Thomas Harding - Kadian Journal

Contents

I would like to thank my family and friends for their support and love. I wouldnt have survived without you.

In particular, to the following who helped me in the writing of this book: Louise and Graham Banks, Lucy and Zam Baring, Peter Benjamin, Jez Butterworth, Mark Collins, Catherine Dawson, Daniel Glaser, Amanda Harding, Angela and Michael Harding, James and Kate Harding, Kate Harrod, Jane Hill, Gregory Kent, Farzad and Tara-Marie Mahootian, Charlie McCormick, Caitlin Morrison, Laura Quinn, Philip Selway, Julia Samuel, Gillian Tett, Dominic Valentine, Juliet Wilkinson and Amelia Wooldridge.

To those who made the Kadian memorial celebrations possible in the UK and USA: Al Blake and the staff at the Sustainability Centre in East Meon; Keith Budge, Jay Green, Joanne Greenwood and the staff and students at Bedales School; the Glenn, Levine, Lo, Mayhew, Moore, Niederhauser and Valentine families in Shepherdstown; and the crew at City Bikes for organising the ride in DC.

Thanks also to those who helped create Kadians iTunes page: Jonathan Ive, Adam Howorth, Aubrey Ghose, David Lee and Rob Reynolds (www.kadianharding.com/apple).

For their support and help with the Kadian Mile campaign: Jason Torrance and the team at the Sustrans sustainable transport charity (www.kadianharding.com/sustrans).

For their legal support: Helen Clifford, Sally Moore, Stephen Miller, Jeremy Hyman, Jodi Sines and Martin Soames.

Thanks to Rob Hyde for permission to reproduce Magical People, to Dominic Valentine and Sam Harding for permission to include the lyrics to Beautiful Boy, and to Debora Harding, for allowing me to quote from the notebooks she kept from Kadians infancy.

To my editor Tom Avery at William Heinemann, for his astonishing sensitivity, good humour and skill. Anna-Sophia Watts, Katherine Fry and Sally Barlow for their editorial help. Glenn ONeill for his beautiful cover. Jason Arthur and Stephanie Sweeney, my publishers at Random House, for their encouragement. And to Gail Rebuck, for her unwavering support.

Great thanks also to my agent, Patrick Walsh, for his solidarity and love, along with the amazing team at Conville & Walsh: Henna Silvennoinen, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Alexandra McNicoll and Carrie Plitt.

Most of all, to my daughter Sam, and wife, Debora, who have shown extraordinary courage in allowing me to write this, and whom I love beyond words.

Miss you Kads.

In July 2012 Thomas Hardings fourteen-year-old son Kadian was killed in a bicycle accident. Shortly afterwards Thomas began to write. This book is the result.

Beginning on the day of Kadians death, and continuing to the one-year anniversary and beyond, it is a record of grief in its rawest form, and of a mind in shock and questioning a strange new reality. Interspersed within the journal are fragments of memory: jewel-bright everyday moments that slowly combine to form a biography of a lost son, and a lost life.

Kadian Journal is a document of startling bravery and candour a description of a family dislocated and united by tragedy, and a beautiful and moving tribute to a son.

Thomas Harding is a journalist who has written for the Sunday Times, Financial Times and the Guardian, among other publications. He co-founded a television station in Oxford, and for many years was an award-winning publisher of a newspaper in West Virginia. He is also the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz. He lives in Hampshire, England.

Hanns and Rudolf:

The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz

For more information about Kadian, and the projects set up in his memory, please visit:

www.kadianharding.com

WE ARE CYCLING up a narrow country lane to the ridge at the top of the Downs. It is early evening. There is not a cloud in the sky. The air is soft and warm after a day of baking sun.

There are six of us: my twenty-one-year-old nephew Taylor, my sister Amanda and her friend Anne-Claire, my fourteen-year-old son Kadian, his school friend Rori, and me.

As Kadian climbs the hill I call from behind, encouraging him to practise his turning signals. He puts his right arm out and the bike wobbles in the same direction. You need to lean to the left when you signal right, I shout from behind. Try it. He does, and it is marginally better. When I tell him to do it again, he grunts in disgust and, pressing hard on his pedals, pulls away from me up the hill.

We are staying at my parents house in Mildenhall, a village just outside Marlborough in Wiltshire. Our plan is to cycle ten miles west, to my uncle and aunts thatched cottage, for a family dinner. The journey will take us up and across the Marlborough Downs, a chain of grassland chalk hills that separates the county of Oxfordshire in the north from Wiltshire in the south. Along its top runs an ancient footpath, known as the Ridgeway, and it is this that we intend to follow.

We continue our way up the lane and the vista opens. There is a field filled with golden wheat on our left. Another speckled with grazing sheep and Neolithic stones. Below us a grassy slope drops away to fields etched with terraces. The ringed mounds of ancient hill forts can be seen in the distance. The sun, sitting low in the sky, splashes amber light across the landscape.

It is so beautiful here, Kadian says as I pull up to him. Its so beautiful, he repeats with a dreamy smile.

We wait for the others to catch up then head off the lane onto a stony track that descends gently down to a large stack of hay bales. The trail ends abruptly, which is strange. I look at my map, trying to figure out where we have gone wrong. Kadian cycles behind the hay and calls out, Its over here, the footpath is over here.

Kadian goes first, and the rest of us follow. Soon we are riding along a narrow path through a tunnel of trees. Kadian, still in front, calls back, Its muddy, its muddy, in a not very believable but still funny northern accent.

The path opens into a broader track. Its a little gravelly, steeper. The gap between myself and Kadian widens. I notice this, the information sliding through my mind without traction as I grasp my brakes to slow my descent.

Hes suddenly way ahead of me. A hundred feet perhaps. He must have gathered speed. And then theres a flash of a white van, moving fast from left to right, at the bottom of the slope. It shouldnt be there. And the van hits Kadian. Driving him away from view, away from me.

Moments later Im at the road. I drop my bike to the ground. Im screaming before I see him. Hes lying face down on the side of the road, near the white line. His head is tilted to the left; there is a small pool of blood by his mouth. I cant see his bike. He is still. Absolutely still. He doesnt look like Kadian any more. He looks vacant. He looks like he is six or seven years old. But what strikes me the most, more than the blood, or the lack of movement, are his eyes. His pupils are dilated unnaturally wide. I know hes gone. I know he is dead. I know that I have lost my son. My Kadian.

This is real. This is happening. I cant believe it. Im crouching a few feet from him. Wailing. My head in my hands. And wailing. No. No. No. I dont want to touch him. I dont want to cradle him in my arms. I want to roll back time. I am both in my body, rocking, howling, and high above, looking down on this dreadful scene, feeling oddly sorry for the father who has just lost his son, suddenly, tragically.

I realise that this is the A4, the road running from Marlborough in the east to Avebury in the west. But there is no traffic. Everything has stopped. A man in a dark green RAF flight suit runs up and squats down by Kadian. I dont know where he has come from. Could an ambulance have arrived already? Who would have called them? My brain cannot make sense of this collapsed world. Is it OK if I turn him over? he asks. How am I meant to know? I realise it wont make a difference, but the mans question makes me wonder, is there hope? I nod. Cradling his head, he gently pulls one side of Kadians body over so that he is staring at the sky. He takes out a phone. Hes talking to the emergency services.