It was awful. On the day it happened my very sensitive, at the time 13 year old, was meant to be going on a week long school activity trip (all meeting in Keswick for the coach).
All the way there he kept saying I don’t feel good, I don’t want to go, something bad is going to happen. He’d never refused a trip away from us before.
By the time we got to Keswick he was adamant he wasn’t going. I tried to encourage him. I tried to bribe him. We chatted. The teacher tried. And I wondered if maybe he was being bullied and couldn’t say.
So we drove all the way back to where we lived at the time. As we were on our way up the A66 it came in the radio news and he burst out crying (he was / and still is definitely not a cryer). Somehow, he seemed to pick up the bad energy of that day.
Needless to say, we went home and stayed in for the rest of day.
It was shocking and devastating.