Aftermath

by Katharine Quarmby

A journalist is haunted by the ghost of a story - and a woman - she can't leave behind. A story so powerful that it haunts the dreams and waking hours of all that have lived through it. A genocide in which the West failed to save the innocent. This is the story of aftermath - of how the dead we fail, haunt us - and how we must return, to lay their ghosts and set ourselves free.Katharine Quarmby is a writer, journalist and film-maker. Her latest book is No Place to Call Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers (One World Publications, 2013). Her first Kindle Single, Blood and Water, was also published this year (Thistle, 2013) In 1997 she travelled with reporter Fergal Keane and BBC Panorama to Rwanda, two years after the genocide, working as assistant producer on the Bafta award-winning Valentina's Story. She returned with Fergal Keane to produce two prize-winning films with BBC Newsnight in 1999. Since then she has worked both in TV and in print journalism, as a correspondent for The Economist, as well as contributing to British broadsheets, including the Guardian and Sunday Times. This is her first short story.

15 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2013

About the author

Award-winning writer, editor and journalist with extensive knowledge of writing and editing across print, TV, radio and online.

Katharine’s latest books include her debut, prize listed novel, The Low Road, which was published in hardback in June 2023 and in paperback by Eye Lightning in November 2025. Set in rural Norfolk, London and Australia in the early nineteenth century, it is based on a true story that Katharine uncovered in her Norfolk hometown, of a Norfolk woman, Mary Tyrell, who was staked through the heart after death in 1813. She had been questioned repeatedly about a suspected infanticide.

An older daughter, known only by the initials A.T., had survived. Katharine traced her to the Refuge for the Destitute in Hackney. She had met another destitute, Anne Simpkins, there and they forged a friendship that deepened into love. In December 1821 they stole laundry from the Refuge, but were caught, stood trial at the Old Bailey, and were sentenced to transportation.

The Low Road novel is about uncovering lost histories: the stories of poor women from rural areas, the stories of the imprisoned, the stories of convicts sent to penal colonies, the stories of people who often left no records as a result of illiteracy and hardship. It also contains an important strand of narrative that explores experiences left out of the history books: a same-sex romance that evolves into a marriage of sorts two centuries before this was legally possible.

Aside from The Low Road, Katharine mainly writes now on environmental journalism and is also an editor.

Reviews

[Roy Stephenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story set around the Rwanda genocide. The author, also a film maker, sees the aftermath of what man can do to man while covering events in Africa. She puts forth that the aftermath is more important than the original incident. She writs Well and the story is interesting and thought provoking.

[Natalie Awdry · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent short story about the impact the Rwandan genocide had on journalists covering the horrific events. It was so nice to read a personal and first person account of the genocide which focused on the preservation of dignity of the woman in the yellow dress. All too often the books I have read about the genocide focus on the scale of the disaster and lose the impact to the individuals.

[Anna From Gustine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short story is about a journalist who witnesses an atrocity during the Rwandan genocide. The backdrop is powerful and yet I felt that this wasn't so much a story with plot and character development as a snapshot of how horrible war is and the innocent victims of it. I don't want to diminish the importance of the subject but I don't think this worked well as a fictional story.

[saradevil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinarily well done short.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. As a journalist, that was an intense read. A journalist reporting from the middle of a horrific genocide. This is short but poignant.