Chapter 4

Tilly sat on the edge of Mom’s bed. It was Dad’s bed too, but because Mom was still ill she was lying right in the middle, her head on a bank of pillows. Tilly didn’t like seeing her like that. Normally, Mom would be rushing about and chatting and singing and doing her drawings for college. Mom was going to be an illustrator when she finished college. One day, Mom sighed, as if it was a long way off. When she was better, she was going to turn one of the spare bedrooms into her studio. It would be like Dad’s study, only nicer, with boxes of paints and pastels and thick, creamy paper.

“What have you been up to?” Mom asked.

Tilly thought about the dollhouse and the garden, and the rose petal scent, but her voice didn’t want to speak and her throat ached.

Dad talked instead. He told Mom about the old dollhouse he’d brought down from the attic for Tilly. “It must have belonged to the old lady who used to live here.”

“Miss Helen Sheldon,” Mom told Tilly. “I met her once or twice when I was little. She was friends with my mother—that’s your Nana. She would be pleased to think you have her dollhouse now.”

Mom stroked Tilly’s hair and Tilly laid her head down on the bed, close to her. She closed her eyes to smell Mom’s special scent. In her head Tilly asked how much longer it was going to be like this, and when Mom could get up again, but her voice wouldn’t say the words out loud. There was a lump getting in the way, deep in her throat.

“It won’t be forever, sweet pea,” Mom whispered into Tilly’s hair, as if she knew how much she wanted to know. “Thank you for being so good and patient.”

Tilly leaned in close, and she was nearly asleep, lying there while Mom talked with Dad about arrangements and the new chapter…the words all blurred into one soft hummmmmm.

Bedtime.

Tilly crouched down to look into the dollhouse windows. Everything was as it should be. She opened up the front, put her hand carefully into the kitchen, and pulled the china dog from his basket. She lifted him up close to look at him properly. He had golden fur and a white bib and a long tail, a bit like the fox. A fox wouldn’t sleep in a basket under the kitchen table. Tilly put the dog/fox down on the carpet, outside the dollhouse, looking in.

She climbed into bed. She was sleepy, drifting off almost as soon as she lay down and pulled the blanket up under her ears.

The fox padded across the silent night garden. It placed each foot carefully, stopping every few paces to sniff the air, nose twitching, tail held high, stiff like a brush. It looked up at Tilly’s bedroom window.

She sat as still as a stone, watching it back. Her breath clouded the glass, and in the second it took for her to rub it clear, the fox had gone again.

Tilly climbed back into bed. She thought about the night garden, and the fox. She imagined him squeezing through the metal gate, crossing the grassy path, and slipping around the gap in the old wooden gate, and then what? Next time, Tilly thought, next time I’m going to follow him and see where he goes.

The night-light by her bed cast its soft silver glow over the bedroom. Tilly reached out to look at the clock next to her glass of water. Five to five. Nearly morning. She had expected it to be much earlier: the middle of the night, even. The bark of the fox must have woken her up.

She thought about Mom, pale against the pillow, and the worried crease on Dad’s face, in between his dark eyebrows, when he looked at her.

What if Mom didn’t get better? What if…?

Tilly pulled furry Little Fox closer. She stroked his head with her cheek.