The Human Condition

for her. According to my notes she should have been on duty but I couldn't find her. I had an awful time searching through the bodies for Maddy. So many poor, innocent people had lost their lives so suddenly and inexplicably...

    When I couldn't find her on any of the wards she covered I worked my way back from the hospital to the house she shared with her friends Jenny and Suzanne. It was there that I found our little girl in her front garden, lying on her back in the long grass. Bloody hell, she deserved much more than that. Such a cruel, sudden and undignified end to such a short and beautiful life. It broke my heart to see her like that. I put her in the car and brought her back home with me. I dealt with her body in accordance with official instructions, just as I had Mother's.

    It was impossible and undignified to leave my family out on the patio as I had done. They both deserved so much more than that. I read through the government booklet again that afternoon. It said that the bodies of any fatalities should be buried away from the house. Dejectedly I decided I would have to do just that. I dragged them both the length of the garden to the small area of lawn between the garden shed and Maddy's old swing. We'd originally brought her that swing on her sixth birthday but Mother and I decided we'd keep it even after she'd grown out of it and stopped using it. It was always there to remind us of her. She used to have so much fun playing on it with her friends. Even now whenever I look at it all I can see is young Maddy swinging on it in the summer sunshine. We had hoped that we'd have grandchildren to use it one day.

    I unlocked the shed and went inside.

    The garden shed has always been my escape. As well as being a very practical and convenient storage space, it was also a quiet and comfortable little area where I could sit and work or read my paper or listen to sport on the radio. Maddy and her mother liked their television and their soap operas but I couldn't abide the constant noise and distraction. Quite often � almost daily in the summer months, certainly most weekends � I would shut myself away in the shed and relax in my own company with a cup of tea or a glass of something stronger.

    Before I picked up my tools I sat down on the deck chair in the corner of the shed and tried to take stock of all that had suddenly happened around me. Sitting there it was hard to comprehend the enormity and finality of what had happened and I could hardly believe that my wife and daughter's lifeless bodies lay just inches away. With tears in my eyes I looked around the little wooden hut and remembered all that I had lost. The season was almost over and the mower and some of the garden tools had been cleaned and were ready to be put away. On the opposite wall was where I stored the summer things that Maddy and her mother used to use; plastic patio furniture, sun-loungers and deck chairs, garden games and the like. In a small wooden box tucked away in one corner I found a collection of brightly coloured buckets and spades which I had again kept for those grandchildren who would now never arrive. They reminded me of many summer holidays now long gone where Maddy, Mother and I would spend endless days playing on the beach in the blistering sun. All of that seemed hundreds of miles and thousands of years away now.

    With a heavy heart I stood up, picked up my spade and the garden edging tool, and set to work. I took a rough measurement of the length and width of Maddy's body (she was slightly taller and thicker set than her mother) and marked out the shape of the two graves in the turf close together. I carefully lifted the turf and then spent the next two hours digging. Although we used to go to church most Sundays I wasn't quite sure what I should say before I covered up their bodies. It was difficult to think of the right words. I loved them both very much but I've always found it hard to properly express my feelings. Being gushing, emotional and romantic was something I've always struggled with, such words have never come naturally to me. In any event I thanked God for their lives and asked that they would now find peace. They were good people and I was confident they would. I was far less sure about what the future had in store for me.

    I'm not the kind of man who sits around feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn't have been doing anyone any favours if I'd just sat there and done nothing. I spent a lot of time over