Chapter 1: A Sad Beginning

My name is John Douglas Sibly; I'm five foot eight tall and weigh ten and half stone. I'm naturally slim, and have never had to workout to keep in shape, no matter what I eat.

When I was seventeen and still in college, my parents and two younger sisters went on a coach holiday to Austria leaving me at home alone. Halfway through their second week away, I was woken one morning by two police officers coming to the house. They sat me down and informed me that there had been an accident and all my family had been injured. Whilst the police were still with me a gentleman turned up from the tour company and he made arrangements for me to fly out to Austria.

On the plane I was sitting across the aisle from a very pretty blond young lady. I suspected she was on the same mission as me because she was crying all through the flight. When we landed in Innsbruck a lady from the British embassy took me in hand. She took me to the hospital were my youngest sister was being treated. It was here that I learnt that my mother, father and other sister had perished, and that Claire was not expected to survive the night.

I cannot explain the feelings I had. I felt guilt that I wasn't on the coach with them. The feeling of hopelessness that my whole family was virtually gone. I spent the night sitting at Claire's bedside, praying that she would survive. At six in the morning the alarms on the many monitors attached to Claire went off. Nurses and doctors appeared from all directions and for the next hour or so they tried to do the impossible.

Then a female doctor came out to me, with tears in her eyes. In broken English she said, "I'm sorry, we tried all we could!"

I thanked her and rest of the hospital staff for their efforts. I'm not sure they all understood what I said as I don't speak Austrian, but I know they understood my sentiments. I can recall now, that for some reason I didn't cry, I think I was too sad to cry. The lady from the embassy reappeared, she took me to the hospital were the bodies of the rest of my family were, but I was not allowed to see them.

Some more embassy people turned up and told me the local police had arranged to take the relatives to the scene of the accident. I was to learn later that this was to assure us that they were making a full investigation as to the circumstances of the crash.

I was completely surprised at the reaction of the locals. When we got to the scene, some people from a nearby village met us. They had bunches of flowers that they gave us to leave at the crash site. Some guy, who I took to be the local mayor, informed us that they would erect a monument to the dead.

As this guy was talking to us through an interpreter, out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone beginning to collapse. It was instinct that made me reach out and catch her. She hung in my arms for a few moments then began to recover. She turned and I saw it was the young lady from the plane. She must have remembered me, and being the only familiar face amongst all these strangers, she hung on to me. Buried her head in my shoulder and cried her heart out. Her crying set me off and we cried together for a while.

When we were invited to get back on the coach to that would take us to a hotel for the night, she stayed firmly attached to my arm, so we travelled together.

We were installed in a comfortable hotel for the night. There must have been a hundred of us altogether, and we were all in the same hotel. How the Austrians managed that I don't know!

I don't think many of us ate much that night. Although a few of us were in the bar for a while, we didn't stay long as the press and TV people were outside and they made us feel uncomfortable. So I retired to bed early.

About eleven I heard a gentle knock at my door. I opened it to find the young lady from earlier standing there. She explained that she didn't want to be alone and asked if she could come in and talk to me. Feeling the same way myself I invited her in. We sat on the bed all night drinking just about everything there was in the mini-bar and talking about our respective losses. Her name was Angeline and she had lost her mother and aunt who had been on holiday together, her father had passed away some years previous.