Wish Upon a Star (3 page)

‘The extra weight suits you, though,’ Celia assured me, ‘because you’re quite tall and still in perfect proportion, while I’ve never had a waist to start with and now gravity’s pulled me into the shape of a squishy pear. Just as well that Will likes pears,’ she added, grinning.

That was a bit consoling, but I’d have to accept that I was now never going to be an airy confection of spun sugar, only a solid Madeira sponge. My smart clothes had been packed away for so long I feared the creases were permanent and I was living in jeans, trainers and sloppy T-shirts. I’d also given up any attempt to straighten my curly fair hair, or cover the freckles across the bridge of my nose with makeup. In fact, I’d entirely resigned myself to looking wholesome, it just didn’t feel that important any more … though I might still grind cake in the face of the next person to remark brightly that I looked like a young Hayley Mills, because I’d Googled her films and no, I
didn’t.

What would I have done without Celia? Other friends had slipped away since I had Stella, but she had remained constant since the day I first moved out of the family home and we shared both a flat and the struggle to make a living. She met her husband, Will, when
Sweet Home
commissioned an article about his driftwood sculptures and we happened to be in the offices when he came in to ask about getting a regular column. Love at first sight. Will is so nice, he almost deserves her.

‘What does Stella want for Christmas – or need I ask?’ she said now. ‘More of those Sylvanian Families?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid the addiction might be permanent, and it’s all my fault,’ I said ruefully. I’d been too old really for the little fuzzy animal toys when they first came out, but I’d loved them anyway and, over the years, added a few more to my collection. Now Stella, at three, had taken them over and I’d bought her even more.

‘I know she’s scarily bright, but isn’t she a bit young for them?’

‘Perhaps, but she’s never put things in her mouth, apart from her thumb, and she plays quietly with them for hours. She wants a house for the mouse family to live in next, but there are a few other things that I know she’d like. There’s a Father Christmas mouse too, with a little tree and parcels – that looked fun.’

‘You can show me on the internet, and I’ll order something. You’re coming up to Sticklepond to stay with Martha for Christmas, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, and bringing all the ingredients for festive fun with us, as usual, because Ma wouldn’t bother otherwise. I do love going up there and I know that Ma, for all her reclusive ways, loves Stella.’

‘We
all
love Stella, she’s bright and delightful – s
he
read her
Meg and Mog
book to
me
last night,’ Celia said. ‘And then she said if she knew a witch she would get her to do a spell to make her heart better.’

‘I only wish
I
knew one. She’s so tiny for nearly three and a half and she gets tired so easily that we still have to take the buggy everywhere. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive and any slight infection is dangerous …’ I sighed. ‘Well, we’ll see what the treatment plan they’ve drawn up for her at the hospital for next year is.’

‘They did say she might need another operation, didn’t they? Perhaps it will be the final one, so she can live a normal life,’ Celia said optimistically.

But there didn’t seem to
be
an ongoing treatment plan – or not one leading in a positive direction. I was shocked when the consultant told me there was nothing more they could do and gave me to understand that Stella’s long-term outlook was poor and she was likely to go slowly downhill as her condition increasingly put a strain on her body, until finally she succumbed to some infection.

‘Of course, we would like her to gain weight so that she has the reserves to fight infections, but then again, as she grows, that will also put a strain on her organs …’ he explained.

‘When I asked him if they couldn’t operate again, he said no, because no one in the UK was doing the kind of complex surgery she needed,’ I reminded Celia later, back in the flat, when Stella had gone for a nap and we were talking it all over. I was still shell-shocked and tearful, but Celia suddenly seized on what I’d just said.

‘So he did! But maybe that means they
are
doing it in another country, like America? I saw a newspaper article about a child who’d gone to America for life-saving surgery, though it cost thousands and thousands of pounds, so they’d had to do a lot of fundraising to pay for it.’

I stared at her blankly. ‘But – wouldn’t the consultant have mentioned it, if there was anyone else capable of helping Stella?’

‘Not necessarily, I don’t think, if it was another country. Come on, it’s worth a go – Google search.’

And that’s how we found Dr Rufford Beems’ experimental programme over in Boston, and a fresh spring of hope.

We emailed the hospital in Boston straight away and after that things just seemed to snowball, so by the time Stella and I finally set out for Christmas with Ma in Sticklepond, I’d had Stella’s medical information sent over to Boston, a very kind and detailed response from the surgeon, and a reluctant agreement from my consultant that it was currently Stella’s only option, other than settling for palliative care.

‘Dr Beems says it would be best to do the operation before Stella’s fifth birthday, but the sooner the better,’ I told Celia when I called her to give her the latest update. ‘I’ll need as much time as possible to raise the money, though, because it’s going to be phenomenally expensive.’

‘Nothing is too expensive if it can cure her,’ Celia said. ‘We can do it.’

‘The surgeon is going to waive his own fees, since it’s still experimental surgery … and when he says
experimental
, my heart goes cold,’ I confessed.

‘Yes, but his success rate is already excellent and the alternative isn’t to be thought of,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s the best option. So now we need to work out a fundraising plan over Christmas. I’ll bring Will across and we’ll put our heads together.’

‘I … am doing the right thing?’ I asked her.

‘You’re doing the only possible thing,’ she assured me, but it suddenly felt as if Stella and I were drowning and someone had thrown us a lifebelt: I wasn’t quite sure how I could get my arms through it without letting go of her, but I’d have to give it my best shot.

I drove Stella up to Sticklepond a few days before Christmas with a boot full of hidden presents, the cake, turkey, mince pies and pudding – in fact, most of the ingredients we’d need for the festive season. Left to her own devices, I’m very sure Ma wouldn’t treat the day any differently from the rest of the year, but she went along with it all.

As usual, I had the emergency numbers for Ormskirk Hospital and Alder Hey (the big children’s hospital in Liverpool) just in case – but I hoped we wouldn’t need them, because I was determined that this was going to be the best Christmas yet.

‘Toto has very sharp elbows,’ Stella said from her child seat in the back, as the dog adjusted himself into a sort of meagre fur lap rug. ‘Did you remember to bring his presents, Mummy?’

‘Yes, they’re in the boot.’

‘Will Father Christmas remember we’re staying with Grandma?’

‘I’m sure he will: he knows everything by magic.’

‘Like God,’ she agreed sagely. ‘Hal says God knows everything.’

Hal is under-gardener at Winter’s End, the historic house just outside Sticklepond, and lives in a cottage on the edge of the estate, across the lane from Ma. A taciturn man with a bold roman nose and a surprising head of soft silvery-grey curls under his flat tweed cap, he’s been moonlighting as Ma’s gardener ever since she moved up there, and they seemed to have become increasingly friendly …

‘I like Hal,’ she added. ‘He makes me sweet milky tea in a special blue cup when he brews up in his shed and last time we came he showed me a dead mole he found in the woods.’

‘That was kind of him,’ I said. Hal had created a cosy den in the old shed next to Ma’s studio in the garden, with a little Primus stove where he brewed up endless enamel pots of sweet tea for them both. Just like Dad, Hal seemed to wander in and out of the studio, or sit reading the paper in the corner, without appearing to bother Ma in the least.

Despite looking so morose he was really a very nice man – and what’s more, he’d slowly brought Ma out of herself a little bit, to the point where, as well as the library, she went with him to the monthly Gardening Club, and the occasional game of darts at the Green Man with the other Winter’s End gardeners.

Ottie Winter occasionally visited her too, because over the years her early patronage and help had turned into friendship. I’d often met her at our house in Hampstead, and Ma had taken me to one or two exhibitions of her sculptures, which are bold and figurative … sort of. You could say the same about Ma’s paintings.

Her only other regular visitor seemed to be Raffy Sinclair, the Sticklepond vicar, despite her not being a churchgoer.

‘Are we nearly there yet? I wish we lived in Sticklepond. It’s much more fun than home,’ Stella said from the back seat.

‘Do you?’ I asked, startled and glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Wouldn’t you miss Primrose Hill and the zoo?’

‘No,’ she said firmly.

Sometimes it was hard to remember that she was only three and a half going on a hundred … But I was just grateful we’d left the tricky subject of God behind and were not again pursuing the question of where people went when they were dead like we had the previous week, after I’d had to tell her that she wouldn’t be seeing one of her little friends from hospital again …

While I chatted to Stella as we trundled north up the motorway, part of my mind was occupied with how I was to raise the astronomical amount of money it would take to get her to America and to pay for the operation. It seemed near impossible – but how different her life would be if I pulled it off and the operation was a complete success … which it surely must be. If only she stayed well enough, till then …

But if she didn’t, if things took a turn for the worst and the need for the operation became urgent – which, please God, they wouldn’t – then I had a contingency plan to raise the money quickly, one that I’d need Ma’s agreement to. It would be a
big
ask and even though I’d already declined her generous offer to mortgage the cottage to pay for the operation, I wasn’t quite sure how she’d react to it.

Will had already started the process of setting up a fundraising website, Stella’s Stars, having had experience of doing something similar with his and Celia’s greyhound fostering one. It proved to be quite a complicated affair: I’d never have managed it on my own. He’d promised it would be up and running by the New Year, though.

Turning off the motorway as the short winter’s day grew towards dusk, I clicked on the Bing Crosby
White Christmas
CD that was Stella’s surprise favourite and resolutely turned my mind to having a merry little Christmas with a bright yuletide and jingle bells all the way.

Ma’s house was a long, low building made of slightly crumbly local sandstone, once a tied cottage on the Almonds’ farm, Badger’s Bolt. From what I’d gleaned, Ma had a fairly solitary childhood there, with parents who didn’t mix much with the local people. But it sounded like the Almonds had always been clannish before they emigrated after the war, so I suppose when Ma’s parents came back, they
would
feel isolated. Ma didn’t like to talk about the Almonds much, but that could be because, apart from her father, she didn’t really remember them.

I do dimly recall visiting Grandma Almond: a small, plump, silver-haired woman, who only ever seemed to have a real conversation with her hens. The cottage had still belonged to old Mr Ormerod, the farmer who’d bought up the Almonds’ land and buildings, so it was a very different place now from how it was originally. A few years before, he’d sold off the buildings he didn’t need, including this cottage, and the new owners extended upwards and out at the back, giving Ma an upstairs master bedroom with ensuite over the light airy garden room, as well as a garage at the side.

The big barn nearby has been converted into a smart house, but the old Almond farmhouse at the top of the lane was currently uninhabited and for sale, since there had been some trouble with the last owner a year or two back and it had lain empty ever since.

Stella and I had the two small downstairs bedrooms just off the old sitting room and next to the family bathroom, and Toto and Moses, Ma’s cat, fight it out for the rag rug in front of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen.

Ma seemed mildly pleased to see us, but it was just as I thought: she hadn’t remembered to get a tree, or find the decorations, and was even hazy on which day of the week Christmas Day fell. But we quickly settled in and next morning I decided to leave Stella with Ma after breakfast while I went into Ormskirk to do a huge supermarket shop for basics: anything else I needed I intended to buy in the village, which has a good range of shops now.

I would take Toto with me, since he was always happy to go anywhere in the car and it took him and Moses the cat two or three days of wary circling and jostling before they settled down happily together, so time apart was good.

Ma and Stella were going to go up to the studio and, since it was a Sunday, I was sure Hal would also be about to keep an eye on her. Stella, though, saw things differently and promised to look after Grandma while I was out.

‘I’ll tell her off if she puts her paintbrush in her mouth,’ she assured me. ‘And Grandma, you shouldn’t smoke.’

‘I’m down to two Sobranies a day now, so have a heart, love,’ Ma said, guiltily laying down the jade holder she had removed from her mouth for long enough to eat her breakfast and which she’d been about to replace. It seemed to be a comfort thing, a bit like the thumb-sucking Stella still resorted to in times of stress. Today’s Sobranie was the same green as the holder.

Stella made a tut-tutting noise and shook her head, so that all her white-blond curls danced.