We sit in a quiet back room and talk for two hours. I meet Benedict’s mother, Helen Blythe, for coffee one spring morning in a country hotel not far from Stamford where she lives. He seemed happy and healthy when he arrived but by the afternoon, he was dead, having collapsed with anaphylaxis. That morning, he went off cheerfully to school with a small packet of dairy-free McVitie’s Gingerbread Men for snack time. It was Benedict’s first term at school – Barnack primary in Stamford – and he loved it so much that back in September, he had cried when he learned that there were no classes at the weekend. He came downstairs to open the first box in his Advent calendar containing a plastic springy frog and a dairy-free white chocolate (Benedict was allergic to milk, along with many other foods including soy, sesame, eggs and nuts). When five-year-old Benedict Blythe woke up on the morning of 1 December 2021, he was excited that Christmas was coming.
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