The memorial garden helping the city to heal
A year on from the city’s terrorist attack, Joe Shute visits a new oasis of calm at the hospital where young victims were treated
It wasn’t the terrible injuries she sustained on the night of May 22 last year that Lily Harrison found hardest to cope with. Though the eight-year-old suffered a shrapnel wound in her back, a bruised lung and a fractured collarbone, as a result of the suicide bomb detonated inside the foyer of the Manchester Arena that killed 22 and left more than 120 injured, what kept Lily awake in her hospital bed in the weeks following the tragedy was guilt.
“She was blaming herself that we were there and got hurt because she wanted to go to the concert,” explains her mum, Lauren, who, along with her partner, Adam, was caught in the blast.
Such is the innocence of the victims of the Manchester bombing. It was a Monday evening one year ago today when a stadium full of predominantly young girls and their parents attended an Ariana Grande pop concert, only to find themselves caught up in one of the worst terror attacks this country has ever borne witness to.
Like so many of the fans present that evening, Lily had spent the weeks running up to the show in a state of near delirious excitement; the singer’s CD was played so often in the car that even her father, Adam, a 32-year-old barber from Heaton Moor in Stockport, had memorised all the lyrics. Arriving at the arena, both Adam and Lily bought Ariana Grande T-shirts (his black, hers pink) at the merchandise stall before taking their seats in the front row of the upper tier. Because Lily had school the next day, her parents decided – when the final song was finished – to make a quick dash for the exits. They were just about level with the windows of the box office when 22-year-old terrorist Salman Abedi detonated his device.
“I just heard this pop and there was a moment of silence,” Adam recalls. “I can’t really remember what was happening around the periphery, only thinking that we needed to get out of there. I hoisted Lily up and dragged Lauren by the arm. It was only when we got to the car park we realised we were all a bit of a mess.”
As well as Lily’s injuries, Lauren, a 26-year-old money advice administrator, had been struck in the inner thigh by a large piece of shrapnel, and was losing so much blood that a passer-by used her scarf to staunch the flow. Adam had also ruptured his ankle ligaments in the melee.
Lily was taken to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, where she was the youngest of 27 paediatric patients treated for injuries sustained in the bomb blast. A further 28 adult patients were treated at Manchester Royal Infirmary, which is located on the same site.
When the Queen visited the wards in the immediate aftermath of the bombing last year, Lily was too unwell to meet her – but she did come face to face with Ariana Grande and the Duke of Cambridge on subsequent visits. She giggles at the memory of the Duke kneeling beside a hospital bed in his well-tailored Gieves & Hawkes suit – she remembers being worried that the trousers might split.
The children’s hospital became a focal point for the outpouring of public support following the attack, and in the days after the blast, staff were inundated with food parcels and messages of goodwill sent from all over the world.
One year on, a new garden is being opened on the site, inspired by the stories of the young Manchester bombing victims – the last of whom only left the hospital two months ago – and all the other patients treated here. Designed by Alan Titchmarsh, it is filled with hornbeam, magnolia, silver birch, Japanese maple, herbs and shrubs. There is also a bee – the emblem of Manchester, which became a symbol of defiance in the face of terror – planted out of black grass and yellow rushes.
The garden is also intended as a place of respite for staff. Naomi Davis, a consultant in paediatric orthopaedic surgery, was the surgeon commander the evening of the bomb blast. She recalls being called in shortly before midnight to discover the wards full of patients suffering from the type of ballistic injuries typical of a war zone. “We noticed how calm they were,” she says. “It wasn’t children screaming and panicking – they were very quiet.”
It wasn’t until mid-afternoon the following day that Davis “emerged blinking into the sunlight”. She says: “We will never be the same again, and that doesn’t mean necessarily worse. The whole hospital did feel like this cohesive force.”
As well as the experience binding them together, for some , the aftermath of that night has left scars. “I know there are staff within the hospital who have been greatly traumatised by it, but that’s mainly because of what they’ve seen,” says Sue Crook, matron for oncology and haematology at the hospital, who was drafted in the day after the bombing. “You see a lot of traumatic things within nursing. The thing about that day was that it was happening all at once, to a lot of people.”
By coincidence, in the months before the bombing, Manchester’s emergency services had launched a citywide operation to prepare for a major terrorist incident. The aim, Davis explains, was to draw on the lessons learned from the Paris terror attack in 2015, including the need for on-call psychiatrists to be immediately drafted on to the hospital wards to allow staff and patients to better cope with the trauma. “That preventive psychology really made a difference and allowed some of the children to turn themselves around very quickly,” she says.
Freya Lewis, 15, was another victim treated at the hospital who has made an astonishing recovery. The GCSE student from Holmes Chapel in Cheshire had attended the concert with her friend, Nell Jones, and was just three metres away from Abedi when he detonated his bomb. Nell, 14, was killed. Freya was left with two broken legs, a broken arm, multiple burns and shrapnel wounds, and was treated at the hospital for nearly six weeks.
The first week was spent in intensive care, and she only fully regained consciousness a week later. The relief of her parents, Nick and Alison, was tempered by the realisation that they had to inform their daughter that her friend had not survived.
“It’s been really tough mentally, as well as physically,” says Freya, who has since raised £40,000 for the children’s hospital and last Sunday completed the Manchester 10k run. “The worst thing has been missing Nell.”
Her father, Nick, a 52-year-old company director, says he has been amazed by the extraordinary resilience that his daughter has shown – including giving a speech at her school assembly only a few months after the blast. “What she went through on the night is truly beyond comprehension,” he says. “The fact that she is alive is a miracle. The fact she is able to get up every morning and summon the strength to do so is simply remarkable.”
For Lily Harrison, what has helped her get better is a simple philosophy that she holds on to today: “One bad thing happened but so many good things have come from it.”
How else to make sense of this appalling act?
Love Your Garden: NHS Special is on ITV tonight at 8pm. For more, see your RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 supplement with today’s Telegraph