<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jan/28/my-husband-was-murdered-on-holiday-and-my-whole-world-collapsed>
"On a Sunday in October 1997, Eve Henderson looked down at her husband,
Roderick, as he lay in a hospital bed, unable to make sense of what she saw.
She was, she says, “a block of stone”. They were in the neurological ward of a
huge hospital on the outskirts of Paris. It had taken Henderson an hour to
find, travelling on the Métro with the name scribbled on a scrap of paper.
Roderick looked comfortable when she arrived; he was a good colour, but there
was a round red mark in the centre of his forehead and a small tube inside his
mouth, attached to something she later learned was breathing for him.
“He looked fairly alive,” says Henderson, “and I just stood there. A doctor
came in. She was in tears and I thought: ‘Bloody hell, am I meant to be
crying?’ You’ve got no emotion, you’ve got nothing. You don’t know what to say
or where you are. That’s what shock does to you.”
Less than 24 hours earlier, on the Saturday night, Henderson, her husband,
their two adult children and their partners had been toasting Roderick’s 54th
birthday on the Seine. “We’d been dressed up, suited and booted, on a
Bateau
Mouche [sightseeing boat].” All six had arrived in Paris for his birthday
weekend the day before, travelling by Eurostar, sharing champagne and bacon
rolls on the way.
“When this happened, Roderick and I had been married for 32 years. We’d seen
all the ups and downs,” says Henderson. “We were broke when we started – you
have the kids, things get easier.” They lived in Swanley, Kent. Henderson
worked part-time for Asda as, she says, “a glorified secretary”. Roderick was a
tool-maker, an engineer. “That was part of the reason behind the weekend,” she
says. “Eurostar was fairly new and he wanted to see the tunnel.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
