Page 5 of Together Again at the Cornish Country Hospital

‘I didn’t realise you knew him.’ Aidan had needed to leave to meet Jase not long after they’d brought Fletcher into A&E. He’d asked Amy to text him later to let him know that the little boy was okay, but he hadn’t given any indication of having known the family.

‘I don’t, as such, but his husband, Mr Kennedy-Taylor, is the headteacher of Fletcher’s school. And I’ve seen Aidan at some of the events, raising funds for the school, including the Humpty Dumpty club. They managed to raise enough to fund places for the whole school year.’ Demi must have picked up on Amy’s confusion. ‘It’s a club for children who benefit from having a free breakfast at school. With that and the free school lunches he’s entitled to, I only have to worry about a snack in the evening for Fletcher, and feeding him at the weekends. I only eat at home when he does, and I can get by on just an evening meal. But it’s half term this week, and this morning there was nothing left. I was going to go to the supermarket last night, to see if they had any bits reduced, but with Mum being so poorly I didn’t leave here until late, and I couldn’t leave Fletcher at his play date for any longer. He had pizza there, and ice cream, so I thought he’d be okay until later. The doctor is right, it’s all my fault he’s ill.’

Tears had sprung into Demi’s eyes again and she wasn’t the only one. It shouldn’t have to be that way. All Demi wanted to do was take care of her little boy, and it had been her desire to care for her own mother, during her final days, that had made that near on impossible. There was something wrong in the world and it made Amy’s heart hurt. Walking over, she wrapped her arms around Demi.

‘It’s not your fault and I promise you won’t have to worry about not being able to feed Fletcher or yourself again.’

‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ Demi rested her head against her shoulder, and even though Amy had no idea how she was going to fulfil her promise, she knew for certain that she would. Whatever it took.

6

One of the things Gwen loved most about her volunteering role at St Piran’s was doing the rounds with the hospital trolley. It meant she got to visit lots of different wards and had the chance to chat with all kinds of people. Barry had always teased her about being incurably nosey, but she preferred to think of it as inquisitive. She was just interested in other people’s lives and in hearing their stories, and over the years she’d made some good friends as a result of chance encounters that had sparked the start of a conversation. She’d never had as much time for reading as she would have liked, mainly because her determination to be on the go all the time meant she didn’t have the concentration it took to focus on much more than a magazine when she finally sat down. Instead she got her fix for stories from the lives of the people she met.

As a midwife she’d been trusted with patients’ secrets, and aspects of their lives they hadn’t even told their loved ones. More than once she’d supported women whose partners thought they were pregnant with their first child, when in truth it was only the man’s first child. Gwen had always thought it was sad that these women, who were about to share the most intimate experience possible with the person they professed to love, hadn’t felt able to tell their partners about their past. She’d always been an open book when it came to Barry; there’d never been anything she hadn’t felt able to tell him about her past, and no subject affecting their present that had felt taboo to broach. But just recently he’d been pushing her to revisit one of the most difficult parts of her past, and suddenly it felt like every conversation with him was loaded. She didn’t want to confront all the feelings it would rake up and she was nowhere near ready to face the ‘what ifs’ about their future if she ended up sharing her mother’s fate. One thing Gwen hated more than anything was the idea of losing control of her own life, and a progressive and debilitating illness was her worst nightmare, not least because she’d witnessed it first hand. It was far easier to bury herself in work, listening to the patchwork of stories and problems that made up other people’s lives. There were other volunteers running the shop today, but she was in no hurry to finish her round and head home, where Barry would be waiting. Her casual chats with the patients could draw out all day long as far as she was concerned.

St Michael’s had always been one of Gwen’s favourite wards. The patients were all under the care of the specialist geriatric team, and had a range of medical conditions, including both physical and cognitive illnesses.

Camilla Armstrong had been in St Michael’s Ward for several days, after a chest infection had turned into pneumonia. She was out of danger by the time Gwen first met her, having spent the first two days in intensive care, but she’d still been tearful and stressed. Camilla’s concerns weren’t about her illness. She’d been panicking about when she could get home to her dogs and, perhaps more surprisingly, to her horse. When Camilla had told Gwen about the horse, whose name was Bojangles, all of the assumptions she’d had about the frail, older woman sitting in the bed in front of her had to be questioned. She’d spoken about riding Bojangles through the fields near her cottage, and Gwen had found herself wondering for a moment whether Camilla was living in a different place and time inside her mind. She’d seen it often enough before: elderly patients talking about needing to buy school shoes for their children, or even calling out for their own mum and dad. Sometimes it was nothing less than tragic, but at other times she tried to hold on to the idea that it gave those patients comfort. One thing Gwen tried never to do was picture herself in those same circumstances, it was too close to home. She didn’t know if her mother had ever reached the stage where she’d forgotten who she was, but she’d lost the ability to express her thoughts, even the sort of jumbled memories some patients shared with Gwen, and in many ways that seemed even worse.

‘Camilla keeps talking about having a horse.’ Gwen had looked at one of the nurses quizzically, gesturing towards Camilla, but the nurse had nodded in response.

‘Oh yes, Bojangles.’ The young nurse smiled. ‘We thought Cami might be a bit confused at first, but she asked me to call Kirsty, the woman who keeps her horse in one of the stables at Cami’s place, in return for helping with Bojangles, and he definitely isn’t a figment of her imagination! She’s horse mad. It’s been her whole life apparently.’

Afterwards Gwen had gone back to chat to Camilla, who’d insisted that Gwen call her Cami, as all the people she liked apparently did.

‘Only my father ever called me Camilla, and a lot of the time he was terribly cross with me for something or other. So now it feels like I’m being told off whenever I hear someone say it.’

Gwen had happily ignored the end of her shift so that Cami could tell her more about her beloved animals, and the others she’d owned right back to when she was growing up at Portharren Manor, a sprawling country estate to the west of Port Kara. It was like someone had turned a light on inside of Cami, and Gwen had felt terrible for doing the thing she’d sworn she’d never do, making sweeping assumptions on the basis of the person’s age alone. Today she wanted to try and make amends. She’d bought a copy ofHorse and Houndmagazine, and had placed it casually on top of the other magazines on the trolley, just before she got to the ward. They didn’t stock it in the shop, and she wasn’t sure if it was something Cami enjoyed reading, but she decided it was worth a gamble.

‘Hello again Cami, how are you doing now?’ Gwen stopped by her bed and the other woman wrinkled her nose.

‘It’s a frightful bore being trapped in here.’ Cami announced her status in a cut-glass accent, so refined she made the Duchess of Cambridge sound as though she could audition for a role inEastEnders. ‘I know I’m horribly ungrateful, when all the nurses work so hard, but it’s terribly dull and I loathe being stuck indoors.’

Gwen had to press her lips together for a moment to stop herself from laughing. There was a flamboyance about Cami that verged on the theatrical. It reminded Gwen of when her daughter had made very over-the-top pronouncements as a child about just how unbearable life could be when it wasn’t going her way. Gwen’s daughter had ended up being a big fan of amateur dramatics and it seemed Cami might have some untapped talent too.

‘At least you’re not missing any good weather. It’s blowing a gale out there today.’ Gwen smiled and lifted a couple of the magazines up from the trolley. ‘Maybe you could think of this as an opportunity to catch up on some reading, I bet you never get the chance to do that when you’re at home.’

‘That’s true.’ Cami’s response didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but then her eyes rested on the copy of the magazine that Gwen had bought especially for her. ‘Oh gosh, I didn’t dream you’d stock theHorse and Hound.How marvellous, and it’s got just the article I need.’

As Gwen passed her the magazine, Cami jabbed a finger against the front cover which detailed various articles, included one entitled ‘joint care made easy’.

‘Is that for you or the horse?’ The joke had come out of Gwen’s mouth before she’d had the chance to stop it. That sort of thing happened a lot, and she knew she had a reputation for having a cheeky sense of humour. She might not want to write people off on the basis of their age, but there was nothing Gwen wouldn’t make a joke out of if the situation and the timing were right. It was the only way to get through the tough times. The trouble was, she barely knew Cami, and she had no idea whether the other woman would find it funny or offensive. For just a moment there was silence, and then Cami started to laugh.

‘I should probably get the vet to put us both out of our misery! Perhaps she’ll give me a good deal, one of those where you buy one and then you get another one free.’ She laughed again and Gwen couldn’t help joining in, partly because of the way she’d worded it, but then Cami started coughing.

‘Are you okay? Sorry, I shouldn’t have made you laugh when you’re not feeling well.’ Gwen looked to see if she could spot one of the nurses, but none of them seemed to be around. She handed Cami a drink from the table in front of her, but the coughing had already eased and she shook her head.

‘Nonsense, whoever said laughter’s the best medicine was absolutely right.’ Cami leaned towards the locker at the side of her bed. ‘How much do I owe for the magazine? It’s going to be a life saver having something decent to read, I just know it.’

‘It’s my treat, you made me laugh too.’ A twinge of regret twisted in Gwen’s gut. She didn’t usually need a reason to laugh, it came easily to her, but lately it was just one more thing that seemed to be drifting further and further out of reach.

‘I couldn’t possibly let you pay for it.’

‘It’s fine, honestly, it was a free sample for the shop, to see whether it might be something we’d consider stocking in future.’ Even as she told the lie, Gwen wasn’t sure why she was doing it. There was something about Cami, though, an echo in her faded blue eyes of Gwen’s mother, who’d been just as tearful and panicked during her early admissions to hospital as Cami had been the first time they’d met.

Gwen went above and beyond for lots of people, but the pull she felt towards Cami was even stronger than her usual desire to make patients’ lives a little bit better. She wanted the outcome to be different this time around. She didn’t want her new friend to fade away until she was barely more than a shadow of the woman she used to be, just like her mother had done. It was stupid, the situations were so different, but she knew that wouldn’t stop her coming back tomorrow with something else she thought might perk Cami up. If there could just be a happy outcome this time around for the woman with the pale blue eyes, then perhaps there’d be a happy ever after for Gwen too.

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