There are many reasons to feel guilty. I’m a nature writer who preaches about the importance of wild childhoods, and my daughter has been made chronically ill by one trip to the countryside. I’m a journalist whose job it is to interrogate information and yet I didn’t demand better answers for her from NHS doctors. But the guilt is most painful when I remember a freezing wet day in October 2021.
Milly’s U10s football club were playing the league’s top team. Milly, player of the year the previous season, a whirl of blond energy across the pitch, had lost her enthusiasm for the beautiful game. That morning, she really didn’t want to play: she was tearful and exhausted. There was nothing obviously wrong: no cough, sickness, temperature. Her twin, Esme, was playing but without Milly the team were a player short. I told Milly they needed her. Stoic, she staggered off but couldn’t step on to the pitch. Instead, she curled into a ball of misery and fatigue beside her coach. The rain fell. Her team lost 15-1.
