Real lives
My life was spiralling out of control when a message from beyond the grave changed everything.
Smoothing the picnic blanket on the grass, I laid out the food on top.
It was a glorious sunny day, and I was having a picnic with my eldest son Thomas, seven, his little sister Jess, five, and brother Owen, three, in our garden.
‘Mum, can I go and play football now?’ Thomas smiled, after we’d been out for a bit.
He loved football — if he wasn’t watching it on the TV, he was outside playing it. ‘OK, then,’ I smiled. He headed off to the green at the back of our home in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where all the kids on the street played together.
I could hear them playing together, so I let him crack on while I stayed home with the little ’uns.
Later that afternoon, I’d just given my two youngest a bath, when there was a knock at the door.
‘It’s Thomas,’ an out-of-breath boy said as I opened the door.
‘What is it?’ I asked, wondering what he’d been up to.
A woman I didn’t know followed behind him and said: ‘It’s OK, he’s been in an accident but he’s breathing.’
‘But he’s playing out the back,’ I said to his friend. ‘I can hear you all.’
‘No,’ the young lad said, ‘we went to the park.’
I left my kids with a neighbour and raced to the scene — a busy main road.
There was already an ambulance there and my husband Gary was sitting with Thomas inside it.
Thomas had been hit by a yellow Fiat on a pedestrian crossing.
I was expecting to see him with a broken arm or leg, but instead he was unconscious with breathing apparatus over his face.
My heart plummeted. We were blue-lighted to the local hospital, where we were met by a team of doctors.
‘How can this be happening if he’s supposed to be OK?’ I cried to Gary.
They took Thomas off for emergency care and we waited for news.
‘Thomas has broken his pelvis and collarbone, but his head injuries have caused catastrophic damage to his brain,’ a doctor said gently. ‘I’m sorry, there’s only a five per cent chance of survival.’
As family and friends arrived to say their goodbyes, I had the heartbreaking job of giving the nod to doctors when they asked for our permission to turn the machines off.
The following days went by in a blur, and I barely kept it together for the funeral.
The guilt I felt was eating me up inside. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I was the one who was looking after him, and I hadn’t known where he was.
He wasn’t allowed to go to that road, which he would have crossed to get to the park.
It was decided at the inquest that
