WEEKS LATER, BACK at Eton, I was walking past two blue doors, almost exactly the same blue as one of Gan-Gan’s kilts. She’d have liked these
doors, I thought.
They were the doors to the TV room, one of my sanctuaries.
Almost every day, straight after lunch, my mates and I would head to the TV room and watch a bit of Neighbours, or maybe Home and Away, before going off to sports. But this day in September 2001 the room was packed and Neighbours wasn’t on.
The news was on.
And the news was a nightmare.
Some buildings on fire? Oh, wow, where’s that? New York.
I tried to see the screen through all the boys massed in the room. I asked the boy to my right what was going on.
He said America was under attack.
Terrorists had flown planes into the Twin Towers in New York City. People were…jumping. From the tops of buildings half a kilometer high.
More and more boys gathered, stood around, biting their lips, their nails, tugging their ears. In stunned silence, in boyish confusion, we watched the only world we’d ever known disappear in clouds of toxic smoke.
World War Three, someone muttered.
Someone propped open the blue doors. Boys kept streaming in. None made a sound.
So much chaos, so much pain.
What can be done? What can we do? What will we be called to do?
Days later I turned seventeen.
