“Mam?” His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper and his throat was hoarse, but his call to her brought Mrs Hopkin to tears and she slumped down over him, scooping his body against hers.
“I’m here,” she said as she gently rocked him against her chest.
“My throat hurts.”
She raised her hand to his head, brushing his hair away and smiled down at him through her tears.
“I need to check you over,” Nellie said as she stepped up to the bed. She felt his forehead first, assessing his temperature, then slowly eased him out of his mother’s arms so that he could lie comfortably. Peeling the sheet away from his body she began to inspect his arms and legs. “Still clear,” she said, finding no signs of a rash. She brought a hand to his face, pulling his chin back to inspect the inside of his mouth. “We’ll need to keep an eye on this,'' she said. “He might be over the worst of it but he’s not out of the woods just yet. I’m going to go and check on Sophia and Betty and then I’ll be right back.”
As if on cue, Betty screamed out from the bedroom next door and Nellie ran out of the room towards the sound of her voice. I immediately jumped from the bed and followed her across the landing, aching from the sudden movement, and pushed behind her into the girls' bedroom.
In the corner of the room opposite the door, Betty crouched in a crumpled heap, sweating with fever and her face contorted with agony. Her body shook as she clawed at her chest and her mouth hung wide, but no more sound escaped her.
“Betty, what is it?” Nellie asked, her voice filled with panic as she rushed to her sister's side. She clasped her hands on either side of Betty’s face and tried to make her eyes meet her own, but Betty’s gaze was fixed across the room and her head remained firmly pressed against the wall. “Speak to me Elizabeth!” Nellie demanded again, to no avail.
I moved further into the room, looking around me, and immediately realised the source of Betty’s anguish
“Get her out,” I bellowed as Mrs Hopkin came into the room demanding to know what the fuss was about. I threw my arm in the air, pointing to the doorway, and Nellie quickly rose to her feet and pushed her mother out onto the landing.
For a moment it was as though everything stopped and I became acutely aware of every noise around me. The creaking of the floorboards as I edged toward the bed and the birds tweeting outside the window. Even the sound of my own breathing felt as though it was ringing in my ears and I had to consciously hold my breath as I edged closer to where Sophia lay.
It was her eyes that I noticed first. Had they been closed I may have been fooled into thinking that she was merely asleep. The sun coming through the window made them sparkle, two spots of colour in an otherwise colourless room, but they were cast upward towards the ceiling, unmoving, with all signs of that familiar cheeky twinkle now gone.
On her neck were the same red marks that we’d seen on Howell, a consequence of desperately clawing at her throat as she gasped for breath, unnoticed, while her family sat at her brother's bedside in the next room.