after her boys and to do my best to take care of things. I told her how much she was loved. Touching her hands gently, and kissing her for the last time, I left the room.
On the journey back I vowed to find out the truth about this accident ‘that should never have happened’. Stupidity and recklessness had cheated my daughter of a full life. She would never see the sons she loved so much grow into manhood. I had no idea then that my quest for the truth would come to involve both the British and Mexican governments and thousands of people from around the world.
Kirsty’s funeral took place on Friday, 5 January 2001 at Mortlake Crematorium. The cars arrived, we took our places, and as the drivers moved off, I remembered my visit two days earlier to the funeral parlour and realised that this was the last farewell.
The queue outside the chapel stretched down the path and out of sight. These silent figures seemed momentarily motionless to me, as if in a Lowry painting. And I felt for them, as their grief-stricken faces turned towards us. A friend of Kirsty’s – not a musician, just a good friend who had always been a treasured guest at her parties – was sobbing uncontrollably inside the chapel and I tried to comfort him and put my arms around him, but I was somehow unable to cry myself. I just