Keep You Safe: A tear-jerking and compelling story that will make you think from the international multi-million bestselling author. Melissa Hill

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СКАЧАТЬ I mumbled sympathetically. ‘But not too hard on the kids if it’s mild enough.’

      Lucy had gone unusually quiet and, sensing she was uncomfortable with the discussion, I decided to change the subject. ‘Oh look, they’re starting,’ I said, turning back to the ballet class and feeling bad for bringing all this up in the first place.

      But Christine wouldn’t be diverted. ‘A bit poorly my ass. Kevin was saying that Clara was coughing the day before that too,’ she said. ‘What kind of mother sends a sick child to school so she can go off to flatter her own ego? And what kind of parents take their kids out of class for an extra week over Easter so they can go and sun themselves in Florida?’

      I remembered Rosie saying something about Clara being absent the first few days back after the break, but hadn’t realised it was because she was still on holiday. Must be nice to be able to fly off somewhere warm and sunny for so long. I could only dream.

      ‘Ah, Christine, it’s not as if the kids missed that much for the few extra days they were away,’ said Lucy. ‘And in fairness to Madeleine the other morning, she really didn’t think there was anything to worry about…’

      ‘Oh save it, that’s no excuse. A blind man could see that the child was coming down with something, though of course maybe those Prada sunglasses her mother likes to wear messed up her eyesight…’

      ‘Christine, seriously,’ Lucy reproached, ‘there’s no need for that. I know Madeleine. If she honestly felt that Clara was ill, she would have cancelled the TV thing, end of story. As it was, the little dote just had the sniffles and a bit of a temperature when I went to pick her up.’

      ‘Well, Kevin said he spotted a cluster of spots on her neck. And if a five-year-old can see it, I don’t understand how the child’s own mother—’

      ‘That could just be heat rash from the temperature,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘Pox don’t cluster.’

      ‘Thank you, Nurse,’ Lucy chuckled, evidently hoping to lighten the mood. ‘In any case, Christine, Maddie was distraught and full of apologies when she got back from Dublin,’ she insisted. ‘She couldn’t have known.’

      As Christine muttered something unintelligible, a thought started rattling around in my head. It was what I had just said: that chicken pox didn’t cluster.

      They don’t, I reminded myself. There were just individual sores when the rash popped up.

      I nodded, affirming my own train of thought. Christine’s son was probably just being a typical five-year-old boy. Making everything seem more dramatic and exaggerated than it actually was.

      Returning my attention to the studio where Rosie practised, I smiled with appreciation as she pirouetted gracefully. She did a slight bow in front of her teacher and classmates and then returned to the barre.

      Whereupon once again, almost absent-mindedly, my daughter raised her arm and scratched her back.

Chapter 5

      Rosie turned over in bed and pulled the covers up over her head. Shoving her face into the pillow, she tried her hardest to stifle the sound of her cough. She rolled over onto her back, then sniffled and pulled her leg up to her chest, so she could scratch her knee.

      She didn’t feel well.

      And she was very itchy.

      Rosie had noticed when she got home from ballet and started undressing to put her pyjamas on that she had some little red dots on her arms. And there were a few on her chest, too. She was sure that if she turned on the light and looked at her knee, she would probably find some spots there too.

      But her mum said that you couldn’t get chicken pox twice.

      Rosie felt worry build in her chest. She really didn’t want chicken pox again. It had been miserable the last time. She couldn’t stand the thought of being cooped up in bed, not being allowed to play with her friends or her dinosaurs, and having to take long, warm baths just to try to ease the itch that came with those yucky blisters.

      She shuddered, thinking about it.

      Maybe she was just tired. That had to be it. It had been a long week and maybe she was just feeling a bit worried because her friend Ellie wasn’t well and then Clara had gone home sick the other day too.

      Kevin hadn’t looked like he was sick though – and he said he’d never had chicken pox before – so how could she get them twice?

      She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. That was what Mum had told her to do any time she was feeling overwhelmed. Of course, she had told her that because of what she had seen with her dad, but Rosie supposed that trick could be used in this situation as well.

      Taking one, two, three deep breaths, she closed her eyes in the darkness and willed herself to go to sleep. In the morning, everything would be fine. She would feel better.

      But then her eyes sprang open as it felt like something had bitten her on the back. She cranked her arm around awkwardly to shove her hand up the back of her pyjama top to reach the area. Once the itch was scratched, she ran her fingers over her skin and felt a few flat bumps. There were more of them all over her too, she just knew it.

      Breathing hard again, she whispered to herself like her mum told her to do when she needed to calm herself down. ‘You’re fine, just go to sleep. Everything is OK. You don’t have chicken pox. Everyone knows kids can’t get them twice.’

      Debating on whether or not to get up and tell her mum about this, she decided against it. Mum worried about things. And Rosie knew she’d be even more worried if she had to take time off work to take care of her, when there was no need.

      She was a big girl now.

      ‘Just go to sleep,’ she told herself quietly in the darkness, trying to count sheep like her dad had once told her. But that had never worked, so instead Rosie decided to try counting the names of all the different dinosaurs she knew – especially all the new ones she’d learned from the exhibition she’d been to over Easter. And after tossing and turning for an hour or more, she finally fell asleep, achieving a fitful slumber.

      Several hours later she woke, realising that she had kicked all of her covers off. She felt hot and cold at the same time and her pyjamas felt wet and her skin clammy. She was covered in sweat!

      At once, the problem of the previous night came rushing back to her and Rosie realised that she didn’t feel better – at all. Instead she felt much, much worse.

      ‘No, no, no,’ she said, feeling a fresh wave of panic. She was so warm – she had to have a fever, like that time she’d had a bad flu and her mum had explained all about how fever was the body’s way of getting rid of bad germs.

      Bad germs like chicken pox?

      And as much as she wanted to jump out of bed to look at herself in the mirror to confirm that the spots were still there, she just couldn’t. She felt exhausted.

      Rosie wanted her mum, but when she opened her mouth to call out, she found she could barely manage a squeak.

      ‘Mum…’ СКАЧАТЬ