Chapter 56
It had been the nurses’ idea. It was, after all, Danny’s fourth birthday. Carefully holding the small bakery box in one hand containing the cake (chocolate had always been Danny’s favourite), Nancy took the lift to the fourth floor where she’d spent so many weeks in the children’s ward.
She’d got some small presents too for the nurses, who had been so selflessly devoted to Danny, and with whom she was on first-name terms.
‘Nancy, that’s so kind of you!’
No, she told Deirdre and Chris and all the others.
It was they who had been kind.
Now up to the bed where Danny had been for so long. The curtains were round it. Gingerly, she opened them. Sam was sitting on the chair by the bed where she had left him in order to help her mother and get the cake.
And there, in the bed itself, was Danny! Not the pale Danny who had gone in for the operation. Or the over-rosy-cheeked Danny who had had a temperature. But the Danny she remembered before any of this had happened.
‘Mum!’ He reached out his arms and she nestled into his neck, breathing in his own smell, which, according to her American parenting magazine, was unique to each child. ‘You were ages!’
‘I had to get some surprises,’ she teased and then looked at Sam, hardly daring to believe their son was there. When the doctor had come to them to say that the transfusion had been completed and now they could only wait and maybe pray if they felt able to, they had slept in each other’s arms on the narrow hospital camp bed that someone had found for them, clinging together for comfort.
During the next few days, Danny was definitely looking better. He was brighter than he had been after the first transfusion, too. And now he was well enough to be eating his birthday cake. Just a small slice, said the nurses, and yes, they wouldn’t mind a piece themselves. Thank you.
‘Can I have my present now?’ asked Danny.
Nancy looked across to Sam. Usually it would be him telling Danny off for being impatient, but now she would do it. She needed to take a firmer line. That was another of her resolutions. ‘Small boys shouldn’t ask for their presents. They should wait until they are given them.’
Sam was already reaching into his pocket. ‘But since you haven’t been well, we’ll make an exception, won’t we, Mummy?’
He beamed up at her and Nancy felt that warm glow which had started to develop between them in Vietnam and had grown even stronger during Danny’s illness. She’d heard the nurses say that when a child’s life was threatened, parents either split up or got closer.
‘If you say so!’ She watched as Sam took the white envelope from his pocket and handed it to their son, who was now jumping up and down with excitement. Nancy felt her heart quicken as she watched Danny pull the photograph out of the envelope.
‘We weren’t allowed to bring him with us,’ said Sam, ‘but he’ll be there waiting for you when you get back.’
Danny looked as though he had seen the five wise men, the three wise women, the star and Baby Jesus (plus his understudy) all in one. ‘Pongo?’ he said in a voice that was laced with magic. ‘You’ve bought me Pongo? My dog with the funny tail?’
Not so much bought, Nancy almost said, as given him a good home. Toby’s dad had originally sold the puppy along with the others in the litter, but Pongo had gone to a couple who had recently split up and could no longer have him. Toby’s dad had then texted Nancy soon after Danny’s successful transfusion to ask if she’d be interested. He didn’t want to sell Pongo. Instead, he just wanted a commitment that the puppy would go to a good home and a loving family.
She’d talked it over with Sam, but they both knew the answer already.
‘Pongo won’t be coming to live with us until you’re home and properly better.’
Danny’s face fell a bit.
‘And you’ll have to help us look after him,’ she warned. ‘That means taking him for walks whatever the weather.’
Danny was still jumping up and down on the bed. ‘I will. I will.’
Sam and Nancy shot each other a look that said we’ll see about that. ‘He seems better all the time,’ whispered Sam as they watched Danny unwrap his other presents. There was a pair of pyjamas from Granny Christabel and a book called Happy Children: How to bring up confident kids , which was clearly designed for her rather than the birthday boy. A small toy train from Granny Patricia. A jigsaw from Billy which Brigid had dropped round. And a colouring book with crayons.
‘That’s from Gemma,’ pointed out Nancy.
Sam’s face seemed to change. ‘You know, I’m actually quite glad that Danny has someone else’s blood. It might have seemed odd if he’d had his playgroup teacher’s blood inside him, mixing with ours.’
‘Really?’ Nancy didn’t feel that way. Personally, she didn’t care whose blood it was so long as it worked, and so far, according to the doctors, all the signs were good.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes darling,’ they both said at once.
‘Can you help me write a letter to Father Christmas?’
‘I want to ask him for one present.’
‘Another one?’ joked one of the nurses.
Danny nodded solemnly, suddenly producing the pink and blue striped rubber which he must have had in his pyjama pocket. ‘I want to ask Father Cwismas to bring Lily back.’
There was a short silence. ‘You know, son, Father Christmas can’t always do everything,’ said Sam quietly. ‘Yes he can, Dad! He’s magic. He can do whatever he wants!’
Nancy went back to Corrytown on the train. Now Danny was so much better, she and Sam had felt it was only fair to give Mr Balls back his flat. They no longer needed a London base. Instead, she and one or other grandmother would come up daily, and Sam, who had gone back to the London office, would visit at lunchtime when he could.
It would be so nice to be back in her own home, she thought as she walked up the hill from the station and put the key in the front door. Putting down her bags in the hall, she looked around disbelievingly. Where was the desk? Where was the stool which had stood in the space under the stairs?
Shocked, Nancy went into the kitchen and then into the back room which had acted as Sam’s study until he had gone away, and then as her mosaic room. None of it was recognisable. At first she thought they’d been burgled, but then realised that everything was all there. It had just been changed around.
‘We both thought it needed a bit of a sort-out,’ said a voice from upstairs. ‘Much better now, don’t you think? The sofa is less obtrusive where Christabel and I put it and as for your room at the back, it took us ages to sort out all those bits of glass and stone. You don’t mind, do you? We followed Christabel’s new feng shui book: amazing what a difference it makes!’
The old Nancy would have swallowed hard and said nothing. But Danny’s illness had changed her. In fact, so had lots of things. ‘You had no right,’ she said as her mother came down the stairs looking slightly shamefaced, as though she knew she had gone too far. ‘You had no right to move things about. It’s my home. Sam’s and mine. I wouldn’t do this to your place!’
Her mother took her arm and led her into the sitting room, which didn’t seem like her sitting room at all with that horrid maroon throw over a rocking chair that she’d never seen before. ‘Talking of Sam, my dear, there’s something I think you ought to know. Something that Patricia told me about his past.’
‘Christabel!’
There was the sound of someone running down the stairs. Patricia appeared. ‘I don’t think that Nancy needs to be bothered with all that stuff now, do you?’ To her surprise, Nancy saw Patricia look daggers at her mother. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, dear,’ said her mother hastily. ‘It’s just that we might have done something we shouldn’t have done.’
‘We found some old papers and photographs from when Sam was younger.’ Patricia was looking really shifty now. ‘And I’m afraid we threw them away.’
‘By mistake,’ said Christabel quickly.
They shouldn’t have done that. But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t really important. The only thing that Sam and she were concerned about was Danny getting better.
‘I know you meant well,’ she said, pulling the maroon throw off the chair, ‘but please don’t rearrange my home. I wouldn’t do that to yours.’
‘What are you doing, dear? Patricia and I spent ages choosing that.’
‘I’m getting my own house back in order.’ She turned round to face the two women. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Sam and I are really grateful for your help. But we think it’s time you went back to your homes. Both of you.’