MANCHESTER, England — It was that moment after the music ends. The pop star, Ariana Grande, had finished the encore of her “Dangerous Woman’’ concert, and the shrieks of teenagers and others had subsided. The stage show was over, the arena lights had gone up, and fans were clutching pink balloons that had dropped from the rafters — souvenirs from a special night.
Lisa Conway, 49, had secretly bought concert tickets a month earlier and booked a room at the nearby Park Inn Hotel. It was a surprise for her 14-year-old daughter, whose favorite artist was Grande. Mother, daughter, father, and son came down from Glasgow, but the father and son skipped the show for a night on the town. The concert was a bonding trip, one of those markers of adolescence, and a small, tentative step into the adult world.
Then, with the arena still tingling with the exhilaration of the music, came the explosion.
“It was meant to be a dream, not a nightmare,’’ Conway said Tuesday morning while eating breakfast at the hotel, trembling as she struggled to contain tears. “There were children, blood, shoes, splattered all over the floor.’’
She added: “How can I explain any of this to a 14-year-old? She hasn’t said a word since she woke up from two hours’ sleep.’’
The explosion at Manchester Arena on Monday night is the worst terrorist incident in Britain since 2005, with at least 22 people dead and dozens more injured — an attack, the police say, carried out by a man who died in the blast. He was later identified as Salman Abedi, 22, a Briton whose family emigrated from Libya. Although the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blast, the police said they were still investigating whether Abedi, who lived in Manchester, acted alone or was part of a larger plot.
In any case, terrorism has its own language and symbolism, whether in an assault against a satirical newspaper in Paris or the bombing of a luxury hotel in Mali. The violence is intended to stoke fear and to deliver a message. And it was the message of the Manchester blast that was so chilling: the slaughter of teenagers, the anxiety of parents who had been waiting to take their children home, the frantic search for loved ones amid chaos and sirens.
The concert began around 7:35 p.m., and after two warm-up acts, one a rapper from Medford, Mass., Grande took the stage. Once a child star on the television network Nickelodeon, Grande, 23, is known for her strong voice and, like other child stars, has sought to evolve with her fans as they grow up together.
Her debut album in 2013, “Yours Truly,’’ reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the United States, and her May 2016 “Dangerous Woman’’ album signaled her progression into more mature themes.
As Grande finished her encore and left the stage around 10:30 p.m., the lights went up and people began streaming toward the exits. Then came what one person described as an “almighty explosion.’’ Some witnesses recalled smelling sulfur. A gush of air whooshed through the arena. For an instant, no one knew what had happened. Some people wondered if some of the pink balloons had burst.
The power of the blast shook the arena, and many people started screaming and running. Outside the hall, parents had been waiting to pick up their children. Diane Burnett, from Edinburgh, was looking for her 17-year-old son at the time of the explosion. “It was a loud bang, and then silence, and then loads of girls screaming,’’ she said. “You didn’t know what it was, whether it was a train crashing.’’
Another parent, Kevin Pickford, rushed into the main entrance to search for his two daughters. “There was an announcement, asking people to leave slowly and calmly,’’ he recalled. But panic was overtaking the calm.
“Everyone was crying and screaming,’’ said Sophie Tedd, 25, who had attended the concert with her friend Jessica Holmes. “Nobody knew which way to go.’’
