Scars from a bombing that won't heal

Ten years ago on April 10, on a clear spring morning, an IRA bomb ripped through the City of London.

The blast outside the Baltic Exchange was the biggest on the mainland since the Second World War. It killed three and left more than 90 injured.

Few Londoners will be aware of the anniversary; many may not recall the horror of that day. A gleaming new glass tower is going up on the site of the old exchange and the Northern Ireland peace process, for all its faults, appears to have brought an end to mainland bombings by the Provisional IRA.

But one young woman can never forget. Christiane Carter - then only eight - and her sister Danielle, 15, were waiting in their father's car outside the exchange when the 100lb Semtex device exploded. Danielle died instantly. Christiane was showered with glass from the windscreen and nearby office windows which left her bloodied from head to foot.

A passing cab driver took Christiane to Guy's Hospital, where she had to have more than 100 stitches. Danielle's body was removed by police, unbeknown to their father Danny, a chauffeur, who then spent a frantic night searching hospitals across London, convinced that his eldest daughter was still alive, but unable to locate her. He finally learned of her death at 5.30 the next morning.

The bomb left Christiane with terrible scars on her face and body but while they gradually healed, the mental scars of the tragedy deepened. Recalling the events of 10 years ago, she said today that she had been unable at first to comprehend the loss of her sister, and would talk about her to anyone who would listen. Counselling was offered in the immediate-aftermath but never materialised she said. So she counselled herself, not least by "talking to" Danielle.

"People thought I was mad, up in my bedroom nattering away all by myself," she said at her father's home in Basildon.

"I missed her a lot, so I talked to her about what we'd do that weekend, whether we would go shopping or play hockey. I think it was the only way I could clear it out of my mind. Some nights, I'd wake up and feel she was there beside me.

"It's not something you can ever actually get over. She was my big sister and now I don't have one.

"On your 18th birthday, what everyone wants is to have their family and friends all around them, but I was missing the one person I had really looked up to. Little things really get to you. I'll never know what Danielle would have looked like when she was 18, for example - though she was always the pretty one."

At the time of the bombing, Christiane's parents were separated. The girls lived with their mother, Kay Meekings, who began to realise that her daughter was deeply confused, and that she believed all Irish people were capable of such outrages.

"I used to run away if I heard an Irish accent," said Christiane. "I thought it was the IRA coming for me. I was very scared. It was so inexplicable, what had happened.

"I asked to watch television, and the adults thought I wanted to watch cartoons when all I wanted to see was the news, to hear what they were saying about my family and my sister."

So her mother took her to Ireland to stay with friends. "I wouldn't leave my mum's side for a while. But her friend talked to me about the situation there, and said that Irish people hated the IRA too. She said she understood if I never wanted to come back, but that I should at least realise why.

"Now of course I do understand why it happened, but I can't forgive the people who planted that bomb. That's just not something I can do."

It helped to talk to other relatives of victims, parents and siblings who were campaigning for peace in Northern Ireland, "complete strangers" who understood exactly what Christiane was feeling.

Her two elder brothers, fiercely protective of her in the first few years after the blast - and still protective, she says, particularly when they meet potential boyfriends - helped her to cope simply by listening to her stories of Danielle. Sometimes in summer Christiane would visit her sister's grave with Danielle's best friend, Terry, and stay there until 2am, just talking. How Christiane lost her sister is one of the first thing she tells one of those potential boyfriends, or girlfriends. "If they want to understand me, then they have to understand that part of my life," she said. "Because it's still a very big part."

Christiane, now an attractive young woman, has vivid memories of her first hours in hospital after the bombing, and her fears that she would be left permanently disfigured. "I asked my aunt to take me to the loo at Guy's, so I could see my face," she said.

"I was held up to the mirror and started to cry saying, 'I'm never going to be pretty'. The glass had caught my right side, on my face, my arm, hand and chest, and I thought I was always going to have this horrible right side of my face, forever. I was only eight years old, and that was tough."

Her long, blonde hair, full of tiny shards of glass, had to be cut off. "I had been growing it since I was little and it was down to my waist," she said. "I had a very short bob cut instead, which was a lot like Danielle's. When I came home my mum just sobbed because I looked so much like her."

Three months later, doctors found a piece of glass the size of a grain of sugar in Christiane's eye. Embedded in the padded jacket she had been wearing in the car were two and a half pounds of glass shards.

At first, Christiane could not bring herself to go out, fearing everyone would stare at her scars. They are now almost invisible.

"I used to rub foundation over my cheeks to try to hide them. I must have looked awful. Mum was in tears when she saw me. She washed it off and told me no one would look at my scars. Everyone was really nice to me and I felt better."

Today Christiane works in a clothes shop in Basildon, where she picks the best bargains and saves money to go clubbing with her friends. To the casual observer, she lives the life of the typical teenager; she drank a few too many Bacardi and cokes on her 18th birthday, only occasionally returns her father's calls on her mobile, shows off a smart new handbag with pride. But she is still self-conscious about the faint scars to her face and traces the outlines with the tip of her finger.

She also finds it hard to spend much time in London. A spell working in Canary Wharf several years ago came to an abrupt end after a bomb scare, when traumatic memories of 1992 came flooding back.

Two years ago, however, with Christiane and her brothers grown up, all that pent-up emotion was suddenly, finally, released. "It was a very strange day," she said, breathing deeply. "I had been up to her grave so many times before and come back fine. But this time, I got back home and just started to cry like a child. And I couldn't stop. There were floods and floods and floods of tears.

"It has been 10 years now and you think it gets easier, but I'm not sure that it really ever does."