Over You Read online

  She broke off from her thoughts at a sudden cry from Toby, and turned to see him frozen on the sofa, a glazed look in his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, going over to him. She felt his forehead. Burning up now. ‘Toby?’

  He made no response, just seemed to be staring over her shoulder. She put a hand on his back, but he didn’t react. ‘Toby?’ He felt rigid, almost as if he’d stopped breathing. Something was wrong. Something was badly wrong. Suddenly Josie could hardly breathe herself for fear.

  ‘Toby!’ she said, louder, more urgent. ‘Darling – can you hear me? Toby?’

  His cheeks were hot and red, his pupils dilating, his gaze fixed and unresponsive. Oh my God. Josie’s heart leaped into her mouth. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said in a frightened voice. ‘Oh, Toby! Don’t mess about! Can you hear me? Can you hear Mummy?’

  ‘Mu-um,’ Sam moaned, his eyes glued to the TV screen. ‘I can’t hear the telly.’

  His voice sounded far away, she could hardly focus on what he was saying. ‘Toby!’ she screamed as his body started jerking. His arms and legs twitched uncontrollably, his eyes started to close. Josie felt a cold fear flood through her and lunged for the phone, dialling 999 with a shaking finger. ‘Ambulance, please!’ she gabbled. It’s my little boy – he’s having a fit! He’s very hot and he’s just … jerking, his arms and legs. He can’t hear me, he’s not saying anything.’ Her voice rose in a wail. ‘What shall I do? Help me!’

  ‘We’ll send someone round,’ the man on the other end of the line said, and took her address. ‘You need to cool him down. Get his clothes off, get him on the floor – don’t hold him, it’ll only make him hotter – fan him with a newspaper or something. And don’t put anything in his mouth …’

  Josie followed his instructions, her heart thumping. She had never been so terrified in her life. Toby’s eyes were closed now and she shouted at him to wake up. Was he dying? Was he actually dying, her boy, right there on the living-room carpet? No. Please no. Please – she’d do anything! – please, please, not that!

  The ambulance was on its way, she was told, and she sat there, fanning her hot, naked little boy like a maniac and calling his name, tears plopping on to his feverish skin.

  Sam was crying now as well, CBeebies forgotten. ‘Is he dead, Mum? Is he dead? he kept shouting, staring at his brother with fearful eyes. ‘Why is he doing that? Is he dead?’

  ‘No, love, he’s just poorly,’ Josie managed to say. ‘I’m sure hell be fine, don’t worry.’ Her own words mocked her. He certainly didn’t look fine, semi-conscious on the carpet in just a pair of Scooby-Doo pants, still making those jerky little movements. Oh God, what was wrong with him? Would the ambulance never arrive?

  But yes – there was the siren coming faintly up the street now, getting louder and louder with every second. She could hardly believe this was happening. Toby had been absolutely fine first thing this morning and now – now …

  Oh Christ. What if this was it? Brain damage, some kind of aneurysm? What if he never spoke, laughed, opened his eyes again? What then?

  ‘They’re here!’ Sam said, and she hauled up Toby’s limp body in her arms to open the front door, his skin still scarily hot against hers.

  In came the paramedics, one male, one female. She’d never been so glad to see anybody. Toby’s jerky movements were slowing now, then he lay still in her arms, eyes closed, his face a horrible grey.

  ‘Sounds like a febrile convulsion,’ the male paramedic said, feeling Toby’s forehead. ‘Temperature’s up. Have you got any Calpol?’

  ‘Yes,’ Josie said, setting Toby down gently on the sofa and running to get it. ‘Will he … will he be all right?’

  ‘Has he had a fit like this before?’ the female paramedic asked, holding Toby’s wrist and taking his pulse.

  Josie shook her head, tears rolling down her face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like this. He’s always been perfectly healthy.’ Sam came and pressed himself against her, still crying.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Sam asked fearfully from behind Josie’s legs. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No, sunshine,’ the male paramedic said. ‘He’s just having a sleep now. He’s worn out, I should think.’ He plunged a plastic syringe into the Calpol bottle and squirted a pink dose into the corner of Toby’s mouth.

  Josie felt bewildered. ‘I don’t understand. What happened to him? Is he going to be OK?’

  The female paramedic was peeling up one of Toby’s eyelids and looking at his eyeball. ‘Almost certainly,’ she said. ‘We see this happen to lots of children – pretty much every day.’ She put a hand on Josie’s shoulder. ‘I know it’s very frightening for you, but it’s more common than you think. Chances are he’ll be absolutely fine, and it might never happen again. Still, we’ll take him into A&E, get him checked over, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Right,’ Josie said, feeling dazed. ‘I thought he was dying,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I really thought he was …’

  The male paramedic patted her arm in a comforting manner. ‘Let’s get him ready to go, eh? Can you grab a few clothes for him, a blanket, maybe a favourite toy?’

  Josie nodded dumbly. Adrenalin was still coursing around her body, and she felt suddenly overwhelmed. She’d really thought that she was losing him, her precious boy, right there on the floor. She would never, never take him for granted again. Not ever. She would never let him out of her sight, not for a minute. She …

  ‘Is there someone who could look after your other son?’ the female paramedic put in. ‘They’re always busy in A&E – there might be a long wait.’

  Josie nodded. ‘I’ll ring a friend,’ she said, picking up the phone and dialling Emma’s number.

  ‘Course I will – oh God, poor you!’ Emma said when Josie explained. ‘Is there anyone who’ll come to the hospital with you? Do you want me to get Guy to come home and watch the kids so I can keep you company?’

  ‘No, I’ll ring Pete,’ Josie said. ‘Thanks, Em. Will you come as quickly as you can?’

  ‘I’ll be there in two minutes,’ Emma promised.

  Josie swallowed hard. ‘I’ll just ring my husband,’ she said to the paramedics.

  ‘No problem,’ the woman said. ‘We’ll get Toby into the ambulance and wait for you there, OK?’

  Josie dialled Pete’s office number, feeling numb. Sara took the call. ‘I’m sorry, Josie, but he’s asked me not to put you through,’ she said, sounding very awkward about it. ‘I told him you’d been in, and he went all funny about it, and said—’

  ‘Yes, but Toby—’ Josie began.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Sara interrupted, a briskness coming into her voice. ‘He was quite definite about it.’

  ‘Could you just—’ Josie tried, but the line went dead. She felt like throwing the receiver at the wall. It was as if she was being punished. His son is going into hospital, you stupid cow! she wanted to scream, but there was only the dialling tone to hear her.

  She put down the phone, Sam clinging to her legs, and it rang immediately. She picked it up, hoping it would be Pete.

  ‘Josie! Don’t hang up on me again. I really need to speak to you …’

  It was Barbara. Of all the times. And yet …

  ‘Barbara, I need your help,’ Josie said quickly, before her mother-in-law could launch into a tirade. She swallowed. ‘Barbara, please – it’s really important. Will you help me? Please, Barbara?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cometh the hour, cometh the mother-in-law. That’s what they said, wasn’t it? That’s what they should have said, anyway, because Barbara was fantastic. Unbelievably, wouldn’t-have-bet-your-bottom-dollar-on-it fantastic. She was already at the hospital when Josie and Toby arrived, interrogating the receptionist as to their whereabouts as Josie staggered through the door with Toby still limp in her arms.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Barbara, hurrying across. ‘Josie, there you are! Is he all right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Josi
e replied, and then, as the paramedics went up to the receptionist and started asking about empty receiving rooms, her bottom lip trembled, and all the fight went out of her. ‘I don’t know, Barbara,’ she said again, as she began to sob.

  ‘Oh, Josie,’ Barbara said. ‘Come on, don’t cry! He’ll be all right.’

  And then, stranger than strange, Josie found that she was leaning into her mother-in-law – leaning into barbarous Barbara’s cast-iron bosom! – letting herself be comforted and hugged with Toby between them, soothed with reassuring words as the tears came.

  ‘I was so frightened,’ Josie sobbed. ‘I thought he was—’

  ‘I know. I know,’ Barbara said. ‘Peter was just the same when he was a boy, didn’t I ever tell you? He was always flaking out on me, you know.’ She patted Josie on the back. ‘Horrible, isn’t it? Oh, I know all about it! Really puts the wind up you, especially the first time.’ She stepped back and stroked Toby’s hair, cupped his head with her lined palm. ‘Hell be all right, you’ll see. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Josie croaked, her eyes on Barbara’s face as her mother-in-law clucked over Toby. She’d never known the old battleaxe to be so motherly before.

  ‘Mark my words,’ Barbara replied firmly. ‘Hell be right as rain.’

  ‘Mrs Winter? If you’d like to follow me,’ the kindly male paramedic said then, and Josie and Barbara went after him into a receiving room. Josie laid Toby down on the hospital bed, his body still motionless as he slept on.

  A nurse bustled in and snapped up the metal sides of the bed so Toby wouldn’t roll off, and started firing questions at Josie, who did her best to answer.

  Barbara stayed at Josie’s side, her gaze constantly going to the door and back as if she were watching a game of tennis. ‘Where is he?’ she muttered. ‘For heaven’s sake, where is he?’

  ‘Where’s who?’ Josie asked as the nurse paused to write something down.

  ‘Peter, of course! Do you think he’s been held up in traffic?’

  Josie stared at Barbara, uncomprehending for a moment. She’d quite forgotten that Barbara wouldn’t know about her disastrous trip to Pete’s office that morning. ‘He … He wouldn’t take my call,’ she said. ‘His secretary hung up on me.’ She wiped a tendril of hair out of her eyes. ‘He doesn’t actually know that Toby … well, what happened. I tried to leave a message but …’

  Barbara clicked her tongue. ‘She hung up on you? The little madam.’ The old ferocity was back, but for once it wasn’t directed towards Josie. Barbara rummaged in her large handbag for her purse, a grimness around her mouth. ‘I’ll go and call him. He should be here with you. Honestly! I don’t know what’s got into him, I really don’t.’

  She bustled away, and the nurse flicked Josie a curious look before going on with her questions. ‘So, Mrs Winter, were both arms and both legs jerking? Or was it just one side of the body?’

  The questions were terrifying, actually. Josie stood there, the cold metal bars of the bed pressing into her side as she did her best to answer them, all the while smoothing Toby’s damp hair away from his head.

  Was there a history of epilepsy in the family?

  Had he had a difficult birth?

  Did he have heart problems?

  It was all she could do to keep herself from crying at some of them. It was like being in the very worst kind of nightmare that she just couldn’t wake up out of. Why do you need to know that? she wanted to ask, between the nurse’s questions. What’s the significance of how his body was jerking? What do you think is wrong with him anyway?

  Barbara came back in with a cup of tea for her as the nurse was checking Toby’s skin for rashes. Meningitis, that’s what she’s looking for, Josie thought, a freezing fear slicing through her body. Please don’t let him have meningitis. Please don’t let him …

  ‘Here,’ said Barbara. ‘I put sugar in it, for your shock.’

  Josie sipped it gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, unable to take her eyes off what the nurse was doing.

  Then the nurse pulled the blanket back over Toby, her skin-pressing finished. ‘No rashes, that’s good,’ she said with a brief smile at Josie, and ticked off a section of her notes. ‘Doctor will be in to see you as soon as possible,’ she added, and left the room.

  Meningitis off the list, then. Thank God.

  ‘I got through to Peter,’ Barbara said. ‘He’s on his way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Josie said. What, she wondered, would Pete say to her about her trip to the office that morning?

  Then her eyes fell upon Toby, and she no longer cared. Oh, so what if she’d made a fool of herself? It was so irrelevant now. It was nothing.

  Barbara sat down on the plastic chair and stirred her coffee. ‘Peter was mortified that he hadn’t spoken to you about this. And he’s very sorry.’ She sipped her drink, her eyes meeting Josie’s over the rim of it. ‘And –’ she broke off, looking awkward, then plunged back into her sentence – ‘well, I’m sorry too.’ The words hung between them for a second, and Josie felt her eyes widening. Had Barbara just said that? Had she really just said … ?

  ‘Sorry that all this has happened, I mean. Not just Toby. What he’s done, Peter, walking out on you like that.’ She spoke briskly, matter-of-factly, then dropped her gaze. ‘Marriage was for life in my day. We said those vows and we meant them!’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Josie said quietly. ‘So did I.’

  ‘My own son!’ Barbara tutted, staring into her coffee. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

  Josie blinked, not quite able to take this in. She’d been expecting Barbara to blame her for Pete leaving, such was the woman’s devotion to her son. Oh, she’d been expecting the recriminations to have started the moment Barbara had heard the news. None of it would have been Golden Boy’s fault, of course. Instead, there would be the accusation that Josie had been the wrong woman all along, yes, and that she was a dreadful mother, not worthy to bear Pete’s children, and what else? That the house was such a mess, and the children’s clothes were never ironed – no wonder darling Peter had left her!

  Yet there she was, Barbara, saying she was sorry?

  ‘Well, I …’ Josie mumbled, not sure how to reply. And then, before she could assemble her thoughts into any kind of a sentence, Toby stirred, rustling the crisp sheets.

  Josie leaned over him. His eyes opened a fraction. ‘Mama?’ he said thickly.

  ‘I’m here, baby,’ she said, almost choking on the words. ‘I’m right here.’

  His eyelids flickered. She could see all the tiny purple veins on them, twisted in an intricate design, uniquely him, Toby Winter. He was so beautiful, so perfect, it hurt her to look at him.

  ‘Hot,’ he murmured, turning his head. His cheek was creased where it had rested on the pillow, its cotton weave imprinted on to his skin.

  She blew on him gently. ‘I know, love,’ she said. ‘You’ll cool down soon, don’t worry.’ She leaned over the metal bars and laid her head next to his on the pillow, feeling his hot, sour breath on her cheek. Her hand rested on his chest, thankful for its steady rise and fall. He was breathing. He was talking. He was still there, her boy. Right now, that was as much as she could ask for.

  Josie and Barbara stayed in silence for a while as Toby’s eyelids fluttered closed and he slipped back into sleep. Josie held his hand and gazed at him, the adrenalin trickling away. She felt exhausted now, done-in. She hoped Sam was all right. It had been such a rush, Emma coming round and spiriting him away like that, and Josie had been so caught up with worry over Toby that she’d hardly been able to concentrate on anything else.

  She turned to get her phone out of her bag. ‘I’d better just check Sam’s all right,’ she muttered. She’d have to go outside to use it, she supposed: there were signs everywhere asking people to switch off their phones.

  Barbara rose from her chair. ‘If you give me the number, I can ring if you like,’ she offered. ‘Then you can stay here with Toby.’

&
nbsp; Josie nodded, touched by Barbara’s thoughtfulness. Her mother-in-law was really surprising her today. In fact, she was going to have to check in a minute if that woman beside her in the flowered dress and perm was actually Barbara at all, or some kind of polyester-clad impostor. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, scribbling down Emma’s number on a piece of paper. ‘Would you tell her that I’ll call again as soon as we’ve seen the doctor and I know what’s happening? Thanks.’

  Josie turned back to her son, dimly aware of the noises outside the room – a squeaky wheel on a trolley rattling by, the low hum of the receptionists in the next room, the muffled cries of a baby in the waiting area, and …

  ‘Where are they? Is he all right?’

  … Pete’s voice down the corridor.

  ‘Just in there. We haven’t seen the doctor yet.’ Barbara’s curt reply, followed by the tapping of her heels as she walked away.

  Josie looked around as the door opened and Pete rushed in, his face white, tie askew. ‘I came as soon as I could,’ he said, his eyes swerving from Josie to Toby. He looked sick and pale, as if he needed medical treatment himself. ‘Oh God! What have they said? What happened?’

  Josie stroked Toby’s hand as she told Pete about the convulsion, and what the paramedics had said. She felt numb now, as if she was watching herself trot it all out. Tired, too. And angry, that Pete hadn’t taken her call. Really angry that he hadn’t been there when she’d needed him.

  He came over and put a hand on her shoulder, and she cringed at his touch, turning her head away so that she could only see her son.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ she replied. She didn’t have the energy for anything else. The words had deserted her, along with her adrenalin. She suspected this was probably her cue to apologize for turning up unannounced at his office, but she just couldn’t face it. Somehow it seemed wrong to drag that up now, now they were sitting in the hospital with their feverish, semi-conscious son.