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The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E20: Rosamund Clears the Air

March 30, 2026·42 min·3 clips

Lawyer Jocelyn Coburn found that 27 of 28 hospital admissions for Ella coincided with air pollution spikes on the South Circular Road.

A child should not have lungs like that. The post-mortem is complicated, but one thing is painfully clear: Ella's lungs look terribly wrong for a nine-year-old. Rosamund cannot sit still. On what would have been Ella's 10th birthday, she joins doctors and teacher colleagues to launch the Ella Roberta Foundation. At first, the work is about asthma. Rosamund calls those early days the blind leading the blind, because grief has pushed them into action before certainty has arrived. Then the inquest begins. She expects it to answer the question that has filled every hour since Ella died. It does not. The process becomes clinical, asking her to identify her child and confirm ordinary details about where Ella lived. That kind of formality cuts deep. The coroner tells Rosamund she did everything she could to keep her daughter alive, and he seems to mean it kindly. But kindness is not an explanation. Rosamund came for a cause, and instead she is asked to let the matter rest. She cannot. What she gets is small, but it matters: Ella's asthma attacks were triggered by something in the air. The phrase could mean almost anything. Doctors warn her not to chase it too far, as if a grieving mother can put down the only clue she has. Too late. In February 2015, Rosamund speaks to her local paper and asks for help finding what killed Ella.

As heard by us

A mother's grief turns into a careful search for what was in the air around her daughter.

Rosamund's story follows a parent's search for what killed Ella, and the episode stays close to the slow, painful work of turning grief into evidence.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a case that follows a daughter's death toward the air pollution around her home.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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