I wish he wasn’t working late, I was hoping to pop over and see Mum again tonight and ask Alison if I could have my key back, tell her I’d have one cut for her tomorrow.
I’m sure Nick doesn’t want to work late either, I remind myself as he ends the call. It’s good that he’s so dedicated to the company. It could have gone under when Dad died if it wasn’t for Nick.
‘I’m hungry,’ Isaac says, running in with Grace right behind him.
I glance at the clock, it’s gone five. ‘How about spaghetti hoops on toast?’ I suggest.
‘Yes, please. Can I have two pieces of toast?’ he asks.
‘And me!’ Grace pipes up.
‘Of course. Now go and wash your hands and I’ll start making it.’
Later, when the kids are tucked up in bed, I give Mum a call to check how she is. It rings out and out. Then George answers.
‘Hello, Lizzie, your mum is asleep. She was shattered so went to bed early. Can I take a message, love?’
Asleep again?
‘I’m worried about Mum, George. She’s always been so lively and outgoing, but since the fall she seems exhausted all the time.’
‘I know, I’m concerned too. Alison said that you and Judith were sitting out in the garden this afternoon and it tired her out. I guess it will take her a bit of time to build up her strength again.’
Is Alison blaming me for visiting my mum?She fractured her ankle. It shouldn’t affect her like this, I want to shout. ‘Maybe Mum should get checked out by the doctor, just to make sure everything is all right.’
‘I suggested that but Judith doesn’t want to. She feels that she’s wasting the doctor’s time when other more seriously ill people need his help.’
Which is exactly the sort of thing Mum would say.
‘We’ll give her a couple more days then I’ll call the doctor myself if she hasn’t improved,’ George continues. ‘I’ll let her know you called, love. Give the kiddies a hug from us both. Love the cards they made, by the way.’
‘Thanks. Will do. Bye George.’
George ends the call. I tap my chin with my phone, deep in thought. Mum has always been a bundle of energy, I can’t help but worry how this fall has knocked her about.
Mum is everything to me. It was devastating when we lost Dad and I can’t bear to think of losing my mum too.
Alison and Kenny lost their mum at a very young age because of me, I think guiltily. It must have been so terrible to have to grow up without a mother, and for poor George to losehis wife. An image of Carol, smiling as she hands me the double flake ice cream, flashes across my mind and I screw my eyes tight. It haunts me that I was responsible for her death. And ever since I realised it was my fault I’ve been consumed by an enormous feeling of foreboding that one day I would pay.
29
LIZZIE
Before
Watching Carol die, choking and gasping for breath, seeing Alison and Kenny’s distress and everyone running around in panic had been the start of my crippling anxiety. One minute their mother had been alive and the next she was dead. It terrified me that someone could die so quickly, but I hadn’t known then that it was my fault.
Night after night, I had horrible dreams about it and every day I was scared that my parents, my friends, or even I would suddenly die. It seemed to me that there was nothing you could do to prevent it, one moment everything was okay and the next moment you could be gone. I woke several times in the night and went in to check on my parents. I was so riddled with anxiety that Mum took me to counselling. The school also arranged for someone to come in and talk to us because several children, including Jodie, had witnessed the terrible event too, and were distressed. Gradually I got over the trauma and realised that it was something that didn’t happen often and it was because of an allergy.
I’d just returned from maternity leave after having Isaac and was standing in for a teacher who was away when one of the boys in my classroom went into an anaphylactic shock. I’d checked the board in the staffroom so that I was aware of medical conditions and allergies but hadn’t expected it to be a problem in a classroom situation. All was fine until halfway into the lesson. The boy, Jamie, started going red in the face and choking. My mind went back to the dreadful day Ally’s mother had died, and I sprang into action, grabbing the EpiPen he kept in the green bag. I saved him, thank goodness, but I was puzzled how it had happened. He hadn’t been eating peanuts. We asked if anyone had anything with peanuts with them and everyone said no. Then we discovered that the little girl next to him had a snack bar in her pocket. Reading the label, we saw that it contained nuts. Just being close to it had caused Jamie to go into shock. An image of Ally and Kenny’s mum emptying Ally’s lunchbox into the litter bin flashed into my mind. The lunchbox that contained my peanut butter coated crusts. It was then when I realised what had happened. It was all my fault. I’d killed her.
The guilt and mental anguish drove me to the point that I could barely function. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the woman who had been so kind to me, bought me an ice cream, was dead. That Ally, the girl I’d sat by, chatted to, and her little brother no longer had a mother. And it was all down to me. My actions had caused it.
I longed to go back in time and change things. I rewrote the scene over and over again in my head, only this time I put my crusts in the bin, not in Ally’s lunchbox, and Ally, her little brother and her mum all waved to me as they went home together, holding hands. How could that one little mistake cause so much tragedy? I felt that I didn’t deserve to live when I’d robbed two children of their mother. My mind was in torment.I really think that only the fact that I didn’t want to leave Isaac motherless gave me the strength to carry on.
Nick and my parents were supportive but didn’t understand my devastation. ‘You saved his life, Lizzie,’ they kept pointing out. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them about my part in Ally’s mum’s death and the weight of the guilt was drowning me, I didn’t know how to cope. I had to give up teaching because I was too anxious that it might happen again and this time I wouldn’t be able to save the child.
More years of therapy helped me to deal with it and move on. I still couldn’t face teaching in school though, so Nick suggested I taught online, which I’ve been doing ever since.
