Chapter 33

The following day we confirmed our flight details and booked Alice and Sinead on a later flight. We spent some time that morning trying to tell our little girl as kindly and gently as we could that her mummy and daddy might never be coming home. We also told her that if this was the case, Katy, Alice and I would look after her and be her new mummy and daddy. As I said, she was a bright little girl and wanted to know why. I told her about the plane crash and that her daddy was dead and her mum badly injured. After a little cry she seemed to settle down but she followed me around the house as if she did not want to let me out of her sight.

Before setting out for the airport, I had another bit of inspiration. I phoned the Reverend John Wilson, the minister who had helped us out on all the major occasions since Joe and Isa got together as a couple, including Dora's funeral.

I explained to him what had happened and that we were about to fly out to the Canaries to identify Joe and make arrangements to bring Isa back to a hospital in this country if she survived her injuries.

He was shocked at our news and said how sorry he was that such a tragedy had occurred in our family. He asked me to phone him as soon as we returned and he would come and see us about the funeral arrangements. We would talk through what we required of him. I told him I was very grateful for the help he had given our family in the past and would talk to him as soon as I could.

With this being a special flight laid on for the relatives of the dead and injured in the plane crash, our way through the check in process went much more smoothly than usual because there were company reps to help everyone through security and we were shown to a private lounge to await our boarding. Katy took the window seat and I sat next to her. Eventually an older lady took the remaining seat beside us and as I glanced over at her I could see that she was as distressed as we were.

After the plane took off I turned to her and decided to engage her in conversation.

"Have you had someone injured in the air crash? I asked her.

She shook her head and I could see that she was near to tears.

"I have lost my son and daughter in law in the crash. They were going on holiday with their children who miraculously have survived with minor injuries."

What age are the children?" I asked her.

They are six, eight and nine, and I am their only living relative since my daughter in law was an only child of older parents, and they are both dead. I love them dearly, but the thought of looking after them at my age scares me. I just don't know how I will cope."

"If it is not an indelicate question; what age are you? You don't look that old."

She gave me a sad little smile and I could see that tears were not far away and she was fighting to hold them back.

"That's a nice compliment young man, but I am seventy two coming up for seventy three quite shortly. It's not just my age though; I am a widow and a retired teacher. I took early retirement and I've been retired for over twelve years. The stock market was buoyant then and I invested my lump sum which has lost a lot of its value in today's market. I don't know if I will be able to cope financially with three children to look after, especially with the price of gas and electricity today."

At this her tears began to flow and I took out my clean handkerchief and gave to her. She mopped her eyes and got control of herself.

"I shouldn't be bothering you with my problems. If you are on this flight you probably have enough problems of your own. It's just that I haven't had anyone to talk to since I got the news that I had lost my only son and his wife. I am so sorry."

Katy had been listening to the old lady's tale and now she reached across me and took her hand.

"You have no need to apologise. Peter's aunt who looked after him is in a coma, and she was also my step mum, and I have lost my dad, and if his aunt dies I will have lost my mum for a second time. We know what you are going through, but we are lucky, we have a circle of friends who are supporting us. Feel free to share your feelings with us if you need to talk. It is going to be a long flight"

This opened the flood gates and we each shared with the other the situation we found ourselves in. I told her I was Peter and introduced Katy and she told us that her name was Esther.

We discovered that she had just been on the point of selling her four bedroom house and making the move to a small retirement flat to release equity capital and to make the bills of running a home much smaller. Now it looked as if this was out of the question and things were going to be very tight financially. What was a reasonable pension was not designed for bringing up three children. Since she was their granny, there would be no fostering allowance; she would become just another unpaid carer.

We told her our worries about being able to keep Sinead even though we would not have any financial problems doing so.

"I know this may be a strange thing to say," Esther told us, "but from one point of view this could not have happened at a better time regarding the problem with your little sister."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. I knew she would detect the surprise in my voice, but I just could not understand how that could be."

"With all these government cutbacks, social services are looking at every possible means to see where they can save money. They are a very high spending department with demands, that even without the cutbacks, could not meet all the expectations people place upon it. In this climate, if they have a child they do not need to take into foster care, believe me, they will not even think about doing so."

"Oh I hope you are right," Katy said. "Peter is my boyfriend and when we get back we are going to get engaged to strengthen our case for looking after Sinead, even though we are so young."

I hadn't thought of things in the way that Esther had pointed out. But now I thought she might well be right. To take Sinead into care would cost a social work department over five hundred pounds a month and that was six thousand a year with possible extras on top. No small beer in today's financial climate.

"Thank you for pointing that out to us Esther. It takes a weight off our shoulders since we were really worried they would think we were too young to shoulder that responsibility.

"If they let a seventy two year old granny take on three children, then they are not going to blink at the thought of two teenagers over sixteen taking on their sister or their cousin as in your case Peter. I would still press ahead with your engagement though and if you can afford it and are sure, then with marriage. They will be even less likely to interfere if that is your status."

I felt that Esther had given us good advice and the three of us chatted away and consoled each other for the rest of the flight. I found out that she had finished her teaching life in Musselburgh and lived in Longniddry which was not all that far from Edinburgh. Her son had been a head of department in a school in West Lothian and he and his wife had a lived in Broxburn. It would still be fairly heavily mortgaged and she doubted if she would get a great deal from it when it was sold. She was definitely going to look after her grandchildren, but she was really worried about the financial implications both for herself and them.

As we were nearing the end of the flight she went off to the toilet and Katy turned to me.

"You know, I really like Esther, she has helped to ease our worries about getting custody of Sinead and she really is a game old soul prepared to take on three grandchildren at her age."

"I agree, I think we will keep in touch with her while we are here and make sure we get her address and telephone number so that we can to keep in touch with her when she gets back home. I think she could do with some support as she seems to be very much on her own."

"I was thinking the same way myself," Katy informed me. "If we keep in touch with her we can do what we can to support her in her endeavours."

I laughed. "We seem to be thinking along the same lines, so we will do that. We will also introduce her to Alice and Sinead when they arrive and find out how the grandchildren are coping when we meet them. With that Esther came back to her seat and the seat belt signs came on for the descent and landing. Despite what happened to our Family's flight, we were not worried by this.

We had spoken about how we would feel about flying after the accident and we were reassured by the knowledge that it was probably the safest way to travel since it really had a very low accident rate. I think I read somewhere that statistically you could fly around for seventy years before you were due to have an accident. Of course that statistic would not prove much of a comfort if you were flying for the first time and happened to be on a flight that came to a disastrous end.

When we landed, we found we were booked into the same hotel as Esther and told her to keep in touch, We agreed to have dinner together when she would introduce us to her grandchildren, two boys and a girl who was the middle child.

The next part of our day was the most harrowing and more so for Katy than it was for me. I loved and respected Joe but he was Katy's dad and the bond between them was much stronger. We were taken to the place which was functioning as a mortuary till the bodies were officially identified and when Joe's face was uncovered, we both nodded and then were led from the building where Katy burst into tears and all I could do was hold her while at the same time I had a huge lump in my throat and was desperately trying to stem my own tears

The next step was the hospital and we were directed to the intensive care ward and to a scene with which we were all too familiar. My aunt was hooked up to a machine which breathed for her and tubes and wires seemed to be everywhere as had been the case with Alice's mother. Again we confirmed her identity and asked to speak with a doctor. We were shown to a waiting room and a few minutes later a doctor beckoned us to follow him and led us to an office where he asked us to take a seat.

"I'm afraid the prognosis for Mrs MacIntyre is not good," he told us. There is some brain activity but from the figures we feel that the damage is extensive and I fear her abilities would be minimal if she regained consciousness."