Free Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats by Amanda Prowse Page B

things can change in a second.
    They say that once life has changed, it is almost impossible to imagine what it was like before.
    These were the seconds before.
    One…
    Two…
    Three…
    It was almost simultaneous. Grace looked at the digital display on her phone and read 9.15 at the exact moment that the deafening sound of a stranger in their house filled her head. It had to be a stranger; it was no voice she recognised, no sound that she had heard before. Was it a person? An animal? She couldn’t tell. Her heart raced and felt as if it was beating in her throat. Her bowels turned to ice.
    It was a scream, a guttural yell, a primal noise that came from the pit of a stomach and was intended to travel up to the highest point in the sky and down to the deepest depths of the earth.
    Grace jumped and shivered. Petrified, rooted for a second or two to the spot where she sat, unsure of what to do next, unsure of how to make her legs move or how to stop her body from shaking.
    ‘Tom?’ she called, but fear had turned her voice to a whisper.
    ‘Tom?’ she called again, trying to fathom what was happening. Who was screaming? Where was that noise coming from? What should I do? I don’t know what to do.
    As if waking from a trance, Grace finally managed to stand. Gingerly she made her way upstairs to the landing.
    The first thing that hit her was the smell. Vomit. She could smell sick and this made her wretch and place her hand over her mouth. She inched forward and flicked on the hall light. Her eyes darted across the space at her feet as she tried to understand what she was seeing.
    Tom was kneeling on the hall floor and he was leaning over a dolly, a teddy or something, a bundle of clothes possibly, with his face buried in it. She couldn’t quite make it out. He had been sick; it dripped in a stain down the front of his chest and in splashes on the wall and on the carpet.
    ‘You’ve been sick,’ she said, as if there was the smallest chance that he was unaware of the fact.
    Grace looked more closely at the bundle and felt the strength leave her legs. She swayed. A knot of icy-cold fear gathered in her stomach and she could hear the blood racing in her head as the bile of realisation rushed into her mouth and down her T-shirt. Placing her hand on the wall, she slid down it and sat in a heap, staring not at a bundle of clothes or a dolly, but at her little girl, who was lying on the floor. She could see Chloe’s small, chubby feet sticking out of the bottom of her nightdress; they were flopping inward and were a little arched.
    Tom was feverishly stroking the hair away from Chloe’s forehead. Chloe who was floppy. Sleeping.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Grace shouted. ‘Why is she on the floor, Tom?’ None of it made any sense.
    ‘Call… call an ambulance. Call an ambulance!’ he screamed in a voice she had never heard before, his tone like broken glass, spikey and painful to draw.
    ‘What’s wrong? You’ve been sick! What’s going on?’ she asked, her eyes wide.
    ‘Get the fucking ambulance, Grace, d’you hear me? Get them now! Right now! She’s not breathing, she’s not breathing!’ His voice got louder and louder.
    Tom again placed his mouth over his little girl’s and tipped her head back, trying to breathe life into her silent form.
    ‘Call the fucking ambulance!’ His voice was now high-pitched, reedy, thin and tortured. He kicked out, catching Grace on the thigh with his bare foot, kicking her as hard as he could manage from the position he was in. ‘Now! For fuck’s sake, Grace, come on! Now!’ he shrieked.
    Grace levered herself up, using her hands to steady herself against the wall as she made her way on legs that felt like sponge. She picked up the phone that Tom kept by the side of the bed and with fingers that shook she dialled 999, hoping that she would wake up from this nightmare soon. Please, please, let me wake up now…
    Tom continued to scream, loud and high pitched. It was an animal