Don’t ignore me or you’ll regret it.

Followed by another message, this time a photo.

The back of three boys.

Connor, Ryan and Tyler.

A message follows:

Remember this isn’t the only interesting thing I have saved on my phone…

He waits for something else but it doesn’t come. But the implications are clear.

Someone is going to get hurt.

He needs to make sure it isn’t his son.

Chapter Twenty-One

Lucy

Kieron is burning up. He’s had infections before – many of them – but none hitting as hard and fast as this one. His chest lifts and drops with rapid breaths. His skin is clammy.

I call 999 before soothing him with soft words and impossible promises.

‘You’ll be okay.’

But will he?

My thoughts are dark and chaotic, a murder of crows fighting and scratching for dominance inside of my mind.

I’m so scared.

That’s one thing Aidan can’t always understand. No amount of medical training, experience can detach you from the primal emotional response a mother feels when her child is sick.

I ring Aidan again from the back of the ambulance. Still, he doesn’t pick up.

The paramedics don’t race towards Wheatfield General with flashing lights and a blaring siren but I urge them to drive faster, making sure they know I’m a doctor. In the young medic’s eyes I see the why-are-you-freaking-out-then look. He wouldn’t be quite so blasé if he were a parent. If this were his child.

Treatment starts almost as soon as Kieron is admitted. The staff here know him – know me. Paracetamol is given to lower his temperature – something other parents are always surprised about, expecting some newfangled drug with a complicated name they have never even heard of. Kieron doesn’t flinch as he’s hooked up to an IV to administer the antibiotics to fight his infection. Bloods are taken. He looks so small in the bed.

One of the nurses cracks a joke about not being able to keep Kieron away from the canteen’s jam sponge and custard, but Kieron doesn’t raise a smile. It’s worrying how quiet he is. How resigned he looks to it all. This is the place Kieron is growing up, where innocence is lost. Where children are faced with their own mortality and parents confront their biggest nightmares.

Mr Peters arrives. ‘Didn’t think we’d see you back so soon.’ He smiles at Kieron, a reassuring stretch of his mouth, flash of his teeth, but it does not calm this agitation that builds and builds until I fear I might explode with it all: the emotion, the fear, the sense of helplessness.

‘Are you going to—’

‘Let’s give the antibiotics time to kick in.’

Waiting is a game parents of sick children know so well. I’m an expert player but I still feel there is more that can be done.

‘I really—’