- After I was left paralysed by the Manchester Arena bombing, the other blokes on the spinal ward said I should kiss goodbye to my marriage…. so I offered my wife a get out of jail card. Read part two of Martin Hibbert’s book here
In the third and final extract from his gripping book, a father crippled by the Manchester Arena blast tells how he rebuilt his life — and became only the second paraplegic ever to scale Mount Kilimanjaro.
Over the years, I’ve heard various outlandish theories – that Elvis was alive and well; that the moon landings had been faked. But it was something else to hear the Manchester Arena bombing — which killed 22 innocent people and left my 14-year-old daughter Eve and I among those with horrific, life-changing injuries — was entirely faked.
According to the conspiracy theorists, the attack during an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, 2017, was a carefully orchestrated exercise to enable the government to introduce more stringent restrictions of public rights.
Now, I’m from the old school — although sticks and stones may break my bones, words can never hurt me. But in the summer of 2021, Eve’s mum Sarah rang to tell me that one of the conspiracy theorists, Richard D. Hall, had set up a camera outside their house in Bolton to film Eve and see if she really was in a wheelchair.
Bloody hell, we’d done it, Martin Hibbert writes of the moment he reached the top. I really was on top of the world
Hibbert and the team that helped him reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro
A cold, hard, fury welled inside me. He’s done what?! With trembling hands, I did some Googling and discovered that Hall had more than 16 million views and 80,000 subscribers on YouTube.
That’s a lot of people being sucked into this nonsense and I worried what he would do next and whether his followers might also be tempted to join in and carry out their own ‘research’. Following a Panorama documentary investigating these ‘disaster trolls’ I went on TV to discuss it and all the publicity led to action.
Hall’s YouTube channels and the market stall in Wales where he sold books and DVDs expounding his theories were closed down, and a group of us survivors have started legal action to ensure that he can no longer defend his poisonous claims. Hopefully, by this summer the case will have concluded completely.
I shook with anger when I watched the video in which Hall showed off the surveillance device he would use to spy on Eve — a camera disguised by leaves on a stick. ‘It’ll be interesting to see if the daughter is in that footage,’ he said
‘The daughter.’ That’s how he referred to my beautiful, brave Eve, the most precious person in my life and my absolute world.
At 6.53pm on the night of the bombing, with less than four hours to go before Salman Abedi detonated his homemade explosive device, I posted to Twitter a photo of the two of us having a pizza at our favourite Italian restaurant, not far from Manchester Arena.
The waiter who took it captured the moment beautifully. Me beaming proudly, Eve smiling shyly with her lips clamped together. We’re both holding our glasses in the air. That picture will always be a poignant reminder of what might have been.
However, I hope it can also serve as a reminder of how life should be lived, no matter what circumstances befall us, and I have come to believe that Eve and I were saved for a reason that night.
It’s taken time but finally, I understand the answer — to help and inspire others through the various campaigns I’ve mounted since the bombing, starting with one arising out of the Kerslake report into how the emergency services responded to the attack.
When that was published in March 2018, less than a year after the bombing, I hoped it would answer questions I had about why survivors like Eve and I were left bleeding to death on the floor of the arena for almost an hour that night. But within minutes of beginning to read, I’d turned back to the cover to check the title.
‘There is a lot to be proud of in the response [to the attack],’ Lord Kerslake wrote in the executive summary. Was he talking about the same event?
Hibbert, his wife Gabby and their pet pup
By some miracle, my life had been given back to me that night of the bombing, Hibbert writes. Now I had a duty to give back to the charity that had got me here.
Soon I had formed a support group of survivors and families of the bereaved and we started demanding answers to our questions. Why hadn’t suicide bomber Salman Abedi been spotted? And stopped? Why weren’t emergency services more prepared? Why were the first-aid kits so inadequate?
On May 22, 2018, Gabby and I went to Manchester Cathedral for a service of remembrance. Police and fire chiefs involved in the response on the night greeted people as they arrived. I couldn’t bring myself to shake their hands. Anyone watching might have thought I was churlish. Ungrateful, downright rude even as I fixed my eyes on a point up ahead. I knew who Eve and I owed our lives to. And it wasn’t them.
A public inquiry chaired by Sir John Saunders would eventually vindicate us in our conviction that there were serious flaws in the rescue operation, not least in the lack of preparation and training for an emergency such as this
Sir John would conclude that one victim’s life could have been saved with prompt treatment and care. And there was also a possibility, albeit remote, that a second victim, the youngest, could also have been saved. All the emergency services would issue apologies after the publication of the report.
At night I still had flashbacks of lying in a growing pool of blood at the Arena, helplessly watching my daughter gasp for breath. But I tried to stay upbeat, preparing for a trip to Australia during the summer of 2019 to do more work with physical therapist Ken Ware.
Although I’d been told I’d never walk again, he’d already achieved the unthinkable, enabling me to pull myself to a standing position and stay upright holding on to a bar. This time I was able to stand in callipers but the highlight of that trip came when I received a video from Sarah and Eve, who had started at a special school. I crumpled. But more was to come. Seeing Eve was top of my homecoming to do list and nothing prepared me for her greeting me with the words, ‘Hi Daddy.’
Although I’d been told I’d never walk again, physical therapist Ken Ware had already achieved the unthinkable, Martin Hibbert writes, enabling me to pull myself to a standing position and stay upright holding on to a bar
She spoke slowly, carefully, but she was speaking. So much pride and love surged through me I could hardly breathe. My brave daughter had been to hell and back. But, after two years, here she was performing miracles.
While I was away Salman Abedi’s brother Hashem was extradited from Libya and February 2020 saw the start of his trial for ordering, stockpiling and transporting materials to create the bomb.
In the run-up to the proceedings, I spent nights desperately chasing sleep that wouldn’t come. I’d done so well since that dreadful night almost three years previously but I was only human.
I’d still jump at the boom of fireworks or the slamming of a car door. I’d freeze at the sound of a high-pitched scream. It was only ever a child playing or a toddler having a meltdown in the supermarket but my heart raced for ages afterwards.
The trial at the Old Bailey was live-streamed to courts around the country — a sombre acknowledgement that people had travelled from all over for the concert. Some never made it home.
Watching the proceedings from Manchester Crown Court, I wanted to see Abedi in the dock, but he had the privilege of being shielded by a screen and missed so many days. His legal team pleaded ill health, dehydration (allergic to tap water, apparently), tiredness, difficulty concentrating, the court day being overly long, Abedi being overwhelmed with the whole process and suffering flashbacks. You really couldn’t make it up.
Other times there was no explanation, he just refused to leave his cell. And when he was found guilty on all counts of murder and attempted murder, he refused to attend court to hear his sentence of 55 years in prison.
On that day, I’d wanted to wheel myself into the Old Bailey defiantly and show him he hadn’t won. But with Abedi refusing to attend there was little point. Later I publicly backed the campaign to make it compulsory for convicted criminals to be present at sentencing.
One thing that helped me through difficult times like this was my work as a trustee of the Spinal Injuries Association (SIA) — the charity which has given me so much support and help.
When talking about the battles faced by people with a spinal cord injury (SCI), I’d often said they climb a mountain every day and when we were discussing fundraising ideas it occurred to me I should climb a real mountain and that it should be Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa.
‘Let’s challenge this notion that disabled people can’t do these things,’ I told the charity. ‘We’ll turn an appalling act of terrorism into something positive.’
Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi, at Victoria Station making his way to the Manchester Arena in 2017, where he detonated his bomb
Even for an able-bodied person, the odds of success are only 65 per cent and I would be scaling the highest free-standing mountain in the world in a custom-built, specially adapted mountain trike.
When Gabby heard what I was proposing, different expressions flashed over her face. Laughter (not for long), disbelief, shock, anger, worry: ‘After everything you’ve been through, Martin, why would you put yourself through this?’ It was hard to explain. But this was something I had to do.
By some miracle, my life had been given back to me that night of the bombing. Now I had a duty to give back to the charity that had got me here.
Soon I found another reason to go. The climb was scheduled for the summer of 2022 but the previous October my lovely, amazing, devoted Mum died of pulmonary heart disease, watching TV with the remote control on her knee.
In a daze of grief, we planned her funeral. I was adamant about one thing. I was going to join my brothers in carrying her coffin. I could see confusion pass over the undertaker’s face.
I put my hand up. ‘It was done for Prince Philip’s funeral. They carried the coffin at waist height. If it can be done for Prince Philip, it can be done for my mum.’
And, so, with a bit of help from my friends, all three Hibbert boys and the undertaker carried Mum’s coffin into the crematorium.
I knew one of the hardest things about Kilimanjaro would be doing it without Mum in my life.
As I packed, I felt a pang that she wouldn’t be there to see me do this. ‘She’d have been so proud,’ my brothers said. Then I had a brainwave. Now, Mum hated the cold and would kill me if I distributed all of her ashes on the summit. But I could spread some.
I bought a scatter tube, lovingly packed the precious cargo in my hand luggage and smiled at her photo. ‘You ready, Mum?’
She would be with me after all. So, too, would nurse Stuart Wildman and physiotherapist Caroline Abbott, both part of the medical team who had helped me on my road to recovery in the immediate aftermath of the bombing and people I was proud to call my friends.
The 45-mile ascent took approximately five days, with three days for the descent. We had one of the best teams of local guides, trek doctors and porters.
They prepared our camps each night and ensured we stayed safe and well but there was no predicting who would be prone to altitude sickness which has nothing do with your abilities or fitness level.
Steve Lloyd, a friend from when I’d worked in banking, was the first to be told he couldn’t continue the climb and then followed Chris Paton, a nurse who specialised in spinal cord injuries and had joined the trip after responding to an appeal from the SIA.
He succumbed the day before we were due to reach the summit and that night I felt consumed by utter terror. I was alone in a tent, high up a mountain, in the middle of a strange continent. Outside, it was pitch black and freezing. I’d never felt so alone. But up there at the top, waiting for me, was Mum.
As we approached the summit the next day I was pumping the levers on my wheelchair so furiously I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them snap off in my hands. The porters in front pulled. From behind, they pushed. With a satisfying bump, my front wheel rose and cleared the final ridge. My back wheels followed. And bloody hell, we’d done it. The team jumped up and down punching the air. I lifted my arms, exhausted.
Top of the world. I really was on top of the world. I rummaged in my bag for my travel urn and then for my phone so I could play some music. As the strains of The Carpenters’ For All We Know floated through the air, I was so weak I could hardly prise the lid from the tube before tilting it and then scattering the precious contents.
‘Love you, Mum,’ I said quietly, sniffing and wiping my tear-stained cheeks with gloved hands.
Our Kilimanjaro climb continues to have such an impact — not only in raising essential funds but in showing others with an SCI what they can achieve with the right team and support. I was the second paraplegic in the world to reach the summit.
In a new-found career as an after-dinner speaker, I’m continuing to shout about everything from depression to greater awareness of sepsis and, of course, SCIs.
I like to think, in some small way, I’m making a difference by shouting my mantra ‘Dream Believe Achieve’ from the rafters.
As the brilliant Manchester poet Tony Walsh says in his poem Everyday Mountains, inspired by my Kilimanjaro climb:
To those who would divide us and spread hatred all around. This says, ‘Love can conquer mountains, and it’s never coming down!
‘And it’s strong and it can catch us, it can lift us to the top.’
And Martin? He’s just starting and he’s never gonna stop!
Adapted from Top Of The World by Martin Hibbert & Fiona Duffy to be published by Ad Lib on April 25, at £9.99. © Martin Hibbert and Fiona Duffy 2024. To order a copy for £8.99 (offer valid until 06/05/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.