“Don’t beat yourself up. He’s a two-year-old. He probably thought it was sugar.”
In the back, Theo’s gone very quiet. When I pull up outside the emergency room and Pete lifts him out of the car seat, he throws up.
By the time I’ve found a parking space and joined them in the hospital, Theo’s flopped in Pete’s arms, looking very pale, and Pete’s talking to a nurse.
“Don’t worry,” she’s saying. “It’s hard to do much damage eating salt—it’s an emetic, so you did the right thing by giving him plenty of water and letting him get it out of his system. You can stay to see one of the doctors if you want, but he’ll probably just go on being sick for an hour or two. Give him plenty of fluids and make him comfortable.” Theo chooses that moment to lean out of Pete’s arms and throw up again, splattering vomit all over the shiny hospital floor. Pete starts to apologize and the nurse laughs.
“There’ll be plenty more of that before the weekend’s over. I’ll call a cleaner. And find you something for him to be sick in.”
She brings us a cardboard bedpan. Theo has by now gone hot and sticky and doesn’t want to leave Pete’s arms, so I sit beside them, holding it. He vomits three more times before he eventually perks up.
“I think we can probably risk the journey home now,” Pete says.
The nearest parking space we can find is a street away from where we live, so it’s only when we reach our house on foot, with Pete carrying a tired and floppy Theo, that we see Miles and Lucy outside our front door. Miles is holding a backpack.
“What the hell?” I say to Pete under my breath.
“Don’t ask me.” He sounds mystified. “Miles did mention something about teaching Theo to throw a rugby ball. But we never made a firm arrangement.”
“Bugger.” I plaster a smile across my face. “Hi there!”
“Hey, big man!” Miles says to Theo. “Hey Pete, Maddie. Lucy’s baked cookies.”
“And brought you a bottle of wine,” Lucy says anxiously. “I hope you don’t mind us randomly turning up like this. We were just around the corner, and David’s with the nanny, so…”
“No, it’s great to see you!” I say brightly. “Though it’s lucky you found us in, actually. We’ve just been to the emergency room.”
“Nothing dramatic, I hope?” Miles looks concerned.
“Only a bit of salt Theo swallowed. We’re all a bit hot and vomitty, I’m afraid.”
“Then it’s a bad time,” Miles says, picking up on my hint. “We’ll come back another day.” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a foam rugby ball. “I’ll leave this with you. I bought it on the interweb—apparently they’re easier to catch than those little leather ones.”
Theo immediately reaches for the ball, perking up as always at the sight of a new toy. Pete says, “Well, maybe we could give it a quick try. The park’s only just around the corner.”
“Shouldn’t Theo be taking it easy for a while?” I ask pointedly.
“We won’t be long,” he says mildly. “The nurse said to stay quiet for an hour or two, after all, and we’re well beyond that. What do you say, Theo? Quiet time or park?”
“Park!” Theo says immediately, as Pete surely knew he would.
* * *
—
“THEY’RE ALL GETTING ON like a house on fire, aren’t they?” Lucy says, when they’ve gone and I’m making the two of us tea.
I nod, though actually I’m wondering about the origins of that phrase. Are houses on fire really a good thing? Or is it one of those innocuous idioms that actually refer to some horrible disaster, like the Great Fire of London or the Black Death?
“Miles really likes Pete,” she adds. “This is so good for him. He doesn’t have many male friends.”
“Really?” I’m surprised. I’d assumed someone as good-looking and charming as Miles would have a huge social circle.
“He used to see a lot of his rugby teammates, the Mayfair Mayflies. But then he damaged his knee and had to stop playing. And he works in a very small office now he’s left Hardings and set up on his own—it’s just him and three others.”
I nod. “It’s the same for Pete, working from home. There’s a group of dads from the NICU who meet up occasionally, but most of the time they only seem to interact on DadStuff.” I glance at her. “Thank you for liking those pictures of Theo, by the