A toddler died after she drank her mother’s heroin substitute medication left in a measuring cup behind the television the night before she was due to take it, a court heard.

Lucy King failed to summon the emergency services until two-and-a-half hours after she suspected Frankie Hedgecock had sipped the methadone at their Dover home, it was alleged.

“If you look at the evidence, this child was not well at all,” said prosecutor Rowan Jenkins.

“Why when Lucy King knew or believed her two-year-old child had accidentally drunk a dangerous prescription drug did she fail to do the simplest and most sensible thing - get some help?

“What stopped her? Had she done so before the methadone had taken hold she might have been saved, the prosecution say.”

King, 39, of De Burgh Street, denies manslaughter.

Mr Jenkins told a jury at Maidstone Crown Court King previously had drug issues and had been prescribed methadone for a number of years.

Her mother would routinely arrive at the home at around 8am and leave at 8.30am.

She did so as usual on Friday, June 5 2015. King’s friend Paul Norris arrived at about 9.40am. Frankie was seemingly asleep on the sofa.

“Everything seemed normal,” said Mr Jenkins. “She (King) proceeded to be her normal cheerful self. Nothing seemed out of order at all.”

Mr Norris was going to take them shopping in the town but after they chatted for about 20 minutes King went to pick up Frankie and said: “She is not moving.”

The child was floppy and her lips had turned blue. “Something was seriously wrong,” said Mr Jenkins. “The mother became very distraught.”

Mr Norris called the emergency services at 9.53am. He and King were given advice about resuscitation and compression.

As King was pressing down on Frankie’s chest, Mr Norris saw that green mucus was coming from the child’s nose and mouth.

Paramedics arrived quickly to see King with her fingers in Frankie’s mouth. She was pale and unconscious and not breathing.

King showed a paramedic a measuring cup she had poured about 15ml of methadone into.

Efforts were made to revive Frankie and she was taken to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford. Life was declared extinct at 11.04am.

“Methadone is a dangerous drug,” said Mr Jenkins. “It is prescribed in bottles in strictly measured and liquid doses.”

King had been prescribed 96ml a day. It had to be taken under supervision and she would go to Boots the chemist to do so.

The exception was weekends when the service was closed. She was allowed on a Friday to take home the medication for the next two days under strict rules.

King had not yet collected her prescription on the Friday but had been buying “top ups” from a friend, added Mr Jenkins.

The prosecutor said the only direct witness as to when Frankie drank the methadone was her mother.

She told a police officer before she went to the hospital that she had done something she had never done before.

She said she had measured out the methadone she intended to take the next morning the night before.

The next morning she dozed on the sofa, she said, and when she awoke Frankie was on the floor pointing at the measuring cup, which was empty.

King said Frankie had been sick, then she was fine before her friend Paul Norris arrived.

She told a paramedic in the ambulance the methadone had been taken at 7.30am and she tried to make Frankie vomit by putting her fingers down her throat.

She thought if anything would happen it would be within half an hour.

Frankie had a cleft lip and would snuffle when sleeping. She was snoring, she said, when Mr Norris arrived. Around 9.50am, she saw the child had stopped breathing and her lips were blue.

“What is clear so far about what she said is she made no contact at all, and made no effort to call 999 or seek medical advice until Mr Norris made the call two-and-a-half hours later,” said Mr Jenkins.

In a police interview she said Frankie just went floppy. She went into “panic mode”.

King said she normally kept her methadone out of the way in the kitchen and would take it in the morning.

The night before she measured out 15ml and put it on the floor behind the television, intending to take it the next morning at the usual time.

“She said she never pre-measures medication and can’t understand why she did things differently this time or why she chose that particular place to leave out the drug,” said Mr Jenkins.

That morning she took Frankie downstairs at 7am and must have “drifted off” for 10 minutes. When she awoke, Frankie was on the floor and the measuring cup was on the hearth of the fireplace.

“Her Facebook account was looked at. It shows before he arrived she had found time to chat to friends" - prosecutor Rowan Jenkins

“That’s when I went into panic mode,” she said. She did not know if the child had taken the whole amount. She tried making her sick. She was crying and emotional.

After her mother arrived, she decided at about 8.36am that Frankie had not taken the methadone.

She calmed down and watched the Jeremy Kyle Show on TV. When Mr Norris arrived, she claimed, Frankie was sitting up eating crisps.

But Mr Norris recalled that the girl was asleep when he arrived.

“Her Facebook account was looked at,” said Mr Jenkins. “It shows before he arrived she had found time to chat to friends.

“There is nothing in that rather brief mundane exchange of comments to suggest anything concerned her. She seemed perfectly relaxed.

“It is not consistent with her claim of having a traumatic morning and any concern with her daughter’s health.

The trial continues.