LOVE IS IN THE HEIR (COMPLETE)

Chapter 39

"No it is a country road. We are alone."

"No flashes on the horizon that would be scopes or binoculars?"

"No."

"Ok I want you to go back. Where were you when Twist and Shout started? What bend in the road or field. Find me a marker."

"Just past the 'fresh asparagus for sale' sign. I thought it would be good for soup and hoped we could find some at the fete."

We carried on going back and fourth picking up little bits of information along the way. Each time he took me a tiny bit further toward the moment I dreaded the most. I would start to panic when we got near so he would make me back up again and tell him what colour a field was. What someone was saying, wearing, sounds in the background over the music.

When it came to the moment I was dreading I was to become someone else. Someone watching. It was to be like a scene in a film, replace my family with actors. Actors I could see in film after film and let them portray my family. I was to be the director, describing it. I was to let it play out and I could call cut whenever I wanted.

I got through the first bit quite well, the car stopping at some lights, before the bridge. My sister lifting my hand to admire my new nail varnish and tell me I was doing hers when we got home. My mum saying 'me too'. I saw the dark shape rush towards the driver side window, it caught my attention.

I was taken back and fourth on the speed, size and shape of the dark shadow. Which direction, how far from the lights was it. Then was the worst bit... I couldn't replace them with actors now matter how hard I tried. I would have to relive it for them. I had to do it for my family. I began to describe it all.

The sound of the gun tapping the glass asking my father to roll the window down. Nothing was said, just the gun tap signalling 'open'. My mum shouted to my father not to but he did and was shot. My mother screamed his name as we all screamed too as we knew my father was dead. In that instant my father was taken from me. My mothers hand reaching out to him, the way his head had jerked when shot and barely a second later my mother was shot in the head too. I saw it, the horror of losing her husband halted with a bullet a quarter inch above her left eyebrow. My brother and sister screaming, I was too but reached out to my brother as he was tried to hide behind his hands and raised his knee to try to hide behind that two but he was shot. Twice. Once through his hand into his ear and the next through the top of his head making blood splatter all over me.

Another shooter or maybe the same one just moved to the side but my sister was shot as she tried to climb over me and out of the car to run. I resigned myself to 'this is it', 'this is how I die'. I felt the bullets 'thud' but didn't feel the pain. I played dead. Somewhere between playing dead and passing out through loss of blood I had to find more clues.

We relived that moment several times in the next few days. Eventually I was taken into a car and each person played a member of my family. We acted it out.

"Don't cry, get angry and get even!" Stan yelled. "Get me those details. Stand here with me and take this gun. You are now the shooter. Walk to the car and carry out the hit."

I couldn't do it. In the end Stan made me stand and watch whilst he did.

"Call cut if it is wrong," he said as he did several versions because I had to tell people what way my family fell, the way their bodies reacted to the bullet so they could work out trajectory. Was there another shooter?

The final day, I was taken to a room and shown a computer regeneration of the whole thing. I was violently sick. They had it... the whole thing there on screen. Even my dad blue and white check shirt and my sister taking my hand to see the nail varnish.