Chapter 16

Tilly woke up, late, to a different sound: music. Granny was singing along to the radio. By the time she’d got dressed and gone downstairs, Granny had already flung open all the windows to let in the fresh air. Light flooded the house, but it was so cold!

“You’ll need at least two extra thick sweaters on today, Tilly!” Granny said. “Inside and out!”

The house already seemed different with Granny sorting things out. The washing machine was whirring in the kitchen, and sheets and blanket covers were hung out on a line across the lawn.

Tilly looked at the clock. It was half past nine already! She’d forgotten all about school and so had Granny. Neither of them mentioned it. It was as if they both agreed that there was something more important to be done today. The horrible feeling in her stomach she got when it was a school day began to ebb away.

“Your dad’s already gone back to the hospital. He sent his love. Your mom’s doing fine. We’ll go and see her later,” Granny said.

After breakfast, Granny put on her coat. “Right. Now you can show me the garden.”

Tilly took the crusts from her toast with them. She showed Granny how the birds flew down from the tree to be fed. The robin perched on the bench again. Granny followed behind while Tilly took the route down the path next to the raspberry bushes, down to the apple trees and along past the prickly bushes (gooseberries, Granny said) to the clump of funny nobbly pink stumps (rhubarb) and the hedge with leaves on it (beech). Granny kept stopping to look closer at dried up bits of plants.

“Look, Tilly!” Granny was smoothing away dead leaves to show her something hidden underneath.

Tilly saw tiny pink flowers with petals like folded-back ears, and gray-green heart-shaped leaves.

“They’re called cyclamen,” Granny said.

Granny showed her the tiny, pale green tips of snowdrops already poking up through the earth, ready for spring. “It looks like everything’s dead in the winter garden, but it’s all just there, waiting under the earth, already alive and growing.”

They found a twiggy tree with pink sweet-scented flowers growing out of the tips of the bare branches. Granny broke off some twigs to take inside. “Viburnum: that’ll look nice on the kitchen table.” She picked some ivy to go with it.

They had reached the two bushes on either side of the gate. Granny stopped and looked through the gate to the grassy path. “Where does that go?” she asked Tilly.

“I don’t know.”

“We should go and explore later.”

“There’s a fox,” Tilly said quietly. “It comes into the garden at night.”

Granny looked at Tilly. “How exciting!” she said. “Perhaps it comes along that path. Now, I need to put in the next load of washing. Do you want to come back with me or stay and play in the garden?”

“Back with you.”

Granny made hot berry drink for Tilly and herself. “I phoned the school earlier,” she said to Tilly. “I said you’re still a little under the weather.”

“Am I?”

“Not exactly. But I know it’s hard for you, Tilly, with your mom being ill…”

Tilly didn’t want to talk about it. But it was a huge relief that she didn’t have to go to school.

“We’ll bring her some flowers later,” Granny said. “Why don’t you go and pick some more viburnum sprigs? She’ll love that. They’ll smell sweet as anything.”

Tilly took the kitchen scissors from the silverware drawer and went into the garden again. She’d pick a huge bunch of the flowering twigs, the ones where the flowers were fully open and smelled the sweetest.

Tilly stepped back inside the kitchen and laid the bunch of twigs on the table. Granny was talking to someone out in the hallway.

Tilly listened. She couldn’t help it.

“It’s a real sign of anxiety, sleepwalking,” Granny was saying. “I know, it’s understandable. But anything could have happened…Yes, I know.”

Who was sleepwalking? Was she talking about Mom? Tilly wondered.

Granny came back into the kitchen. She smiled at Tilly and pointed to the phone she was holding.

“We’ll see you in about an hour, then,” Granny said into the phone. “Lovely. Bye for now.” Granny turned to Tilly. “Your dad. Everything’s fine. I told him we’ll be at the hospital right after lunch.”

Tilly didn’t like the look of the hospital. She didn’t like the smell, either. She was glad she’d brought the flowers from the garden for Mom.

They found her in a room by herself, not with the other women in the ward. The big window had a view of the hills and the tops of trees, and down over the parking lot if you stood close and looked down.

“They smell gorgeous!” Mom said when Tilly brought the flowers up close. “And how are you, lambkin?”

“I’m not a lambkin,” Tilly said crossly.

Dad went to get coffee.

Tilly tried out the headphones for the TV and the radio, and next she fidgeted with the things on Mom’s nightstand, and then there wasn’t anything to do. Granny and Mom were whispering softly together. She picked up the chart on the end of Mom’s bed, which had lines, and red crosses and scribbles in messy writing. She wished Little Fox were here. She went off to explore by herself anyway.

No one took much notice of her. She walked past a ward full of women all laughing and joking, and one of them waved at her. Then she went through some swinging doors and along a corridor and through another door labeled Special Neonatal Unit.

Through a long glass window on one side of the corridor, she saw a small room full of plastic cribs and loads of tubes and wires and things, and the tiniest real babies she had ever seen, with funny knitted bonnets and mittens. Some were lying on sheepskin, and they all had tubes taped to their tiny noses. Tilly couldn’t stop herself from staring until a nurse suddenly saw her and whisked a curtain back across the window.

That squirmy-eel feeling was in her stomach suddenly. She was hot all over. She started running back to find Mom, scared she might have forgotten the way, but phew! There it was: the swinging door with its blue sign: Prenatal Ward. She leaned against the heavy door, her heart thumping too hard in her chest. She closed her eyes; she could feel it, thump thump, the blood rushing in her ears. Those tiny babies, all covered in wires and tubes, lying all alone in the plastic cribs; it had looked all wrong and terrible.

Tilly went more slowly along the corridor and pushed open the door to Mom’s room. Granny and Dad were sipping coffee from plastic cups, and Mom was smiling. Tilly let out a long breath. She sat on the bottom of Mom’s bed and watched a pigeon preening its feathers on the windowsill while the grown-ups talked.

“So what did the doctor say?” Granny asked Mom. “How long does she think it will be?”

“Soon, now. If not, they’ll do a caesarean.”

“Have you got everything ready? Do you need me to buy you anything?”

“We’ve got most of the stuff already, from when we had Tilly,” Dad said.

The pigeon tapped the window with its beak. It bent its head and looked at Tilly with its beady eye.

Tilly stood up. The pigeon flew off. She watched it fly down onto the parking lot and start pecking at half a sandwich lying in the gutter. She thought about the hungry fox and about the girl living in that old house. The girl called Helen.

“Can we go now?” Tilly asked Granny.

“Whenever you like,” Granny said.

“Thanks for coming,” Mom said. “It was wonderful to see you, Tilly. Your pretty twigs have filled the whole room with their sweet scent.”

Tilly leaned over to kiss Mom good-bye. She walked away as quickly as she could, before the tears came.

Granny drove fast. When they stopped at a red traffic light, she reached across for Tilly’s hand.

Tilly pulled her hand away.

“Has Dad explained Mom’s illness to you, Tilly? I mean properly, so you understand?”

Tilly bit down on her lip. She didn’t answer.

“As soon as the baby comes, Mom will get better,” Granny said. “For now, because of her headaches and high blood pressure, she has to lie down and rest and be extra careful.”

Tilly watched a cyclist go past the car, to the front of the traffic line. He had a little seat on the back, for a child. She tried to block out Granny’s voice. She didn’t want to think about the words.

Granny was saying something about your baby brother or sister.

A picture came into Tilly’s head of those tiny babies in the incubator, struggling to breathe and eat, born too soon. And then the lights went green and they were off again, and Granny was quiet, concentrating on driving them home.

Granny cooked sausages and baked potatoes for supper, but Tilly wasn’t hungry.

“Can I go out to play in the garden?” she asked.

“It’s dark, Tilly! And too cold. Wait until the morning.”

Tilly knew the fox would be hungry. When the telephone rang and Granny went to answer it, she picked up her leftover lunch and wrapped it in kitchen paper. She slipped out of the back door and ran fast across the damp grass to the garden gate. “Fox?” she called.

She waited, but no fox appeared. Anxious now, she pushed the potato and sausage through the gate onto the grass path and ran back to the kitchen before Granny realized she’d gone out.

It was bedtime. Dad was still at the hospital.

“I don’t need you to read me a story,” Tilly told Granny. “I’m too sleepy tonight.”

“Well,” Granny said, “in that case, I’ll run myself a bath and have an early night too. It’s been a busy day. I hope you sleep better.”

What was Granny talking about?

Tilly tried hard to stay awake. She listened to Granny pottering about, having her bath and sorting her things out in the spare room at the end of the landing. She watched the shadows dance around the room, from the lamp by her bed. She propped herself up on the pillows so she could see the dollhouse better. Was Helen in bed yet? Or still up, climbing trees, or running around the garden? Perhaps she was sitting in the den or playing with the fox…the fox she’d somehow tamed.

Tilly climbed out of bed again and drew back the curtains, to look out. All she could see was her own reflection. She turned off the bedside light and looked again, her face pressed against the cold glass. The dark shapes of trees and bushes were swaying in the wind, and clouds moved fast across the moon. The first spatter of rain hit the window. Tilly climbed back into bed. She listened to the rain and the wind battering the house. The fox would be safe and dry in its den, deep in the bramble thicket. She hoped it had found the food she left earlier.

She still hadn’t heard Dad come back home from the hospital. The knot of worry inside her was getting bigger, taking up all the space.