Almost 20 years ago, my life changed in a single moment. My little brother, Tim, was stabbed and killed by someone trying to steal his car. He was 25 years old. Even now, writing those words numbs my fingers.
We’d always been close, growing up together in the most idyllic surroundings in the New Forest, Hampshire. I was the eldest, then came my sister Alex, born a few years afterwards.
Tim arrived just 16 months later, and I remember seeing him for the first time, wrapped in a white blanket with a shock of black hair, his eyes shut.
I thought he was marvellous. Much of our childhood was spent on bikes or swimming in rivers, building camps in the woods or watching the films we’d video-taped on repeat until we knew all the words.
Having two older sisters can’t have always been easy for him, but when our parents divorced when we were still quite young, it brought us closer together as siblings.
By the time we were in our 20s, Tim was more than 6 ft tall and towered over me, but he was still my little brother and I adored him.
Writer Helen McGinn has shared for the first time what it was like to experience the loss of her little brother Tim who was stabbed to death in 2002 by a teenager who wanted his Audi
We both lived in London and spent a lot of time together, quite a bit of it in the pub. If Tim went to the bar, he didn’t come back with just a couple of drinks and a packet of crisps to share, he’d appear with a tray full of glasses and packets in every flavour they had.
He was all in, always, loving life and everything it had to offer.
Then, one Sunday night in January 2002, all that changed. My mobile rang and it was Tim’s girlfriend, Jemma. I remember thinking she was going to try to persuade me and my husband to join them for the evening but we were on the sofa engrossed in a film.
‘Tim’s been stabbed.’ Her words hit me, but I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. My first thought was that he’d been in some sort of altercation outside the pub. I actually felt cross with him. How could he have been so stupid?
Then I heard a stranger’s voice on the phone telling me that Tim was in an ambulance and to go straight to St Thomas’ Hospital near Waterloo.
My husband, Ross, drove us there, past Buckingham Palace, St James’s Park, Big Ben, landmarks lodging themselves in my memory. I can remember looking at my hands and watching as my fingers seized up. They looked like claws.
I called my father, mother and sister to tell them what little I knew: that Tim had been stabbed by someone trying to steal his car outside his flat in Battersea, and that he was being operated on as I spoke. It was truly awful.
Pictured: Tim Robinson was stabbed to death for his car by a teenager almost 20 years ago
I saw my brother one last time, wired up to a life-support machine. I thought of how I’d seen him just a few days before, standing by his Audi in our street, music blaring as he waved goodbye, shouting that he’d see us soon.
One of his wounds — he had been stabbed seven times — had pierced his heart, and even though the doctors had tried everything, Tim’s life couldn’t be saved. He died on January 30, 2002.
In the months after his death, I moved in what felt like a parallel universe, watching the world go on around me, wanting to tell everyone to stop because this awful thing had happened.
At the same time, I didn’t want to see anyone but my family and close friends, particularly the ones Tim and I had shared since childhood.
Being with the people who knew him best was the easiest place to be because you didn’t have to tell anyone how brilliant he was or how much he was missed. They knew, too.
It’s taken a long time, years in fact, for me to even begin to come to terms with what happened. Losing someone I loved so suddenly, and in such brutal circumstances, was at times impossible to comprehend.
There was a lot of media coverage about it at the time — it was one of the first carjacking murders in Britain — and much as I tried not to read or watch anything about it, it was almost unavoidable.
For a long time I would go through the motions — go to work, meet friends — but inside I felt utterly lost.
Pictured left to right: Older sister Helen, brother Tim in the middle and her little sister Alex
I was working as a supermarket wine buyer, so I tried to keep myself busy. My colleagues were incredibly supportive, but my saving grace was my husband Ross. We’ve been together since we were teenagers and Tim had looked up to him like an older brother.
I honestly don’t know how I would have coped without having Ross there to squeeze my hand when my thoughts wandered into ‘what if’ scenarios, or hold me when my body shook with sobs that suddenly came from deep within.
At times, he still has to.
And I guess that’s the point. I didn’t realise that grief would be like this. Once, I actually Googled ‘how long does grief last?’ I just wanted to know when it would get better.
I now know that grief doesn’t work like that. In fact, it doesn’t work like anything because it’s different for everyone. It never goes away, but with love and luck, it
