I’ve been listening a lot to what everyone has been saying tonight. I know I have only come here a couple of times now but….Our mother always taught us to be grateful. Years ago, when she found out she was pregnant with my brother, the whole family was in shock. One child left the nest, another trying desperately to leave - it was supposed to be their time, you know, to finally dedicate time to each other, for each other. Dad wanted to go on cruises, Mum said they weren’t that old and she preferred to jump in the campervan and cruise round the south of France, carelessly drinking cheap wine. But that was all out the window. She could have opted out of course, but she was tough you know? And she said God wouldn’t want her to waste a life, and that we should be grateful. She’d barely uttered a word about the bastard all her life and now suddenly she is grateful to him! So I watched him grow up, the precocious little shit, and had the same love for that kid as with my other sibling, despite the huge age gap. And we both loved art, and I had promised him that on his 6th birthday I’d bring them down to London and go round the galleries.And I see him now, in his chair, he can’t walk, he can’t talk. He can barely hold a paintbrush. Not for long anyway. And I ask myself - should I be grateful? That he is still here and we can still, in our own way, communicate? But I can’t. As much as I appreciate what you are doing here, I have to say, respectfully, you’re all lying to yourselves. There is not a day goes by that I don’t think about why a stranger, some 17yr old kid, a young man, would pick up a 6yr old child, and throw him from a balcony five storeys up. One minute he is two happy steps away and the next he is changed forever. ‘Extremely swiftly and in one movement’ they said in court. Extremely swiftly and in one movement! And so, I can’t allow myself the luxury of being a victim here, because I am… too... angry. And I cannot forgive. And neither should you.
Inspired by a true story