On the 25th September 2005 I had a phone call about roughly one o’clock in the morning. It was my Dad on the phone and I had to work the next day as well, so I was a bit angry at first because I didn’t know why he was phoning me, and I couldn’t make out what he was saying, I thought it was interference with the phone signal.
And then as I figured it out, I could hear that he was crying, and he said, “Adam, Lloyd’s, Lloyd’s been attacked, he’s dead”, and I remember that, well I just went into a daze really, I can’t even, I can’t even say I felt anything, I didn’t even feel sad, I didn’t I didn’t know what to think, I was just like a zombie after that. And they said that the police were going to come and pick me up and take me to the, to the hospital, so that I could meet them there and see him and things like that. I got dressed, I was wandering around the house just aimlessly, I mean my housemate was still up and he said you know, “What’s the matter?” And I said, “My brother’s been, my brother’s dead.” And I just didn’t, I didn’t have any sort of reaction on my face at all. Although to be honest and I don’t like saying it, because I think it’s a really weird thing, to react like but, I might as well be honest because other people might have reacted the same to news like that, I actually laughed, and I can never understand why, but then it happened again, I was with some friends and we were having a joke and a laugh just trying to lighten the mood, and I can remember we were laughing so hard our sides were splitting and I can remember because I was laughing so much it just suddenly turned into this horrendous amount of crying, but I managed to stop myself before it got like that, because there was this thing at the back of my mind the whole time saying, “Don’t cry, don’t be stupid,” you know, “Pull yourself together.” So, even now if I start crying, two sniffles later and then I stop because I feel stupid even when I’m on my own.
Why do you think you feel stupid?
I don’t know, it’s one of the things that was said to me by a member of the family, I don’t know whether, I don’t know whether it was that but I was told, “Be strong for your parents”, so every time I started to get upset I would choke it back, and walk away, anything to not let myself be seen crying and things like that. And I think as a result of that that maybe one of the reasons that I’m unable to cry as much now because I’ve got this built in thing saying, “Don’t, don’t cry, don’t be silly, be strong.” and going to back to before going to the hospital, my parents turned up in the end, and they said the police were unable to pick me up and take me to the hospital because they didn’t have enough police cars. They didn’t have enough resources. So my parents turned up.
