Chapter 15 #2
‘There’s so much more help now about allergies.
Now, I’d be told about a special diet, cutting out high-allergy food, I’d get advice on washing powders, anti-allergy clothing, bedding, non-toxic household cleaners.
There are even special cotton padded pyjamas with built-in mittens and feet you can buy to soothe eczema.
All this sort of thing might have given him a chance…
But then again, maybe not. Maybe he was over-exposed to toxins in the womb.
The job I was doing when I was pregnant, the chemicals I was in daily contact with.
Looking back, it was utter stupidity.’ Tears were falling down her cheeks, hanging from her chin and then dripping noiselessly onto her shoulders, but she managed to carry on talking in an almost normal voice.
‘It’s what’s known as the cocktail effect.
No single exposure that someone can point a finger at and say “it was the lead”, “it was the mercury” or whatever.
But both Philippe and I were working with all kinds of slightly toxic things all the time.
We were living in a brand-new apartment with new carpeting, new kitchen, new furniture, lots of electrical equipment.
I mean, it seems so obvious now that this was totally the wrong environment for a hyper-allergic baby, but I didn’t know any of that and neither did Felix’s doctors. ’
‘Did your parents have the chance to see Felix?’ Jo asked.
‘Luckily, yes,’ Savannah managed. ‘We were in Argentina for the two Christmases we had with Felix. Philippe’s family came over to meet him as well.
‘The plane crash happened in April and we took Felix to Argentina for a third time for the funeral. Philippe went back to work and I stayed on for many weeks because Felix seemed to improve there. I thought it was the sunshine, the drier climate, but you know, maybe it was because we were outside a lot and we weren’t living in a brand-new box laced with chemicals.
‘Felix was walking,’ she went on. ‘He was talking well for a one-and-a-half-year-old. He loved the cows. He loved his uncle; he had two little cousins to play with. The fact that Felix finally seemed to be getting better was the thing that I held onto, that kept me going through that terrible time.
‘But of course Philippe missed us and we missed Philippe.’ Savannah was twisting the paper tissue between her fingers into a tight strand. ‘So, after eight weeks or so, we packed our bags and went back to Alaska.’
Without much of a pause, in as steady and matter-of-fact a tone as she could manage, Savannah delivered the words: ‘We’d been back five days when Felix had a fatal asthma attack.’
Jo felt a shudder pass over her at those words. She didn’t like to think of what that meant: watching your baby suffocate to death.
‘In the hospital?’ she asked, almost not wanting to know.
‘He died at home, before the ambulance could get to us,’ came the steady reply. ‘We were in a remote place and it was on another call fifty miles away.’ Savannah wasn’t crying any longer. Her eyes had taken on something of a glaze as she fixed them onto the photo of her son on the mantelpiece.
‘At night?’ Jo probed.
‘No. On an ordinary Tuesday morning. An ordinary, sunny Tuesday morning. Philippe was at work. Felix was with me… And you should understand that I fought to save him.’ Savannah was rocking slightly, eyes still fixed to the mantelpiece: ‘I did everything our doctor had taught us, everything the ambulance operator talking at me down the line calmly, over my screams, could recommend. But when I saw—’ and here her voice faltered, seemed to dry up for a moment, before she managed: ‘When I saw he was going, he was really going— I had to stop. I had to put the phone down, stop battling and just hold him for one moment longer. Let him go in some sort of peace.’
Jo felt tears of her own slip down her cheeks. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she whispered. Her instinct was to go over to Savannah and put an arm round her. But she worried about whether it would be welcomed. And then her mobile intruded on the moment.
Jo fumbled in her bag and didn’t even look at the number before switching it off. No matter if Spikey himself was on the line, he would have to wait.
Once Savannah had taken another drink and wiped at her face again, Jo asked about the years that followed.
Savannah described it as just managing to survive, although her relationship with Philippe hadn’t.
‘It was too tough,’ Savannah tried to explain.
‘I felt as if I had a right to grieve for longer than him, to grieve more than him because I’d lost more people.
‘I blamed myself and I thought Philippe blamed me. I couldn’t comfort him and he couldn’t begin to comfort me.
I’d lost my child and I’d lost my parents.
I’d lost my past and my future all at the same time.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I was out of my mind with grief.
’ Something of a challenging look came with this explanation.
Jo read it as ‘but don’t you even dare to suggest in any way at all that I’m out of my mind now’.
‘In the end, part of getting better was to move on from each other. Move on from the daily reminder of what we could have had… and didn’t,’ Savannah explained.
‘Is that when you came to Britain?’ Jo asked, wondering how long it must take after this kind of grief, before a person could even begin to function normally again.
‘I got here eventually. A sort of roundabout way… over years,’ Savannah said with a little smile.
‘Lots of different jobs and some interesting people on the way. It was quite hard to be taken seriously again. After you’ve been out of the industry for some time, and you’ve been treated for – big surprise – depression.
People can recover. They don’t “get over it” but there’s room in the mind for all this.
It just needs to find its place. I did finally come to terms with my new world order. ’
Savannah’s phone began to ring, as it had done every so often throughout the afternoon, but this time the answering machine in her bedroom didn’t click on automatically, so she apologised and went through to the other room to answer.
When she returned, they were both conscious of the time. It was approaching four o’clock. Jo had to get back, although she hated to break this talk off now.
‘You probably need to go, don’t you?’ Savannah asked her.
‘Well, you know, yes, I do,’ Jo admitted, ‘but I don’t want to rush off from you like this. It’s important to me to know how you’d like me to play this interview.’
‘Ha,’ Savannah smiled. ‘I don’t suppose I can get you not to mention Felix at all though, can I?’
Jo shook her head.
‘I’d rather you’d not known anything about this. That was the way I wanted to play it, that’s why I’ve avoided interviews, so I haven’t had to deny anything or lie to anyone, I feel as if I’ve been hijacked by you.’
There was a prickle in her voice that Jo was immediately alert to.
‘Savannah,’ Jo began, ‘you’re standing for election, you’re probably going to win and become Britain’s first Green MP, every news editor in London is digging about in your past, inviting old contacts out for drinks, trying to squeeze some little nugget out about you.
This was going to come out, believe me. I’m glad it’s me who’s found out about this first. And I hope you’ll be glad too. ’
But Savannah sighed and added: ‘I know what you’re going to write.
The whole, secret heartbreak/tragedy of Green Queen…
Goddess… whatever,’ she snorted at the thought.
‘What I actually stand for, the changes I’d like to see, the revolution in the way we live, will be squeezed down to two paragraphs right at the bottom of the page. ’
‘It won’t. I absolutely promise you, it won’t,’ Jo insisted. ‘In fact, I’ll use those very words: that you didn’t want people to know about Felix because you thought it would only take away from the message you’re trying to get across. That you only spoke about it because we found out.’
‘And you know what,’ Savannah added, ‘I think it’s sexist. That somehow what I do, what I stand for isn’t nearly as important to your paper as the fact that I’ve lost a child.
I mean, obviously that’s hugely important for me…
but for people who don’t know me, how is it relevant?
Why should it matter? Would you put such emphasis on this if I’d been a man? Felix’s father?’
This was a fair question. Most papers were sexist, some less so, some more so.
But they were reflective of a society that was still sexist. Jo and Bella had once done a survey of two newspapers for a month to find out how many negative stories there were about modern mothers versus fathers.
It had come out as twenty-eight to three.
‘Savannah,’ Jo spoke slowly, choosing every word with care, ‘the public doesn’t know you.
You’re single, you’re childless, you live alone, you’re a scientist politician.
It’s hard for people to place you into any sort of context.
This is about your human side. This is the part that will help people to really get you, connect with you.
They’ll have great sympathy for what you’ve gone through and respect that you’ve tried to keep it private.
And they’ll understand that your son’s allergies are an important part of your commitment to make the world a cleaner, safer place. It’ll work out fine,’ Jo insisted.
‘Well, OK, it will probably be over-important for a few days and then something else will happen, you’ll fall off the news pages and people will remember your story, but back in the right context.
The other important things about you will come back into focus.
Trust me just a bit,’ she added with a smile, ‘I’ve been doing this job for a long time.
I know how it works. Well, some of it anyway.
‘And don’t think your interview will be the only thing in the paper on Sunday. I’ve got a whole whooping cough/vaccine story to investigate and some celebrity is bound to have done something incredibly scandalous that will take all the attention away from you,’ Jo said with a smile.
Savannah glanced at her wristwatch, then told Jo: ‘It’s 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon. How the hell are you going to get in a whooping cough investigation between now and tomorrow afternoon?’
‘I have the feeling I’m going to be up all night,’ was Jo’s reply.