Chapter 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.
Now, it has all come flooding back. And I’m scared that Mum is in danger.
She’s married George, a widower, whose wife, Carol, died of an allergic reaction after I put my crusts in their daughter’s lunchbox.
And his daughter, Alison, is looking after Mum, who has suddenly had an accident and is always feeling ill.
It all seems too much of a coincidence.