A Lost Friend
Monday, August 29, 2011 at 3:07AM Im not sure why but lately a friend from nearly 25 years ago keeps coming to mind. Tonight I cant sleep and I realised that today, August 29th is the anniversary of his death.
I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard, I was ironing a pair of trousers ready to go and meet my fiancé. Im standing in the kitchen at home and my Mum and my Sister are making fun of me. It’s the end of the summer 1988, I’m 20 and in a week or so I’ll be getting the train back to Hatfield Poly for my second year. Four of us who shared a kitchen in halls of residence that first year have signed up to share a house together: Scott, Chris, Jeremy and me.
Scott was my closest friend in the group. I saw him on the first day I arrived, he was dressed entirely in black lying on his bed with a huge set of speakers each side of his head blasting out music. The stereo and a box of records seemed to be the only things in his room. Scott and I had a similar sense of humour and would often have each other in stitches with a remark no one else seemed to hear.
Chris was in a room next to the Kitchen and was one of the few people with a TV so we would take cups of coffee and sit on his floor to watch Neighbours until he got grumpy and kicked us out. He wasn’t much of a drinker but loved playing the Out Run arcade game in the bar. At the Fresher’s week Chris and I joined a Gun Club but after one session we could never be bothered to trek across town to the range. Chris seemed to have managed to survive his entire first year eating only Fish Fingers
Jeremy had come to Hatfield with a friend of his from school and the two of them were sharing the only twin room on our floor. When I first met them they were wandering around the hallway carrying a fridge trying to work out where they could plug it in. After a year of fighting they had decided to find separate living spaces for the sake of their friendship and everyone’s sanity.
I was looking forward to going back, to seeing them all again.
So I was ironing a pair of trousers ready to go out when Mum suddenly remembered something she’d meant to tell me, there was something in the newspaper she’d read it that morning, a student had been killed in London and it mentioned Hatfield. She went to fetch the paper while I wondered if I’d recognise the name or the face of the student. It was a long shot but I was thinking how cool it would be to be able to say, “yeah I’ve seen him in the union” or “I think I know someone off his course”.
On the front page of the Daily Mail, right at the top under the banner was a passport sized photo of Chris and four or five short columns of text. There wasn’t much to say, a young civil engineering student had been walking home in the early hours of the morning after a night out at a snooker club when he was shot twice at close range and left to die in a deserted street.
The weeks after his death were a dizzying, disconnected period. We went to the funeral which was at once heartbreaking and uplifting. I vividly remember Chris’s family, his mum and his sisters, being unbelievably brave and strong while we were just kids with no idea of how we should react. I remember crying and laughing hysterically that day in equal measures.
The Poly sorted out a house for the three of us and gave us counselling when we returned which amounted to a short chat from the chaplain and an offer of further help if we felt we needed it. We felt we didn’t.
We were also interviewed by the police. I remember a friendly but very serious detective asking me if Chris had any enemies, if he was using drugs, why had we joined the gun club together, if I could think of any reason anyone would want to hurt him. I couldn’t, no one could, everyone was baffled. We invented theories, explanations, stories amongst ourselves but none of them made sense and slowly we stopped talking about it and got back to our student lives.
It eventually turned out that there was no reason, no motive, no story. A violent, paranoid, schizophrenic man was eventually arrested after killing his own mother. He confessed to murdering Chris saying: “I left home intending to kill someone and he happened to be the first person I saw.”
Not every day but often and at significant moments in my life I think of Chris and the fact that he should be getting married now, or having children, or moving to a new job, turning forty. I’d like his family to know that I still do think of him and that Im sure there are many others out there who regularly pause to remember and while this is no replacement for a life I hope it is perhaps a small comfort.
In memory of Christopher Wandless 1968 - 1988
