shouldn’t even have it in the house,” Mina had said when we got back from the doctor’s, three-year-old Sophia blissfully unaware of the potentially fatal diagnosis she’d just been given.
“Her allergy isn’t that bad.” There were some people, the doctor told us, who couldn’t be within ten feet of a nut, who could feel their lips swelling the second a packet was ripped open in the pub.
“But what if she opens it? She’s too young to understand the difference between a spread she can have and a spread she can’t.”
“I’ll keep it on top of the fridge. She won’t even see it.” Peanut butter was my guilty pleasure, spooned from the jar before a long run or smeared on toast on a Sunday morning.
Since her diagnosis, Sophia’s only had one allergic reaction, when a thoughtless parent at a coffee morning gave her a biscuit without checking with Mina.
“It was terrifying,” Mina said afterward. She shook her head as if there were a fly trapped inside. “I used the pen, and I suddenly thought, What if it doesn’t work? You know—we have these pens, and you just assume they work, but what if we’ve got a rogue one? An off day at the factory. The one duff pen.”
“But it did work,” I reminded her, because her words were racing as though she’d forgotten that Sophia was banging pans around her toy kitchen, the excitement of the day already forgotten.
“Yes, but—”
I moved to hold her, physically stemming her panic. “It worked.”
As Sophia got older, she knew not to take food from anyone but us. She got used to taking a packed lunch on days out, learned to ask at parties if the cake contained nuts. We relaxed. Became complacent. But the peanut butter jar stayed on top of the fridge, safely out of Sophia’s reach.
“Stay calm. Try and breathe slowly.”
She’s hardly breathing at all. I know that her chest will be tight, as though someone’s sitting on it, her throat swelling so that every intake of air is forced. She moves her lips, but no sound comes out. Her eyelids have already puffed up, closing her eyes to narrow slits.
“Becca!” If I shouted loudly for our food, it’s nothing compared to how I shout now. I get on my knees, as though the tiny increase in height will carry the sound farther, and bang my handcuffs against the metal pipe again and again and again. “Help!”
It can take anything from a few minutes to a few hours to die from an anaphylactic attack. The first time it happened, we drove her straight to the GP, where we were rushed past the queue to an efficient doctor who whipped out an EpiPen and dialed 999 at the same time. We were given our own pen at the hospital.
“What happens if she doesn’t have the epinephrine? How bad would the reaction be?”
“Impossible to say. Let’s not find out the hard way.” The doctor was young and thoughtful, empathy in her eyes. “Best to get a spare pen.”
We have five in total. One at school, one in Sophia’s school bag, one in Mina’s handbag, one in my car, and one in the kitchen drawer along with spare keys and loose batteries and three-year-old toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals.
“Help!”
In the kitchen, the radio snaps off midway through “Fairy Tale of New York.”
I don’t wait for Becca to call out.
“I need Sophia’s EpiPen. You gave her nuts, you stupid, stupid—”
“I gave you nuts! There wasn’t enough cheese, so I—”
“Quickly! There’s no time. She could die, Becca!” I regret my words the second I see Sophia’s face, swollen and panicked and now fighting for what little breath she’s managing to find. “It’s not true, sweetheart,” I add in a low voice. “I just said it because we really need your pen.”
There’s noise upstairs. I hear a clatter of keys, and I picture the contents of the kitchen drawer spilled on the floor. I yank at my handcuffs, fear and frustration lending strength to my stiff arms. What will I do if Sophia stops breathing? If her heart stops?
“Hurry!”
“I can’t find it!”
Mina must have moved it. I feel an unjust spike of anger that she didn’t tell me, that we didn’t talk about it, say, I was thinking it might be better to keep it in the hall, in the bathroom, in the cupboard.
“In Sophia’s school bag!” I yell.
Becca makes a sound that’s midway between a sob and a scream. “It isn’t there! It’s on the plane. I took