by Carmen Reid
‘You are very soothing,’ she’d told him, closing down the story she was working on, storing her files, taking one last neurotic glance at her email and powering down her computer.
‘I should have married someone as soothing as you,’ she’d added, ‘I’m sure that would have helped.’
Group therapy in the pub with the other reporters and enough beers to require a taxi home was sometimes the only way of winding down from the hectic Fridays and manic Saturdays of the job.
The talk was always scurrilous, libellous, all the outrageously elaborated rumours that couldn’t possibly be printed but that someone had heard from an impeccable source who ‘swore it was true’.
Dominique was on the line now.
‘Have you got someone at Friends of the Earth who’s going to be a help on wind farms? Because the people in the press office haven’t come up with anything useful.’
‘Everyone’s busy,’ Jo reminded her. ‘You have to coax them along. Nudge them into doing the favour for you. Have you done a good cuts search and dug out some controversial planning stories? I’m sure you can track down plenty of people for and against from that.’
‘Well yeah’ – in that how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am? tone. ‘But I want to try and assess how useful wind farms are. How much electricity they produce. How much it costs. So on.’
‘That’s fine, that’s good. And try to find out who’s making the money from them. Where the government subsidies are going. But I’m not running a total knocking piece, OK? Because, hello, oil is one day going to run out and at the moment we don’t seem to have a lot of other ideas, do we? See how well you get on today and we’ll decide what angle we’re going to focus on tomorrow morning.’
‘Where are you?’ Dominique wanted to know.
Jo told her, giving a brief outline of the story.
‘So that’s the Townell family in Canterbury, twins, I’ll just jot that down in the desk diary. When are you back?’
‘Um, lunchtime . . . I think. But get in touch if you need me. I’ll download my email on the laptop when I get a chance,’ she added, dropping the hint that there was no need for Dominique to log onto her computer and even glance at the list of messages Jo knew would be waiting for her. ‘Any other messages?’
‘No, don’t think so.’
‘OK fine. I’ll speak to you later.’
It took Jo a long time to find the address she’d been given. Even after she’d stopped on the outskirts of the town and bought a street map at the petrol station, stuffing the receipt into the section of her wallet dedicated to work receipts. (She really must file an expenses claim, really, really must. It was totting up to hundreds of pounds now and Accounts would not like that, not one little bit.)
But finally she was driving up the right street. A long, narrow street close to the edge of town, it wound gently up a hill, small detached houses on each side with gardens, lawnmowers, cars and motorbikes in front. It wasn’t a smart area, but it wasn’t too shabby either. Samantha and Mick Townell were parents of twin boys suffering seizures and mild brain damage, which the Townells blamed on the Quintet injections their children had had at the age of 18 months.
Jo parked her car and locked up, bringing her bags out with her. The photographer was going to come an hour later. She liked to do interviews that way. Get talking properly without someone with a huge camera and associated equipment scaring the interviewees to death.
Scooters, bikes, plastic tractors, swings and a slide were strewn about the hilly front lawn, but there was no sign of children. The brick house looked neat from the outside. Paint shiny, small leaded-effect windows, with the white toggle of a blind hanging in the centre of each one. Before she could reach up and press the bell, the door was opening and a woman with short blond hair wearing a smooth white shirt and three-quarter-length beige trousers was standing in front of her, holding out a hand to shake and introducing herself as Samantha.
‘Come in . . . sorry, we’re in the kitchen having a snack, we couldn’t wait any longer.’
‘Sorry I’m late, it took me a while to find it.’
They had the cursory little chat about direction times and driving from London, traffic and so on. Jo was as relaxed and friendly as she could be. Handling the preliminary warm-up talk well was an important part of the job.
The Townells hadn’t in fact signed any sort of contract yet, they’d made no agreement and were under no obligation to talk to her. They could pull out at any time, and it had happened often enough in the past: she’d arrived at out of the way addresses after hours of driving only to have the door slammed in her face because people had changed their minds about giving an interview. Or worse, another newspaper was already there. Assume nothing. The newsroom motto. Take absolutely nothing for granted. Check every single fact and waterproof, airtight your story, your contacts. Your exclusivity.
Of course, it was impossible to make everything foolproof. Things went wrong all the time. But it was her job to do what she could to prevent this.
‘Come and say hello to the boys,’ Samantha instructed her. Jo followed her into a small beige and brown kitchen where the two-year-olds and their father Mick were sitting at the table.
Mick, a friendly-looking, casually dressed man, stood up to shake her hand, encouraging his sons with a: ‘Say hello, boys.’
The two curly heads moved in her direction and mumbled words followed, then the faces turned back to their plates.
‘They don’t like strangers,’ Samantha explained. ‘They’ll be very shy to start with but I’m sure they’ll get used to you. Shall we go into the sitting room?’
‘Do you know many children with brain damage?’ Samantha asked as she settled Jo down on the sofa in the spotlessly tidy room. Obviously, all the toys had been cleared out and Samantha had done some serious cleaning before the visit.
‘I’ve met a lot of autistic children,’ Jo told her. ‘But I suppose I don’t know any well.’
‘I didn’t know any either . . . Now I know quite a lot. Even in an area like this. You start going to support groups, that kind of thing, and it’s just surprising to me, really, how many other children there are like this. And I didn’t know one single one, before. . .’ the little pause that signified to Jo that ‘before’ was too vast an area to be summed up in one sentence. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Samantha asked instead.
‘Tea would be great. Just milk, please.’
So, finally they settled down. Teacups in front of them – boys out in the back garden with their dad – Jo, tape recorder ready, notebook and biro on her knee.
‘So, d’you want to tell me all about it?’
And Samantha began. A little falteringly at first, but then gathering strength, until the story was flowing unchecked from her. Jo listened. She sometimes slipped in a clarifying question or two, but mainly she listened, thinking occasionally how confessor-like her job was, the terrible things she’d heard over the years. All spilled out into her battered black tape recorder. The voices played over again in her earphones back at the office, their words typed out onto the computer screen in front of her, then appearing in black and white on the pages of the paper on Sunday.
It was a strange job, because she couldn’t give her interviewees much in return. She was not there to comfort them, to bring help, to advise, she was just there to listen, to tell others and only occasionally could her articles at least serve as a warning, to try and prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.
Samantha and Mick had tried to have children for five years. Their boys, Ben and Ellis, were born after a third IVF attempt. There was grief enough in that story. But what Samantha went on to tell was even worse; it made Jo wonder, yet again, why pain was doled out so unfairly in life. Why were some people allowed to lead charmed, virtually unshadowed lives, when others were given the lion’s share of grief?
‘The boys made it to 36 weeks,’ Samantha was telling her. ‘That’s when I went into labour. I had a Caesarean because
the doctors felt it would be safer for us all. And they were a good weight for twins, both just over five pounds. They went into special care for three weeks, but they were thriving. Doing really well. It was just mad, the first few months. We were on this wonderful, unbelievable high.’ The words were tumbling out, Samantha was smiling at the memories: ‘I mean, two healthy baby boys. It was all we could ever have hoped for. Much more than we’d ever hoped for. We were exhausted . . . expressing breast milk, changing nappies, but the magic of it never wore off. In the middle of the night, getting up yet again, I’d just think about the women I met through the IVF. Think about how much they’d love to be woken up by a baby crying in the middle of the night.’
Jo scribbled this down in her notebook and underlined it.
‘The boys’ development was very closely monitored, because they were premature twins,’ Samantha went on. ‘I’d go for developmental checks every couple of months, hand-eye co-ordination, hearing, sight, that sort of thing. It was all normal, they were coming along fine. I’ve got their log books. I can show you them.’
‘That’s great, we’ll do that afterwards, you just tell me what happened next,’ Jo reassured her.
‘March the 6th. I will never forget the date,’ Samantha began, very serious now, turning from the window to face Jo and look her directly in the eye. ‘Mick came with me, because taking them for their baby vaccinations had been an ordeal. I’d had to put one screaming baby down to hold the other one for the injection and I thought it would be better if we were both there, especially as they were toddling about by then, curious, getting into all sorts of mischief. So anyway, we went to the doctor’s surgery. They were exactly 22 months old. I was always keen on vaccinations, wanted them to have them as soon as they could. Had them all at the recommended ages, even though the boys were born a month early. No one had suggested to me I should treat them as aged minus one month and delay everything for a month at least.
‘So we took them in and—’ Suddenly Samantha stopped, she looked out of the window and into the garden where Mick was trying to interest one of the boys in a tricycle. Her hand went up to her eyes and wiped away the tears that suddenly spilled out. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t be sorry, take all the time you need,’ Jo soothed her.
‘I have dreams about that day,’ Samantha said quietly, and Jo noticed that the hand wiping away the tears was trembling. The smiles, the bubbly friendliness were gone.
‘I dream that we pull up outside the surgery and Mick gets a phone call on his mobile, or I change my mind, or one of the boys is sick, something makes us drive away again and they are still fine.’ Her voice was a whisper now.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jo said, trying to begin to imagine what this must feel like.
‘We went in,’ Samantha continued. ‘Mick stayed in the waiting room and I took them in one at a time so they wouldn’t be frightened, because injections always make children cry. And they have to have two at a time – Quintet and then the Meningitis C, which makes it really hard, because after the first one they know what’s coming. You feel bad enough, putting them through the pain, let alone—’ She broke off to dab at tears again. ‘I’ll have to go and get some tissues, I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d get so upset.’
‘It’s OK, I’ve got plenty of time,’ Jo smiled, but once Samantha was out of the room, she grabbed for her phone and texted the photographer to stay away for another forty minutes at least.
When Samantha returned she looked composed. She took up her seat on the sofa again and continued: ‘The injections had an immediate effect on them. They cried and cried. Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t say, after Ellis had been done, “Wait a minute, this isn’t the way he should be reacting.” He was inconsolable. Bright red, screaming. But I just handed him to Mick and snatched Ben up before he got upset, and headed back to the nurse.
‘Once they’d both been injected we sat in the waiting room for twenty-five minutes trying to calm them down. The other patients were joining in, trying to help us out. We were cuddling the boys, rocking, bouncing, whatever we could. The nurse came out to look at them, took their temperature and said they were fine, they’d just been upset by it all. So, finally we decided to bundle them into the car.
‘They were still screaming by the time we got home and when they did, at last, quieten down, they fell asleep. We put them to bed and they slept for the whole afternoon. I remember joking about it at the time with Mick. It was so wonderful to have a full afternoon off. We were saying, “must take them for more injections”. Terrible to think of now. Just terrible.’
‘So what happened after that?’ Jo asked gently.
‘I ended up waking them. But they were groggy, tired, just not themselves for the rest of the day. They didn’t eat much. Ellis had a temperature and I gave him Calpol, because that’s what they tell you to do if they’re unwell after the injection.
‘They both slept through that night and the next morning they didn’t seem much better. Groggy, drowsy, not themselves,’ she repeated. ‘I had the vague feeling for several days that they weren’t right. But I didn’t contact anyone about it, I didn’t phone the doctor, the health visitor or anyone, because I thought I was being over-anxious. I told myself maybe they were coming down with a virus.’
Samantha cleared her throat, then said, as matter-of-factly as she could: ‘It was twelve days after the injection that Ellis had his first fit. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a child fitting . . . ’
Jo nodded: ‘It’s very frightening.’
‘Oh God,’ Samantha’s fingers went up to squeeze at her eyes again, ‘it’s terrifying . . . watching your own child shake and chatter, eyes rolling back into his head. Then he went limp and unconscious. I was absolutely convinced he was dead. Mick was here, it happened in the early evening, just after tea and I was shouting for him, trying to hold Ellis, trying to dial 999 with fingers that just didn’t work any more.’ Samantha took a deep breath to steady herself and then began to recount the hospital experience.
She spoke of doctors who asked if Ellis had had a temperature or had been vaccinated recently and were happy to say the two might be connected, but as Ellis deteriorated, having further fits, requiring resuscitation, not regaining consciousness, the vaccination link had been dismissed.
‘Ellis had been in hospital for three days,’ Samantha went on, ‘I hadn’t left his side, when this nurse came into the room and said she had some bad news for me. I couldn’t really take in what she was telling me at first: that Ben had been brought in by ambulance, was fitting too and was being stabilized in a room just a few doors down.’
With a sigh, Samantha managed, ‘I just felt as if the world had caved in on me.’
In the following weeks, both her children suffered severe seizures and brief periods of coma, she explained.
‘We’re only thirteen weeks on from the first fit,’ she added. ‘They’re carefully monitored, they’re on antiseizure medication and we’ve been told they have been brain damaged by what’s happened but we’ll only know to what extent in the months to come.’
‘Have you noticed any differences?’ Jo asked.
‘Slight regression,’ Samantha said as evenly as she could. ‘They’re not walking as well or talking as well as they were. Ellis has this open-mouthed drool and stare that wasn’t there before. It scares me.’
‘So what explanation is being given for what happened?’ Jo asked.
‘A hereditary condition, a genetic weakness, a congenital weakness . . . these are the things we’re being told. But I suppose we find it hard to believe because neither Mick nor myself have any relatives with these problems, the twins aren’t identical and this set in with both of them so soon after an injection they reacted so badly to.’
Here came the story Jo had heard many times before: the parent who can so obviously see that everything has gone wrong with her children, can pinpoint the moment when it started, but can’t get any doctors even
to consider the possibility that the vaccination may have played a part in the deterioration.
Samantha blew her nose but she couldn’t stop the tears as she added: ‘I don’t know if I’m wrong to think this, but I can’t help feeling that it would have been better if they’d been born disabled. I wouldn’t feel I’d lost something I once had. I wouldn’t blame myself for it, every single day, and I wouldn’t have this never-ending battle to get someone, somewhere to admit that the injections were to blame. Or,’ angrily now, ‘at least say they might be to blame, might have played a part and that the matter should be properly investigated before any other family has to suffer like this.’
‘Are you going to go to court?’ Jo asked.
‘We’re looking into all the avenues open to us,’ Samantha told her. ‘At the moment a lawyer Jayne knows is looking at our case for free. But I don’t need to tell you we can’t risk landing ourselves with a big legal bill. It could cost us all we have left. Can we risk being penniless or homeless when we’ve got two sons who are going to need a lot of special care and attention?’ She shook her head.
‘The IVF was expensive,’ she added. ‘Having twins is expensive. Can we risk a court case? I don’t think so. Someone, somewhere should be brought to justice for this. But I don’t think we’re going to be the ones to do it.’
‘How does Mick feel about it?’ Jo asked.
There was the sound of voices at the back door and Samantha stood up, telling Jo she could speak to him herself.
Mick, despite her first impressions, was maybe going to be a little more prickly to interview, Jo reckoned. She watched him sit down and cross his arms as she turned over the tape in her machine and selected a fresh notebook page.
He talked about his children, about the day of the injection and the problems the boys had had ever since.
‘To my mind, there’s no doubt the injection caused the problem,’ he said. ‘The manufacturers know perfectly well that some children can be damaged. The government has a fund set aside for vaccine-damaged kids. But I’ve no idea how you’re supposed to get any compensation when not a single doctor wants to help you or will even admit that there is a connection.’