Authors: Trisha Ashley
Mrs Scott has written two or three times to Stella by now, in tiny lettering inside cards with old-fashioned fairy pictures on the front, which Stella found enchanting. They were little chatty notes, saying how much her new granny and grandpa enjoyed meeting her and how they hoped she and her mummy would come to stay for a little holiday next year, when she was all better.
There was no word from, or about, Adam.
Stella seemed fine for the Bank Holiday weekend and it was a lovely day for the opening of the restored and recreated Honey’s shop at the mill.
Miss Honey arrived in her wheelchair encased in a kind of sheepskin body muff that would have had me expiring with the heat, and all you could really see of her was her face topped by a red turban hat with a Scottish Celtic circle brooch pinned to it.
The wheelchair was trundled directly from the van down a ramp and straight through the arch into the courtyard, where Tim and various Trust members and local dignitaries, including Hebe Winter, awaited her.
There was a good crowd there to watch her cut the ribbon, too.
‘God Bless the good ship Honey and all who sail in her,’ she announced clearly, grinning, and there was a ripple of laughter and then applause.
She was taken inside to view the new shop and emerged some time later from the other end of the building via the gift shop, clutching a bunch of yellow roses, which she waved at Florrie Snowball, who was standing near us with Jenny.
‘Is that you, young Florrie?’ she called, having herself propelled in our direction.
‘Not dead yet then, Queenie?’ replied Mrs Snowball, and then they both cackled with laughter as though this was a joke of high order.
‘I’m glad you’re not dead,’ Stella told her, and then Miss Honey insisted we all go and have tea with her in the eco-centre before she was, as she put it, incarcerated at Pinker’s End again.
Bank Holiday Monday was Ivo Hawksley’s Shakespeare reading up at Winter’s End, but we thought yesterday had been excitement enough for Stella, so we left her with Ma and went on our own.
David and Sarah, and Celia and Will had also said they were going, and Miss Winter had certainly made the most of the publicity leading up to it because there was a crowd of people heading up there.
It was a warm day with a heavy, sultry sky that threatened a thunderstorm later. Ivo performed from the lowest of the three terraces behind the house, which was very appropriate because the Shakespeare garden and the wall incised with quotations from the Bard were both on that level. His audience were grouped on the terraces above and it made quite a natural auditorium.
He performed three pieces, at first funny, then sad and moving, his beautiful voice carrying clearly up to the highest point without him seeming to raise it, which I suspect will give Hebe Winter ideas about having whole performances of Shakespeare there in future.
We were all so gripped and mesmerised that when he’d finished, there was a short silence and then a thunder of applause and cheering. He was persuaded to do an encore and, appropriately, given the gathering storm clouds, it was a piece from
The Tempest
.
But luckily the weather must have read the stage directions, for it held off until we were almost home again afterwards, when the rain started to splash down in big, hard drops that exploded onto the car windscreen.
‘Good timing,’ Jago said. ‘And the gardens need it, after this dry spell. I’m glad it didn’t start while Ivo was still reading, though – great, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, amazing. The theatre’s the only thing I’ve really missed since I had Stella … and do you know, I was thinking earlier that despite all the worry over her health, I’ve had more fun since moving to Sticklepond than I’ve ever had in my entire life before!’
‘Me too, and I feel more a part of your family than I ever did my own. Now they’re in New Zealand, I think they forget I exist most of the time,’ he added ruefully.
‘Ma says you don’t bother her and she doesn’t mind whether you’re there or not.’
‘Maybe she’d like to adopt me?’ he suggested, which I thought showed just how brotherly a light he saw me in.
Unfortunately, that was not how I was increasingly coming to think of him.
I should have seen that storm after the spell of lovely weather as an omen, for on the following Thursday morning Stella slept so late that in the end I had to wake her up and I could see at once that she was heavy-eyed and running a slight temperature.
Luckily her hospital appointment was an early one, because by the time we got there she was burning up and tearful, and I wasn’t surprised when they decided to admit her overnight, so they could give her antibiotics intravenously, the quickest way of getting them into her system.
This did not go down well with Stella. It was hard being a mother and having to watch doctors do something that will hurt your child, even if the result was for the best. The last time she had an operation she wasn’t really old enough to understand what was happening and that was bad enough …
Once she was settled in bed with Bun tucked up beside her, I rang Ma to tell her what was happening.
‘They don’t know what’s causing the temperature yet, but they’ve taken some blood for tests and they’re giving her antibiotics intravenously in the hope it will stop any infection taking hold. They’ll see if that’s had any effect tomorrow and hopefully it will do the trick. If not, they’ll probably send her across to Alder Hey …’
‘Then let’s hope they’ve caught it in time, whatever it is,’ Ma said. ‘Shall I come in now and do you want me to bring anything?’
‘She’s in a small side room on her own, and I’m staying here overnight,’ I said, and told her where the emergency bags I always keep packed were. She said she’d be in shortly with them. ‘What about your car?’
‘They don’t have overnight car parks; I’ll have to move it somewhere.’
‘We’ll work something out, don’t worry about it.’
‘Stella told the consultant he was a bad Dr Rabbit and the nurse that she wouldn’t let her work in her cottage hospital,’ I said, managing a laugh, despite my worry.
But when I was talking to Jago a few minutes later and he said he’d be in as soon as he could get there, I began to cry, which is not like me in the least.
‘But it’s always busy at the Happy Macaroon on market days and, anyway, haven’t you and David got orders to make?’ I protested, sniffling.
‘Nothing he can’t handle on his own,’ he assured me. ‘Dorrie and Sarah are covering the shop, and although I’ll have to deliver a macaroon party cone order first, it’s in Ormskirk so it won’t take long.’
Ma arrived first with Hal in tow, but he’d just come to take my car back home and went off with the keys, so that was one thing fewer to worry about. She’d brought both our overnight bags, too.
Stella had fallen asleep and Ma tiptoed in and stroked her hot forehead as she slept whispering, ‘Poor little mite!’
‘I think we caught it quickly – I hope so,’ I said devoutly.
After a while she went home again to feed the animals and I said I’d ring her if there was any change; then soon afterwards, Jago arrived.
Stella was still asleep, though I thought she didn’t look as flushed, just very small and frail in the big white expanse of bed.
‘Oh, Jago!’ I said, running straight into his arms. He folded me into a strong, reassuring hug.
‘It’s going to be all right, Cally.’
‘I think she’s starting to look better already … or I could just be fooling myself,’ I told him.
He looked down on her tenderly. ‘She’s certainly fast asleep and that’s probably the best thing for her. She doesn’t look very flushed, either, so you’re probably right about that.’
‘She hated it when they put the line in her arm and … well, it really brought home to me what I’ll be putting her through in Boston now she’s old enough to know what’s happening.’
‘I know, but at least this should be the last time she has to face an operation.’
‘But what if it all goes wrong and—’
‘It won’t,’ he broke in firmly. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’
We sat on either side of her bed talking in whispers until she woke. She was much more her usual self and pleased to see him, though she told him indignantly what the doctors and nurses had done and showed him the drip in her arm.
‘Do they do this in America?’
‘I think they might put
one
needle in your arm, but then you’ll be fast asleep after that while they mend your heart and when you wake up you’ll soon start to feel much better.’
‘Huh!’ she said. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘Who says that?’ I asked, startled.
‘You do, Mummy,’ she told me. ‘You say it all the time.’
‘Well then, you’d better believe it,’ Jago told her, grinning.
Ma returned bearing a special present from Hal – an angel feather.
Stella was enchanted by the lovely plume of purest silky white and wanted to know how he had got it, but Ma told her it was a big secret.
She sat with her while Jago and I went and had something to eat in the hospital cafeteria, though I don’t think either of us noticed what was on our plates. When we got back to Stella’s room the nurse had been in in our absence and said her temperature
was
coming down, so I felt a little less fraught.
Ma went home but Stella didn’t want Jago to go; she wanted us
both
there … and in the morning when I awoke in the chair by the bed he was fast asleep in the one opposite, unshaven and uncomfortable, and I felt a strong stirring of that deep and entirely un-sisterly love …
Then Stella opened her eyes and murmured querulously, ‘Mummy?’
Stella made a rapid recovery and they said the tests they’d done were inconclusive, so it was probably some anonymous infection she’d picked up, which luckily they’d stopped in its tracks before it had a chance to properly take hold.
They kept her in for another night to be sure and then released her with a warning to me to be careful and make sure she took things very easy. But I could already see that the stuffing had been knocked out of her by the episode and I didn’t need the warning – I wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool and keep her safe …
It only occurred to me to tell Adam’s parents what had happened when we got her home – I wasn’t used to having anyone other than Ma and my friends to consider. Still, it was probably better that they only got to know when she was feeling better, so they were spared some of the worry.
‘We’ll try and tell Adam,’ Mrs Scott said, ‘but I’m afraid we’re a little cross with him because he’s thrown up his job, and he and the Calthrop girl have left the country. They’re travelling round the world for a year, but he only told me after they’d left.’
‘Really? That was a bit sudden,’ I said.
‘He says they’re engaged, too,’ she told me.
‘I think they’ll be perfect for each other,’ I assured her. They were shallow, selfish and thoughtless: the perfect match.
Jago wasn’t all that surprised either, and said drily, ‘I don’t somehow think they’ll be inviting us to the wedding.’
Jago tried again to persuade me to let him go to America with us, but I was adamant he shouldn’t, because he really needed to get Honey’s Croquembouche Cakes going before his winnings ran out.
It was quite likely we’d be in the States for weeks, too, and he simply couldn’t take all that time off: it would be selfish of me to let him, especially when he’d already done so much for us …
After this scare, and with less than a month to go before we flew out to Boston, I became even more terrified that Stella would get another infection and this time be too ill to travel.
And now the realities of the operation had
really
come home to me – that they would stop her heart beating and hook her up to all kinds of machines that would keep her alive while the delicate surgery was performed. The prospect terrified me and gave me sleepless nights. But I could also see that even this small setback had taken its toll on Stella and, without the operation, she’d continue her steady decline, her resistance to any further infections weakening. I couldn’t bear to think of that alternative, either.
Ormskirk were keeping the Boston hospital updated and they’d emailed me all kinds of information about children’s heart surgery and how long I could expect Stella’s recovery to take afterwards. So long as there
is
an afterwards …
Stella was now worried too, since she was old enough and certainly smart enough to guess that more of the same as she’d just had awaited her in Boston, even though we kept reminding her that this would be the last time she had to face an operation like this and assuring her that she would be fine afterwards. Please God we were not all going to be proved liars.
I was now totally Little Miss Neurotic: I’d told Chloe we were not going to playgroup till after the operation, and I turned tail and fled if I was anywhere with Stella and someone started to cough, sneeze or just looked vaguely diseased. I’d even wondered if I should make Stella wear a facemask on the flight, because we’d be cooped up over the Atlantic for hours with a lot of germy people, but Jenny talked me out of that one.
So we carried on quietly, our social circle limited to home, Celia and Will, who were busily sorting out any last-minute arrangements for the trip as they came up, and Jago, who luckily seemed resistant to coughs and colds. We still had little trips out to our favourite places and often went down to Honey’s, where a state-of-the-art croquembouche preparation area was being installed.
The house was looking much more like a home now and Jago had found an old dresser on which to display a collection of antique moulds, dishes and jugs to rival my own.
The last of the Stella’s Stars fundraising events was the book signing at Marked Pages with Ivo Hawksley and his wife, Tansy, Gregory Lyon and Seth Greenwood.
The event was a distraction and surprisingly busy – in fact, at one point people were queuing out of the door, though that was mostly for Ivo, who had loads of fans for his Elizabethan crime novels. Lots of parents had brought their children to have their
Slipper Monkey
books signed by Tansy, too.