Life-saving
I was so pleased to hear that my little boy had come to the rescue!
Michelle Bryant-Adams, 37, from East Sussex
Watching as my youngest two played together, I couldn’t help but smile. My son Kobi, then four, and daughter Kenya, two, had a wonderful bond.
They were always together in a nook somewhere, playing hide and seek or drawing.
My husband Paul, 32, and I had two other children – Benjamin, now 17 , and Eyron, 11. But Kobi and his little sister had a really inseparable bond.
It hadn’t been an easy weekend, though.
Eyron’s hamster had died. We’d replaced it and got another then that had died, too.
Bad things happen in threes… what’s next? I wondered to myself.
I was due to go away on a girlie weekend to Liverpool in June 2021.
‘Do you think I should go away?’
Bad luck was really stalking us
I asked Paul, looking at Eyron, who was bereft after yet another beloved hamster death.
‘They’ll be fine,’ Paul said. So, I packed my things and kissed the kids one by one. I found Kenya and Kobi together, snuggled up and reading a book.
‘Bye you two, Mummy loves you,’ I said.
They both kissed me goodbye and smiled. I set off with friends.
However, I felt awful on the journey there. Two dead hamsters in just a few hours.
I had a bad feeling, as if bad luck was stalking us.
We drove for miles and we were just passing Birmingham when my phone rang.
It was Paul on FaceTime. ‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Look,’ he said, his frantic face filling the screen.
He turned his phone to show some smoke coming from our garden shed.
‘It’s on fire,’ he said. ‘Kobi told me. I was in the house and he ran in with Kenya, getting her safe.’
‘Call 999!’ I shrieked.
‘I have, we’re just waiting for the fire brigade now!’ he said, before hanging up.
Shaking like a leaf, I quickly called my neighbour.
I had to think fast.
‘My shed is on fire. Can you get my kids?’ I cried to her.
‘On it!’ she said.
She hung up, then ran down from her house and got all the kids to safety while Paul stayed there trying to put the fire out with a pitifully small garden hose.
I have a Ring Doorbell where I can see people on my phone.
I turned it on and saw fireman after fireman running through the front door.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like something from the film Backdraft.
‘Why are there so many of them at the house?’ I muttered. ‘It’s only a small shed fire.’
But then Paul rang me.
‘It’s all gone,’ he said, sounding shocked.
