‘Nothing,’ Harvey gasps.
But he’s had lunch, like everyone else, and finished his cake before half the other guests had even been given a slice.
Eric seems to be taking his time, but he finally returns with Isobel’s bag. ‘Sorry,’ he gasps. ‘It had fallen off the bed on to the floor. It took me a while to find it.’
Isobel yanks at the bag to open the drawstring. There’s a single compartment and it’s clearly not easy to find anything in it.
‘It’s not in here.’ Isobel is rummaging through her bag. ‘It’s not here! I know I had one in here. Where is it?’
‘Tip it out,’ Eric says, picking the bag up and turning it upside down. A cascade of lipsticks, keys and tampons spills across the floor.
There is no epipen. I know what they look like. There’ve been enough kids over the years with nut allergies at school and enough times I’ve been asked to look after the epipens on school trips. Thankfully I’ve never had to use one, never had to deal with the situation that is unfolding in my own living room.
‘It must have fallen out upstairs!’ Isobel says. ‘I know I had it in here. Will you go and see if you can find it.’
‘Gabs, you look,’ Eric says, and then to Isobel. ‘I think we need to call an ambulance.’
‘I’ll call one,’ I say and I go to the base station on a table by the door, but the phone isn’t there.
‘I think it’s in the kitchen. Here, use this.’ Maggie produces her mobile from somewhere and hands it to me. I dial 999.
‘Emergency. Which service?’ a woman’s voice asks.
‘Ambulance,’ I say. ‘We’re having a party and there’s a boy who has a nut allergy and seems to be having a reaction.’
‘What’s the address?’ I tell her. ‘Right, the ambulance is on its way and should be with you very soon,’ the operator says. ‘Are you near the casualty?’
‘No,’ I say, but I begin to move across the sitting room. ‘I’ll hand you over to the boy’s father.’
I hand the phone to Eric.
‘Yes, he’s still breathing, but with difficulty,’ Eric says. Then to Isobel. ‘They say to lie him on the floor and put his legs up.’
People move back as Isobel moves Harvey off the chair he was sitting on and on to the floor.
‘What’s happening?’ Vincent, who had disappeared momentarily, rematerialises and looks anxiously towards his older brother. ‘Is Harvey OK?’
‘It’s OK, Vinnie. An ambulance is on its way,’ Gabriella tries to reassure him.
‘You need to keep his airways open,’ Eric is saying to Isobel. ‘Open his mouth and make sure his nostrils are clear.’
Isobel is already doing this and checking his pulse. She looks alarmed. ‘Eric…’
There is fear in her voice, but we can hear the wail of an ambulance siren and a flash of blue strobes through the window and across the room.
‘The ambulance is here now, Harvey,’ Isobel says and then, with a look of horror on her face, ‘Eric, he’s stopped breathing.’
‘Harvey!’ Eric drops the phone and kneels beside the boy, as the paramedics come into the room and begin ministering to him. One of them takes out a syringe and injects something into Harvey’s leg.
He doesn’t respond.
They lift him on to a stretcher and carry him out of the living room to the ambulance. Isobel and Eric follow.
‘Only one of you can come in the ambulance,’ the paramedic says.
‘Bel, you go with him,’ Eric says.
‘I’ll drive the rest of you up to the hospital,’ Paddy volunteers.
The party is over. Everyone is shocked. People begin to get their coats and thank us. Some offer to stay and help clear up, but we decline.
‘That came on suddenly,’ I say when everyone has gone. ‘I wonder what caused it.’
‘I can’t think it was anything he ate here,’ Maggie says. ‘There was nothing with nuts in.’
‘Did you check all the packaging?’ I ask.
‘Not every single thing,’ Maggie says, dismayed. ‘But I didn’t buy anything that was going to contain nuts.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I say. ‘It’s Isobel’s responsibility to check or ask, and I’m surprised she doesn’t keep the epipen with her all the time, if that’s how bad his reactions are.’
‘Yes, that’s odd,’ Maggie says, and she starts picking up plates with half-eaten slices of cake and carrying them into the kitchen. She puts her foot on the pedal of the bin, but pauses before scraping the leftovers onto packaging that is already in there ‘You’d think they’d all be aware of anything that might trigger one.’
She goes ahead and tips half-eaten slices of cake on to the rest of the detritus.
‘I’m sure he’ll be OK,’ I say, as I stack the plates in the dishwasher.
‘I hope so,’ Maggie replies, and we both look up as Iris toddles into the kitchen, her face covered in cake icing, smiling, and makes one of her strange noises.
It’s a happy noise though. Iris is blissfully unaware of the drama which is now playing out in an ambulance, racing to hospital through the streets of London.
Acknowledgements
On the off-chance that they’re reading this, I have to thank the burglars (or maybe it was just one burglar) who broke into my house at the end of 2012 and left with my computers and the memory sticks containing the first draft of this novel. You forced me to start again from scratch and, while I’m still a bit miffed about the muddy footprints, in the end you did me a favour. This is a better book because of it.
But breaking in is easy. The real hard work was done by my editor and friend, Candida Lacey, to whom I am hugely indebted for her insight, patience, humour, kindness, and an almost unlimited supply of tea and prosecco. I can’t thank the whole Myriad team enough for putting their faith in me and for all their boundless energy and hard work and general very-niceness; it has been a real pleasure. Enormous thanks to Linda McQueen, who is quite the best copy-editor ever, and hilarious too. And to Emma Dowson for doing the press stuff. (I know journalists and editors can be a real pain!)
Thank you, too, to my agent Peter Straus at RCW for his continued support.
At the risk of repeating thanks too often, it also goes to Anna Galandzij at the National Deaf Children’s Society and Mark Chacksfield for help and advice on deafness, and Dino Skinner for the same with legal stuff.
And for support from all my writer friends, especially Araminta Hall, Richard Bingham, Craig Melvin, Martine McDonagh, Stephen May and Colin Grant who have borne the brunt of the insecurity, paranoia and endless going on – thank you.
Plus my friends and family who also have to live with it (and me) and never let on, if they mind, especially my three children who are inspirational in so many ways. For all sorts of reasons, I could not have written this without the support, love and friendship of so many people. You know who you are and I know I owe you all.
And because the book deals with the highs and lows of bringing up children, a special mention goes to Esther, Hannah, Helen, Jo and Nicola: you’ve been there for me throughout. And I’ve borrowed your surnames as well as various anecdotes and incidents from your lives – you know I do this and you don’t object. Apologies and thanks in equal measure.
BOOK GROUP GUIDE:
1. How do your sympathies with Isobel and Ben change over the course of the novel?
2. Isobel’s experience suggests there are times when the parental desire to protect one’s own children conflicts with one’s responsibilities to a wider community. In what other situations might this apply?
3. Could you understand Eric’s reaction to the news of Iris’s deafness?
4. How do the reactions of Isobel’s three children, in the novel, reflect your own response to the hesitation, denial and conflict of the adults around them?
5. To what extent do you sympathise with the divided loyalties of Isobel and Ben’s mutual friends?
6. The novel explores different kin
ds of disappointment. Which characters cope best with their changed circumstances and why?
7. Is Ben right to feel that Maggie is a better person than him?
8. Eric says, about Ben, that he needs someone around who still sees Isobel as she used to be. Is the Isobel of the university flashbacks as distant from the Isobel of today as Isobel and Eric and Ben believe, or are there threads still linking past and present?
9. Eric says that the situation with Iris didn’t cause the problems in his and Isobel’s marriage, it simply exposed them. Is he right? And is there hope for them, for the future?
10. How would the novel be different if it had been Eric and Maggie telling the story, not Isobel and Ben? Or if it were written in the third person, from an outside perspective?
About the Author
Lizzie Enfield is a journalist and the author of two previous novels, What You Don’t Know and Uncoupled. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in various magazines, and her articles regularly appear in national newspapers. She lives in Brighton with her husband and three children.
Also by Lizzie Enfield:
What You Don’t Know
Uncoupled
Copyright
First edition published in 2014
This ebook edition published in 2014 by
Myriad Editions
59 Lansdowne Place
Brighton BN3 1FL
www.myriadeditions.com
Copyright © Lizzie Enfield 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–908434–48–7
Living With It Page 30