Chapter 21

The telephone was ringing. It seemed to fill the whole house with its urgent sound. Tilly sat bolt upright. The bedroom was full of light; she’d been asleep, and it was properly morning now. The ringing went on and on. Tilly shot out of bed and ran downstairs to pick up the phone.

“Tilly?” Dad’s voice! He sounded breathless, excited. “Guess what?”

Tilly could hardly breathe. “The baby?”

“Yes! A little boy. And he’s fine, and Mom’s fine.” Dad sounded as if he was crying.

Tilly’s insides turned somersaults.

Granny was padding downstairs. She stopped at the bottom step and waited, her face full of questions.

Dad was still talking. “He’s very small but completely perfect; he’s breathing by himself and even feeding, and oh—you have to come and see him as soon as Granny can bring you, Tilly. Is she there? Can I speak to her?”

Tilly passed the phone to Granny.

She went into the kitchen, opened the back door, and a blast of cold air rushed in. The snow had settled on the path and the grass; not a single blade of green showed now.

She shoved her feet into her boots and ran out, leaving huge prints over the white garden. Even the tree was covered: little avalanches of snow slid off the overloaded twigs, making shooshing sounds. The snow creaked under the weight of her boots as she ran and danced and spun.

It had snowed, and her baby brother had just been born! The very same night! And now Mom would get better. Everything was going to be all right!

Tilly started picking up handfuls of snow, packing it with her bare hands, rolling it into a ball. I’ll make a snow fox, instead of a snowman! An Arctic fox.

She remembered the book in Mrs. Almond’s classroom.

She swallowed hard.

But she’d decided, hadn’t she? She’d told Dad she would go back to school today, and she would. There wasn’t anything to be frightened of.

“Tilly?” Granny called from the back doorstep. “Come and get dressed! You’ll freeze to death dressed like that!”

Tilly ran back to the kitchen.

Granny gave her a huge hug. “Isn’t it the best news? Amazing and wonderful! A baby brother, Tilly!” She held Tilly tight, and Tilly squeezed her back. “We’ll go and see them later,” Granny said.

“Am I still going to school?” Tilly asked.

“What do you think? What would you like to do?”

Tilly took a deep breath. “School,” she said. “And go and see Mom after.”

“Let’s get breakfast, then,” Granny said.

Granny wanted to come into the classroom, but Tilly said no.

“It’s not allowed,” Tilly said.

“I don’t see why not!” Granny huffed.

“Only the preschool classes allow moms and dads in,” Tilly explained. “I’ll be fine! Don’t worry, Granny!”

Granny was giving her that look again, as if she didn’t quite believe her.

“I’ll be back at three thirty, and we’ll drive straight to the hospital,” Granny said. She kissed Tilly good-bye on the top of her head.

Tilly stamped her snowy boots on the mat and went down the corridor to her classroom. She hung up her wet coat and went straight in. She was early.

Mrs. Almond was sitting at her table at the front, writing notes. She looked up. “Tilly! How lovely to see you. Welcome back!”

Tilly smiled shyly.

“How’s your mom?” Mrs. Almond asked.

“She’s in the hospital. The baby was born last night.”

“Oh, Tilly! How exciting!”

“I haven’t seen them yet,” Tilly said. “I’m going after school today. It’s a boy.”

“Has he got a name yet?”

Tilly shook her head. She went to her drawer to take out her school reading book. It seemed a long time since she’d looked at it.

“Do you want to choose something else?” Mrs. Almond said. “Have a look through the new books I’ve put on the shelf.”

New books smell wonderful! Tilly thought. She liked being the first person to open up the pages. She chose one with a lovely cover, about an elephant. She read the first page, about a girl called Kirsty. That was Mom’s name. The story made it sound as if the girl was exploring in a jungle but really she was playing. It was the sort of game Tilly liked, where you make stuff up.

The classroom was beginning to fill up. Lucy said hello to Tilly shyly, when Harriet was busy talking to Simone. A girl she didn’t recognize, with lovely dark hair and eyes, came through the classroom door and hovered there, unsure. Mrs. Almond went over to the girl. She brought her over to Tilly’s table. “Susila only started on Monday. Perhaps you would help her today?”

Tilly nodded.

Susila kept her eyes down, looking at the table, not at Tilly.

So Tilly had to do the talking to begin with. “I’ve been away for a few days,” she explained. “My mom’s just had a baby, and I’m going to see them this afternoon. We moved here in the middle of last term, so I’ve only been at this school since then.”

Susila didn’t speak.

Tilly tried again. “Have you just moved here too?”

Susila nodded. “From London.”

“I’ve been to London,” Tilly said. “On the train. To the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum and the London Eye.”

“Which was your favorite?” Susila asked.

“I liked the Natural History Museum,” Tilly said, “because of the whale and the dinosaurs, but I didn’t like the stuffed animals and birds.”

Susila pulled her reading book out of her bag and put it on the table.

Tilly glimpsed the title: The Midnight Fox. Her heart beat a little faster. She thought about her own fox, with tiny cubs, in the snow…

Mrs. Almond started to call the names for attendance.

At recess, Susila followed Tilly outside.

Harriet, Lucy, and Simone were already sitting on the bench, looking bored and cold.

Lots of other children were racing around and throwing snowballs when the teachers weren’t looking. A big group from fifth grade started making an igloo.

“We could make a snow animal,” Tilly said. “I was going to make a snow fox in our garden at home, but I ran out of time.”

“We could make lots of little snow birds. That would be quicker,” Susila said.

Two younger girls wanted to help. Other children came to watch. Soon there was a row of small snow doves on the playground. And then the bell rang and it was time to line up to go back inside.

Tilly’s hands were bright red, freezing cold, but it was the first time she’d actually enjoyed recess in a long time. And after that, Tilly was just excited about going to see Mom and the baby, and it was hard to concentrate on anything else at school at all.

Granny was waiting for her at the gate at three thirty.

“How was it?” Granny asked.

“Good,” Tilly said. “We made snow birds, but they’ve all melted now.”

“I went shopping,” Granny said, as she started the car. “I thought you might want to give a little present to the baby, and then I couldn’t resist one for you. It’s in that bag if you want to look.”

Tilly opened the bag. Two soft animals were in there: a white polar bear and a small fox with red-brown fur and a white-tipped tail.

Granny glanced at her. “The fox is for you, to replace the one you lost.”

Tilly took it out of the bag. It was quite sweet: soft, furry, all clean and new, but it was nothing like Little Fox, and anyway, you couldn’t just replace one animal with another. Granny should know that!

“It’s nice,” she said quickly. “Thank you, Granny. But would you mind if I gave it to the baby instead?”

“As you please,” Granny said. “The polar bear can be from me and the fox from you. How about that?”

“There’s hardly any snow left,” Tilly said sadly, as they went up the hill to the hospital. “I wish it would snow again, lots more.”

Granny laughed. “Me too, but only when we’re safely back at home. All of us: Mom, Dad, baby, you, and me.”

“You go first,” Granny said when they reached the maternity ward.

The nurse at the desk smiled at Tilly. “Who are you visiting?”

“My mom.”

“Kirsty Harper,” Granny said.

“Fifth door on the right.”

Tilly ran ahead, counting the doors, then stopped.

She stood on tiptoe so she could look through the glass window in the door. It was like looking into a picture in a frame. Mom was in the bed but sitting up, talking to Dad, who was in the chair by the bed, one hand on the tiny mound of blanket inside a plastic crib. No wires. No horrible machines or feeding tubes.

Tilly let out her breath with a big sigh.

Slowly, she opened the door.

“Tilly!” Dad sprang up to give Tilly a huge hug. He held her so close his stubbly chin tickled her face.

Mom’s eyes looked big, shiny with tears about to spill. But she looked fine too, not so pale, and now she was smiling and asking questions, and Tilly felt the huge knot of worry inside her begin to unravel.

“Here he is,” Dad said, lifting the bundle out of the crib. “Get comfy next to Mom, and you can give him his first ever cuddle from his big sister.”

The baby was as small as a doll, but the blanket wrapped around him made him feel more sturdy, and it wasn’t so scary after all, holding him by herself. His eyes stayed tight shut, his tiny hand poking out at the top of the white blanket stayed curled in a fist. The blanket went up and down, in time with his breath.

“What should we call him?” Tilly said.

“We need to make a list,” Dad said. “Any ideas, Til?”

She shook her head. Names were hard. They had to sound right and not remind you of anyone else, and they were important too, Tilly thought. They seemed to make you be the person you were. If she’d been something like Harriet or Alex, say, instead of Tilly, she’d be different…

The baby began to stir. He made tiny noises; his mouth opened a little bit, then he yawned. Tilly passed him across to Mom very, very carefully. Even though he was tiny, her arms ached.

“What do you think?” Mom said. “Will he do?”

Tilly didn’t know what to say. She took the polar bear and the little fox out of the bag and perched them at the foot of the crib, so the baby could see them when he opened his eyes. “These are from Granny,” she said to Mom.

“And you,” Granny said.

Mom kissed her head. “Thank you, Tilly. How lovely.”

Granny wanted a turn holding the baby. She said he was beautiful, though anyone could see he wasn’t really—too scrawny and wrinkled, with skin so pale it was nearly transparent and you could see blue veins underneath.

Granny got an old envelope out of her bag. She’d scribbled her own list of names on the back. She handed it to Dad.

Dad gave Mom a funny look. “Maximilian, Benjamin, Samuel, James, Raphael, Sebastian,” he read out.

Mom pulled a face.

Tilly laughed. She leaned closer into Mom’s warm body. Mom was all soft, wrapped in her fuschia-pink dressing gown. “When are you coming home?” she asked her.

“A week or so, maybe,” Mom said. “They have to do tests, on me and on him. But then we can come home if all’s well.”

“And I’ll be back this evening,” Dad said. “We can have a special dinner to celebrate. How about that, Tilly? What should we have?”

“Pancakes, of course,” Tilly said.