Sadly, at around 5am, the news that I had so desperately feared was confirmed. I stayed awake all night on a high state of alert, constantly refreshing the phone and each time saying a silent prayer to myself that Tom would be okay. It was around midnight by this point, but I knew that it wasn’t worth trying to get to sleep. Most news outlets were understandably focused on this story, but this just hindered my ability to find out what exactly had happened to Tom. While some reported that Tom Petty had died, others said he was in a life-threatening condition in hospital or that he had been found unconscious and was being treated at home.įinding a clear answer was made worse by the fact that America had experienced a terrible mass shooting earlier that very same day: the Las Vegas massacre. As I read, it quickly became clear that the events were fuzzy and not clear cut at all. I started flipping through as many other news sites as I could possibly think of: BBC, CNN, New York Times, Yahoo, NBC, The Independent. “No, it can’t be,” I said to myself, shaking my head in disbelief. “Give me that!” I cried, snatching his mobile phone from his hand where he had been reading the newspaper.įrantically, I scrolled through the breaking news section of The Guardian until I came across the headline: Tom Petty: US rock musician dies aged 66. “What?!” I shouted somewhat agitatedly, thinking this was one of those jokes typical of his black sense of humour.

Those four words hit me like a tonne of bricks when my boyfriend uttered them to me around 10:30pm on October 1, 2017.

Tom petty learning to fly