‘Knock, knock,’ I said, sticking my head round the door.
The room was in semi-darkness, though Hope, sitting cross-legged on the bed, was not. Her face and yellow pyjamas were illuminated by flickering light from the little TV on the wheeled trolley beside her. Her lips were stretched back in a grin of wonder, and her eyes were wide and shone like liquid. Even before entering the room I’d recognised the soundtrack of what she was watching: Disney’s Aladdin, with Robin Williams giving it his all as the genie.
Hope’s head turned slowly and with obvious reluctance towards me. I could hardly blame her. Moving images on a glass screen must genuinely seem like magic to her, cartoons even more so. The difficulty she had tearing herself away from them gave me time to see that the right sleeve of her pyjama top was empty, and that it had been pinned up to stop it trailing loosely by her side. When she finally focused on me her face wore a stupefied expression. Then her smile reappeared, wider than before.
‘Alex!’ she yelled.
She leaped off the bed and ran towards me. ‘Oof!’ I said as she threw her left arm around my waist and turned her head to thump her cheek into my belly. It hadn’t exactly been a full body slam, but even the impact of her slight frame sent shockwaves through my aching bones and muscles. I’d needed a stick, which I was clutching in my right hand, to hobble here along the two corridors I’d negotiated to and from the lift, so we were both effectively one-armed. I wrapped my own left arm around her and bent forward with a teeth-gritted wince of pain to kiss the top of her head.
She smelled… modern. That was the only way I could think of to describe it. The Victorian odour of carbolic soap and rose water, which partially masked the faint sooty sourness that clung to even the most scrupulously clean inhabitant of the nineteenth century, was gone, and in its place was the fresh fruity-floral smell of bath gel, shampoo and talcum powder.
She was a new girl, facing a new life, a new beginning. Despite the fact that she had no official identity – which would be someone else’s problem, not hers – the vista of possibility before her was breathtaking. If she’d been older, even by six or seven years, she might have found the twenty-first century bewildering to the point of being overwhelmed, even traumatised by it. But she was young and infinitely adaptable. Based on what I’d heard about how she’d coped so far, and judging by the enthusiasm with which she’d greeted me, I had a feeling she’d be fine.
She stepped back from me, took my big left hand in her smaller, daintier one and gave it a tug.
‘Come and look at this.’
I allowed her to lead me to the bed. When we got there, she let go of my hand, scrabbled up on to the mattress, shuffled over and half twisted to pat the space beside her.
‘Sit here, Alex.’
I grinned at her confidence, her new-found energy. Even in the dimly lit room I could see how pink and rosy her skin was now; I’d never seen her so healthy.
I plonked myself on the bed beside her, grunting with relief. It was frustrating to be so lacking in energy. Even walking forty or fifty steps up a couple of hospital corridors had knackered me.
‘Look!’ she said, pointing at the screen.
I nodded. ‘It’s called a cartoon. Great, isn’t it?’
She looked at me as though I was deluded.
‘It’s called Aladdin. He’s a boy and he loves Princess Jasmine. He has a lamp, which has a genie in it, and he’s blue and funny. And there are songs!’ Her eyes lit up, and the joy on her face was so pure, so unadulterated, that I felt my heart clench.
‘And look, Alex! Jackie brought me these.’
‘Who’s Jackie?’ I asked, but she had already leaped forward on to all fours and scrambled across the bed to the TV. Despite her missing arm she was as swift and agile as a monkey. She dropped on to her stomach and leaned forward, her upper half hanging over the edge of the bed, her left arm reaching out to grab something from the lower shelf of the wheeled trolley supporting the TV.
Her voice muffled, she said, ‘Jackie’s a nurse. She’s really nice. She’s got a boy called Ed, who’s eight, and a dog called Jasper, and she likes swimming and she comes to work on a bicycle.’
She re-emerged, her hair awry and her face flushed, clutching a handful of DVD cases.
‘Look at these, Alex. They’ve got silver circles inside.’ She dropped them on the bed and pointed at the slim black DVD player tucked into its own little slot beneath the TV. ‘You press that button there and a drawer comes out and you put the circle in and then you press that other button with the little triangle on it and the story comes up on there.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘That’s called a Tee Vee,’ she added proudly, emphasising each letter. ‘It stands for t-t—’ she wrinkled her nose, trying to remember. ‘Taller Vision?’
‘Television,’ I said softly.
‘Yes,’ she said with a happy grin. ‘It’s like a story book that moves. And look, I’ve got all these stories to choose from.’
She scooped up the DVDs in her left hand and dropped them in my lap. I started to browse through them – Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Madagascar – and then I froze.
Toy Story 2. Kate’s favourite. I glanced at Hope, and suddenly, for a split second, it was as though Kate was back with me, as though the last three months had been nothing but a strange and vivid dream.
Then the moment passed, and it took part of me with it. I felt suddenly hollow, empty, and into that emptiness, like poison into an abscess, came a fresh surge of anguish and sorrow and loss.
Hope looked up at me, her little face etched with concern.
‘What’s the matter, Alex?’
I hadn’t realised I was so transparent. I tried to smile. ‘Nothing.’
‘Then why are you crying?’
‘I’m not crying.’ I swiped at my cheek and realised that I was. ‘They’re happy tears, that’s all. I’m happy that you’re happy. I’m happy that you’re better.’
But she was too bright to be fobbed off so easily.
‘You’re not happy, you’re sad. Are you sad about Kate? Because you don’t know where she is?’
‘A little bit,’ I admitted, trying to stop my voice from cracking.
‘You’ll find her,’ Hope said confidently. ‘I know you will.’ She twitched her right shoulder to draw attention to her missing arm.
‘It’s because you were so brave and clever that I’m going to get better, and I’m going to get a new arm. I know because Clover told me.’ With a curiously adult gesture she reached out with her left hand and wiped my tears from my stubbled cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Alex. You can do anything.’