The next evening, Delia's full of the excursion into the hospital grounds that they made that morning. She wants to tell Patsy all about it. But 'Oh,' she seems to realize, as Mrs Busby and Patsy are taking off their coats. 'You'll have already heard all about it from mam.'
Mrs Busby suddenly feels guilty. Of course she's filled Patsy in on it, as they were on their way to the hospital. Things have become tense again between herself and Patsy, so she'd filled the bus journey with chatter to prevent an awkward silence: how they'd had to borrow a coat and boots from Irene, the nurse on duty, because they'd realized too late that Delia had nothing to wear outside; Delia's initial reluctance to go in the wheelchair, followed by her resigned acceptance that after almost a fortnight in bed her legs were not up to carrying her all that way; how Delia had brightened as they pushed open the outside doors and left the confines of the hospital building; the pleasant fifteen minutes they'd had, despite the wintery chill in the air, until it had started raining and they'd had to head inside for cover.
'Sorry love,' she says.
'Never mind,' Patsy says. 'Tell me again. Tell me all about it.'
But what Delia has to say about it surprises both Mrs Busby and Patsy. 'I don't suppose you happen to know if I've been there before?' she asks. 'I've been thinking about it all afternoon. It felt like I knew what would be there, round that corner. Like dejavu, or something.'
'Oh,' Patsy says. 'Yes. You've been there before. We used to meet there for lunch when I worked here. It was somewhere nice and quiet where we could go to chat away from the noise of everyone else.'
'I thought so,' Delia says, nodding. 'I thought it felt familiar. Did we go there often?'
'Quite often.' Patsy seems to half-smile, as if to herself.
It's a spot that's secluded and not overlooked, Mrs Busby remembers, and starts to wonder – but quickly pushes that thought back down beneath the glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, Delia might have remembered something.
'Anyway, thank you for suggesting it to mam. It was nice,' Delia says. 'Except for the rain.'
'Just like home,' Mrs Busby says.
'I suppose I'll have to start getting used to the rain, since I'm going back to Wales soon,' Delia says, a little uncertainly.
Mrs Busby can't help smiling at that; she can't help noticing the black look in Patsy's eyes, either.
Yesterday evening the doctor had spoken to her and had said that as long as nothing untoward happened in the next couple of days, he was sufficiently pleased with Delia's progress that he was willing to release her into Mrs Busby's care.
She's finally going to be able to take her daughter home.
Ever since then, she's been busy making arrangements. Before Delia can come home, Mrs Busby had decided, she needs to get the house ready for her. Her sister's been in, of course, to drop meals off for David, to keep an eye on things, and while it's not that she doesn't trust her to keep everything tidy, she doesn't think she'll get the place (particularly Delia's room) just the way that Mrs Busby wants it. And David's no use, of course.
So she's going to go home on the train tomorrow; after a day of setting the house in order, she and David will then drive back to London to pick Delia and her things up.
She and Patsy had discussed it on their way home yesterday. It had been a difficult conversation, her own bright enthusiasm for the future pitted against Patsy's deepening misery. She'd asked Patsy if she wouldn't mind going to the nurses home to pack up Delia's things.
'But why?' Patsy had said.
'She won't be living there, will she,' Mrs Busby had said. 'She can't stay in London. Not the way she is. You know that.'
After a long silence – most of the bus ride home – Patsy had finally nodded. 'I'll do it,' she had said. 'But there's something else I want to do too. I'm going to ask Sister Julienne to let me have the two days you're away off, so I can visit Delia in the mornings and evenings.'
'Will they let you do that?' Mrs Busby had asked.
'I'll take unpaid leave if I have to,' Patsy had replied grimly.
Her immediate response had been anxiety at leaving the pair of them unchaperoned for two days. But then she had thought: with Delia coming back to Wales, what harm could it do? Surely this thing between them, whatever it is, won't survive the distance as well as Delia's memory loss, and surely Patsy knows that too. These two days, then, had been a concession she'd been big enough to make.
Eventually, then, she had nodded, agreed. The fierce determination in Patsy's eyes had told her that she had no choice in the matter, really.
When she'd reflected on it, part of Mrs Busby had been glad, actually, that Delia wouldn't be left to sit through the whole day on her own with no company. This morning, then, she'd hovered in the corridor while Patsy was in with Sister Julienne trying to secure the arrangement. Patsy had emerged from the office with eyes that were uncharacteristically red-rimmed; she'd nodded quickly in her direction, and then hurriedly disappeared.
Patsy hadn't spoken to her for the rest of the day, after that, until their awkward journey to the hospital this evening.
But since this is their last evening together, Mrs Busby doesn't want it to be a bad one. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a parcel. She's slightly worried that this might be too much for Delia on top of the excitement she's already had today, but this is their last night together as a trio, so it feels like now or never. And it feels like a way to rescue the evening from the dark turn it might take if she doesn't do something to raise Patsy's spirits.
A few evenings ago, on the telephone to David, she'd asked him to send some photographs in the post. He'd always had the camera in his hand when Delia was growing up. She'd thought it was a nuisance at the time, but she's been glad ever since. And now she's realized that it might be helpful to Delia, if she were able to illustrate her tales of home with pictures, to jog her memory by helping her visualize what the places and people in her past looked like. The photograph album had arrived in the post that morning, while she'd been waiting in the corridor for Patsy; since then, she's been keeping it as a surprise from them both.
She unwraps the parcel.
'Oh, photos!' Delia says, and Patsy – whether soothed by Delia's company or simply putting on a brave face, Mrs Busby doesn't know – coos appreciatively too.
She hands the book to Delia, who opens it on her lap, and from their chairs on either side of the bed, Mrs Busby and Patsy lean in for a better view.
'This is you as a baby,' Mrs Busby says. She can see Patsy crane in for a closer look and smile affectionately.
'This is your father and I. Here's the dog. That's the house. Your nain and taid. Your cousins. In Anglesey - you must've been five or six.'
The pair of them ooh and aah at each picture, appreciatively.
'And I think that's your uncle Stephen's dog. Your father's brother,' she adds, when Delia looks at her questioningly. 'Now, that's you and your father. You and me. You and the dog. The dog again.'
Patsy laughs at all the pictures of the dog.
'Why wouldn't we have a picture of the dog,' Mrs Busby protests. 'She's part of the family too.'
'There are more pictures of the dog than there are of Delia,' Patsy teases.
'Hardly,' Mrs Busby huffs, but she doesn't mean it. And for Delia's sake, she's glad Patsy's started to relax again.
They continue to flick through the pages of the book, seeing child-Delia grow into teen-Delia into adult-Delia. Patsy's as interested as Delia, spotting family resemblances and easily picking young Delias out from pictures of assorted groupings of the Busby clan.
'That's when you came home for Christmas, the year before last.' It was the first family Christmas they'd had in years. Delia had always protested she was busy with work. She'd stayed in London last year too – together with Patsy? Mrs Busby wonders. And then she tries to imagine what Christmas will be like this year. Delia will be home, at least. That'll be something.
Delia turns the page.
'This is you, in your nurse's uniform, not long after you qualified.'
Delia inspects it closely. 'This is me?' she says. She looks amazed that the confident, assured young woman in the photo is her.
On the same page there's a group shot, a collection of nurses standing on a broad flight of stairs. Delia finds herself. And then for a moment she's looking between the picture and the woman sat next to her. 'Is that you, Pats?'
The affectionate shortening of Patsy's name is a new thing: it seems to startle Patsy slightly, though she covers it well. Patsy leans in: she looks at it and nods.
Mrs Busby angles the album towards herself for a better look at the pair of them. They're standing next to each other in the shot.
'When was it?' Delia wants to know, angling the book back towards herself.
'Three or four years ago,' Patsy says.
'So long?' Delia asks. 'Have we been friends so long?'
'Yes,' Patsy says, wistful, nostalgic, even.
Friends or more than friends for so long, Mrs Busby thinks, but doesn't say.
On the next page there's another group shot: a group of women on a day out. 'There you are again!' Delia says, picking Patsy out. 'And that's me, isn't it?'
Mrs Busby leans in again. Of course they're standing next to each other. It looks like they might have their arms round each other too, but it's hard to tell, such is the press of other women around them. Mrs Busby's surprised, now, that she didn't guess sooner that this person in the picture was the Patsy who filled Delia's letters. It seems so obvious now, looking at the photos.
'That was last year,' Patsy says.
'Tell me about it, Pats.' Delia says. 'Tell me about being a nurse. What's it like? What was I like?'
Patsy looks to Mrs Busby for her agreement. She nods, encouragingly. She's interested in it herself: she's only the vaguest imaginings of what Delia's life in the hospital is like, odd clues from Delia's letters, things she's read in novels, guesses from what she's seen at Nonnatus, from what she's observed on the ward here. And this, perhaps, is her last chance to find out about it.
Patsy settles back in her chair, an oddly wistful look on her face. 'You were – ' she stops, and starts again. 'You are very good at it.'
Later, as they're leaving, Delia asks if she can keep the photo album. Mrs Busby agrees: the pictures might help keep her fresh in her daughter's memory while she's away for the next couple of days. Then Delia wants a picture of Patsy to sit alongside those of her mother and father and the dog ' – A proper one, not one where your face is tiny and crowded out by a dozen other people,' Delia says. 'So I can remember your face when you're not here.'
Mrs Busby's not sure whether there's an edge of deception in Delia's voice: does Delia want the picture for the sake of remembering her new (old) friend, or does she want it for the sake of looking at her? She doesn't think she wants to encourage that.
That Patsy feels the way she does about Delia is, evidently, something Mrs Busby can't do anything about. But Delia? As much as Mrs Busby has come to rely on Patsy, to respect her – to like her, even – she still feels that, given Delia's condition, it's better that she thinks that Patsy is only her friend, has only ever been her friend, will only ever be her friend. For her to get sentimental over what Patsy looks like doesn't seem to be a good idea. But how can she prohibit it? If Delia hasn't thought of it as a reason for wanting the photo, she might plant the seed of it by saying something; and if Delia has thought of it, she'll dig her heels in and want it all the more for her mother saying no.
'Perhaps Patsy doesn't have any photos to give you,' is the best she can manage to steer a way out of this situation. But she can see from the look on Patsy's face that tomorrow she'll turn up with a picture for Delia. And by that time Mrs Busby will be in Wales. There'll be nothing she can do about it.
She gets back to Nonnatus the following morning, after visiting time, without having made a show of herself by breaking down in tears on the bus. It's only two days, she has to remind herself, trying to hold on to the great joy she anticipates in having her daughter home again. But there's that nagging anxiety about leaving her care to Patsy, and worse than that, much worse, the fear that while she's away Delia'll forget all about her again.
With a couple of hours left before her train back to Wales, she goes her room to pack up her things. She'll miss the odd calm of the place, she thinks, its unusual community full of purposeful women.
Her suitcase is almost full when she turns to the small parcel of Delia's things that she'd been given at the hospital soon after they'd first arrived. She'd put the parcel to one side then, but now, the better to fit into her case, she opens it up.
And that's when she finds the ring.
She sees the chain first, a pretty, delicate one, wrapped awkwardly around a tangle of oddments. Carefully she untangles it, holds it up to see what's attached to it. And then she sees it.
There's no doubting what it is. It's unmistakable.
She's shocked. She hadn't thought of them doing anything like this.
She sits on the bed to think. Does Patsy have one too? Is that how it works? Or is it just Delia? And if it is just Delia, what does that mean?
It makes her reconsider going home, reconsider leaving them unsupervised: what if Patsy's been waiting for this moment, when she gets Delia alone to - to do what?
And what if Delia starts to remember?
But she has to go back to Wales. She has to sort out the house, to sort out Delia's room: she trusts neither her sister nor David to do it properly. And she has to go back because she has to accompany David on the long drive back to London, so they can take Delia home. It's too far on roads that are too unfamiliar to expect him to do it alone.
She sighs. A ring! The audacity of it. Was it Delia's idea? Or Patsy's? She can't imagine how it must have been. She can't imagine what they must have been thinking.
But it's something, at least, she supposes. Commitment. Perhaps it explains a lot about Patsy, about the last few weeks.
She thinks back to those heady days when she and David were engaged. If something like this, like Delia's accident, had happened to her then, what would David have done? Would he have stuck around like Patsy has? It's different, she thinks. He's a man, singularly unprepared for coping in these situations. And would she have wanted him to, anyway? Wouldn't she have wanted him to move on, to start afresh?
But were the situation reversed – had David been injured, back then when they were so young and she was so in love – she knows what she would have done. She wouldn't have given him up, or given up on him. She wouldn't have left him. She couldn't have done.
She sits on the bed and she thinks.