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 nodded and murmured my agreement. Jennifer was one of the instructors at the dance studio, and her taste in recital gear was a bit more… liberal than most. While I tended to side with Lucy as it related to what my daughter was going to wear when she strutted her stuff on the stage in front of friends and neighbours, I also knew that I didn’t have to offer any complaint. Lucy would simply handle it for the rest of us and everything would get sorted accordingly. It must be wonderful to be that confident and capable.

      I took a seat on the bench along the wall for the parents as Lucy buzzed off, happily barking orders at parents and children alike.

      Some people tended to be put off by her bluster, and I realised that it was easy to feel that way. I myself had felt a bit overwhelmed when I first met her a couple of years back. A bit like a hurricane – she comes in really strong, churns everything up, and then mellows out. However, over time, she has become one of my biggest advocates and friends. When Greg passed away, she really helped me keep it together and I don’t know what I would have done without her.

      Lucy organised my house when I was in too much of a fog to do anything, kept the receiving line of sympathisers moving, made sure both Rosie and I were fed, did my washing, helped me with pretty much everything day in and day out.

      In the immediate aftermath, my parents had of course come up to stay, but they’re in their late sixties and in poor health, and were themselves too wracked with grief to be of any real help. And while I had others – work colleagues and old friends from Dublin – around at the time willing to do what they could, Lucy was the drill sergeant we all needed.

      Now, I watched through the glass observation window as Rosie’s class started. This was really the first time this week I had been able to just sit and breathe, I realised.

      I reached into my bag, grabbed an elastic and pulled my tousled shoulder-length hair up off my shoulders, tying it into a makeshift bun at the nape of my neck. It was starting to get greasy and I really needed a shower but there’d been no time. Later hopefully, when Rosie had gone to bed. She usually went up about eight, and while Greg and I used to relish the few hours together before our own bedtime, now the silence made his absence even more pronounced. So I tended to keep myself busy by cooking, reading or going online and wasting time on Pinterest and the like.

      Inside the studio, my daughter was standing in fifth position as normal, but something she was doing caught my eye.

      She put her hand up and scratched her back, right along her shoulder blade. I grimaced; she must have grabbed the wrong cardie by accident earlier. That purple one she had on was an itchy wool, and now she was paying the price.

      ‘Is anyone sitting here?’

      I looked up to see Christine Campbell, a tall woman with a slightly aloof air about her. Her son Kevin was in Rosie’s class and, by all accounts (including Rosie’s), a bit of a troublemaker, constantly causing grief for the teachers. Typical boy stuff, really. She also had a daughter Suzanne, who was older and in a more senior ballet class.

      I didn’t see Christine often, but our daughters’ class times sometimes overlapped. She and Lucy knew each other well, though personality-wise they seemed to me to be chalk and cheese.

      ‘No, go ahead.’ I moved my oversized bag and placed it on the floor at the same time that Lucy rejoined us and sat back down.

      All at once, I felt like I was smack bang in the middle of a gossip sandwich as the two women tried their utmost to outdo each other for local ‘news’.

      The topics were wide ranging and flung about rapidly – Christine conveyed her annoyance about a neighbour who had illegally constructed a shed against a boundary wall and how she was going to talk to her solicitor cousin about it, while Lucy condemned a hapless mother who’d promised she would volunteer at the Applewood PTA, but had not turned up to a meeting. I grimaced, making a mental note to be sure to keep any volunteer commitments.

      But since I myself was short on scandal, I searched my brain for something to contribute to the conversation.

      ‘I heard poor Clara Cooper went home early from school with chickenpox the other day,’ I offered. ‘Is Kevin OK so far?’ I added, knowing that Christine’s son was one of the kids in Rosie’s class who hadn’t had it yet. I glanced towards the dance studio and frowned. My daughter was still scratching.

      ‘I know. I was the one who picked Clara up,’ Lucy commented. ‘Madeleine rang me first thing that morning – Clara woke up a bit poorly, but Madeleine was due at Channel 2 for a TV thing and had to send her in. She asked if I’d do the honours in case she got any worse.’

      ‘Typical,’ Christine harrumphed, her horn-rimmed glasses falling down her nose. ‘Getting someone else to do her dirty work. Mad Mum is right. And I’m sure it’s only a matter of time till my poor Kevin gets it.’ She pushed the glasses back up and rolled her eyes. ‘Doesn’t surprise me that Clara did either. You know what the bloody Coopers are like.’

      I bit my lip guiltily, having forgotten that Lucy and Clara’s mum were also close, and had grown up together in Knockroe. And I especially regretted bringing up the subject in front of Christine. Lucy had once confided that Madeleine’s rapidly growing celeb status was a sore point as far as Christine was concerned, and I hadn’t intended to open that particular can of worms.

      I started to reply, but Lucy beat me to it. ‘Ah leave it, Christine. To be fair, you don’t usually vaccinate for chicken pox anyway.’

      At this, my ears pricked up. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, turning to her. ‘What’s that got to do with the Coopers?’

      Rosie’s allergy or the fact that she couldn’t be immunised wasn’t common knowledge amongst the school community, mostly because of the inevitable negative reaction it provoked amongst parents. And I didn’t want my daughter to be singled out in any way because of reasons she (or I) couldn’t control. So when before Easter the school secretary had sent out Health Service permission forms for the MMR booster to be carried out in the school, I had quietly marked an X in the ‘Decline’ box and forgotten all about it.

      But now I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the Coopers and I had something in common.

      ‘But Madeleine and Tom don’t believe in vaccination full stop,’ Christine said bitterly. ‘Complete nonsense. Not to mention irresponsible.’

      My mouth went dry. So while I’d had no choice but to opt out of the standard vaccination programme, it seemed the Coopers had wilfully declined.

      ‘Don’t believe in… you mean the Cooper children haven’t had shots – for anything?’ I asked, feeling more than a little unnerved.

      This was what Greg and I had worried most about – the idea that so-called ‘herd immunity’ wasn’t guaranteed to protect Rosie so long as there were parents who chose not to participate. Yet I couldn’t condemn the Coopers for anything when I didn’t know the reasons. For all I knew, their children might also have some kind of autoimmune condition or other valid reason not to go along with protocol.

      ‘Yep. Apparently they don’t trust the HSE and the pharmaceutical companies, even though all that controversy over the MMR jabs was written off yonks ago.’ Christine rolled her eyes. ‘Give me a break. They’re just lucky this time that chicken pox is fairly harmless.’

       This time.

      I swallowed hard, СКАЧАТЬ