Trixie grinned, chest swelling with pride as her granddaughter sidled into the sitting room. "There she is! Congratulations my darling!"
The platinum blonde octogenarian struggled to rise from her armchair, intent on a hug, only to find herself being gently pressed back into her seat.
"Don't you dare Gran, I know your hip's playing up again!" smiled the younger woman, wrapping her arms around her grandmother in a firm squeeze.
"And it starts," grumbled Trixie into pixie-cut brown hair. "Just because you've been accepted into nursing school doesn't mean you can out-nurse me, Lainey Fiona Aylward."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Lainey reassured, settling on the footstool by Trixie's chair that had been her preferred seat since before she could walk. "I'm under no illusion that I could ever outrank the great Nurse Franklin."
Trixie rolled her eyes, heat lightly colouring her cheeks. "You really shouldn't heed your grandfather's bumpf, my girl."
"Why shouldn't I? You were a hero of the East End, I'd never have considered going into nursing without you as a role-model."
Humming in modest disapproval, Trixie turned to the table on the other side of her chair. "I've told you, I deserve no medals or accolades for what I did, I was just there to help. Now, here you go." She gathered up the pile of books sitting in the late afternoon sun, and handed them over to her heir-apparent. "As requested, your father got them out of the loft for you. Heaven only knows what you want with them, they're terribly outdated."
Lainey grinned as she gingerly took the textbooks from Trixie's thin but still strong hands. "I just want to see how you did things in your glory days."
"You're a hopeless optimist, aren't you sweetie." She tenderly stroked a few errant strands of hair behind her granddaughter's ear. "I can only hope university doesn't knock that out of you, I gather training is on the brutal side these days." Wistfully, Trixie popped on her reading glasses and picked up one of her old textbooks, allowing it to fall open in her lap. "I wasn't sure whether or not to rub out my old annotations, I'm afraid I got a bit carried away at times."
"I'm glad you didn't," murmured Lainey, already enthralled by the pages in front of her. "I'm sure there's some absolute gems in here."
Trixie chuckled indulgently at the sight of her not-so-little bookworm, and returned to the book in her own hands. She found herself immediately transported back, could practically smell the disinfectant, feel the wooden seats of the lecture theatre digging into the backs of her legs. A bubbling excitement rose in her belly. She was astonished by how clearly she could remember the first time she opened this book, surrounded by the nervous and excited faces of her fellow 19-year-olds as they all took their first steps into the world of nursing.
"Were there male nurses in your day Gran?"
The beloved voice drew her back to the present, to the smell of musty paper and the worn cosiness of her arm chair.
"Male nurses?" she queried, wondering if she'd missed part of the conversation. "Ermm, there were a few around, not many mind. None in my cohort though…I don't think there were even any in my year. Why?"
"So you just used to let your suitors leave you messages in your textbooks?" Lainey asked with a smirk, presenting the book to her grandmother and pointing to a tiny scrawl in the margin.
You are beautiful
Trixie took the book and peered at the words. "Goodness. I don't remember that."
"It's not the only one." Leaning over so she could see, Lainey flipped a couple more pages.
All I have to do is dream…
And a few more pages later…
You're a whole lotta woman!
"Now that one I'm sure I'd remember!" exclaimed Trixie, increasingly baffled. She'd never let anyone else write in her textbooks. She was very proud of them.
"They really don't ring any bells? There's even a poem at the end of one of the chapters, look." Taking the book from Trixie's hand, Lainey flicked towards the back.
Sure enough, there in the void beneath the final words of the chapter, was what looked like a verse.
When you walk in the garden
In the garden of Eden
With a beautiful woman
And you know how you care
And the voice in the garden
In the Garden of Eden
Tells you she is forbidden
Can you leave her there?
A deep frown marred Trixie's brow. "I don't think this is a poem…" The words were tugging at something, some distant memory. The handwriting was too. She just couldn't quite… "I think this is lyrics from a song."
"Really?" Lainey asked, squinting at the page.
Trixie nodded. "Though I can't remember for the life of me who sang it." As she tried to sort through her memories of long-playing records and evenings spent in dance halls, her eyes drifted away from the words. Only to find something written next to the verse.
You are ridiculous.
Now this handwriting was definitely familiar. As she scanned the page she saw more of it. She started flicking through pages. It was everywhere. In every margin, every paragraph break.
"I don't think this is my copy," she hedged.
"Don't tell me you were a tea leaf Gran—"
Pieces of paper slipping from between the pages to the floor caught both their attention. Lainey bent down to collect them.
"What are they?" Trixie asked quietly, a sense of wonder and mystery falling over the room.
Lainey shrugged. "Notes."
"Lecture notes?" queried Trixie, a little disappointed.
"No, like conversation notes. You know, like you pass in class?" She handed the pages over to her grandmother.
They were heavily creased, just like, as Lainey had deduced, they had been folded multiple times and passed around. The paper was very thin, lined, the tops tatty, probably torn from a spiral-bound notepad.
Can we go to the pictures this weekend? Asked the less familiar hand.
What are they showing? Queried the other.
Witness For The Prosecution
Who's in that?
Tyrone Power
Not the greatest selling point.
And Marlene Dietrich
I'll check my diary.
Trixie turned to the next one.
Are you free tomorrow evening?
I'm out with St John, why?
No reason, just wondered.
St John? As in St John Ambulance? Why was that prickling at her?
There were several more pages of similar content, making plans, a couple of catty comments about a girl called Patricia, even a game of hangman. But then one really caught Trixie's attention.
Are you upset with me?
No.
I don't believe you. You haven't spoken to me in three days and now you won't even look at me.
Delia, I am trying to concentrate! Believe it or not, what Mr Hastie is teaching us today is actually important.
I'll leave you be if you agree to meet me at the Silver Buckle after dinner.
Fine.
Delia…? Fumbling fingers flipped to the front cover. Trixie's breath caught when she saw the name written out in neat black script.
Patience Elizabeth Mount
"Patsy," she whispered beatifically, her fingers tracing the carefully drawn letters. A profound sadness washed over the blonde. "Oh Patsy…you dark, dark horse."
"Who was she?" Lainey asked quietly, her jovial, teasing mood subdued into cautious curiosity.
Trixie removed her reading glasses and shook her head, hoping it would help her order her thoughts. "Err, we shared a room together at Nonnatus House for…oh, two or three years? We must have accidentally swapped books before she pulled her disappearing act." She was a little surprised at the hint of bitterness in her own voice. Of course she'd been miffed when she returned from South Africa only to find her most dependable friend off on her own whirlwind visit to foreign climes, and to then disappear almost as suddenly as she reappeared at Barbara's wedding. But she'd forgiven the redhead a long time ago…
"And this Delia?"
"I believe they trained together at the London," murmured Trixie, refolding the notes and placing them carefully back between the pages. "Delia actually moved in with us for a time after a dreadful accident that almost ended her career. She and Patsy were very close."
A sly grin spread across Lainey's face. "You mean they were a couple."
"I mean, they were close." Trixie's tone brokered no argument. "We can't presume anything more than that."
"Oh come on Gran! You saw what Delia was writing in there!"
Trixie stared hard at the younger woman. "Stop it Lainey. Patsy Mount was a terribly private person, she'd be horrified to know anyone was speculating about her personal life."
Yes, she was aware she was fooling herself. With the benefit of a great many years of hindsight, it was blatantly obvious that Patsy Mount and Delia Busby had been a couple. On the one hand, Trixie was exceptionally happy for Patsy. Her friend had not been doomed to lonely spinster-hood as Trixie had often feared, what with the redhead's "boyfriends are not the be all and end all" rhetoric. But on the other hand, she couldn't imagine how lonely Patsy must have been. She remembered the woman being devastated by her "friend's" accident, but she now realised Patsy must have been hiding so much of her pain. When she'd been with Tom there were times when she needed to have a good old rant about something superficially ridiculous he'd done. Patsy hadn't had that luxury, the benefit of a trusted confidant.
"When did you see her last?"
"Late November 1962 I believe," Trixie hedged. "Patsy spent most of the year in Hong Kong seeing her father out of this world. She returned to London only long enough to whisk Delia away on a jet-set tour of the globe."
Lainey watched her with a raised eyebrow, a smirk tugging at her lips.
"All right," Trixie conceded with a roll of her eyes. "They probably were a couple."
The smirk on her granddaughter's face became a triumphant grin. "Please say they sent you plenty of postcards?"
"They sent a fair few to Nonnatus House. But I was too engrossed in my own dramas at the time to write back."
"Ooo! Was that the days of the dishy dentist?"
Trixie couldn't help smiling at the young woman's enthusiastic interest. "Yes, it was. He was quite the distraction." Lainey didn't need to know that at the time she'd been battling her own demons, or how she'd felt cruelly abandoned by the one person in her life who categorically knew what it was like to live life behind a near permanent facade.
Lainey gently lifted the book from Trixie's lap, glancing through the scribbles on the pages with unconcealed delight. "I wonder if they're still around."
"Probably. Patsy Mount was to formidable to let ordinary mortality get in the way," Trixie chuckled. "Though they could be anywhere. They settled in Scotland once they were done globetrotting, but I doubt they stayed there all this time."
A thoughtful silence fell over the pair, and Trixie found herself drifting back; to evenings bickering about music in their shared bedroom, or consoling each other over a cocktail, giggles in the clinical room and putting the world to rights over the dinner table.
"Found her!"
Blinking away the past, the octogenarian turned to find her granddaughter holding the ridiculous oversized mobile phone that Trixie deliberately "lost" on a regular basis. Lainey turned the screen, and Trixie popped her glasses back on, leaning away so she could see better.
"Is that her? Patience Mount?"
"My my my," murmured Trixie, taking hold of the phone. Gone was the copper red hair and the alabaster complexion, but that chiselled jaw and those sculpted cheekbones were unmistakable. "At least one of us aged well."
"Oh don't start," chastised Lainey with a roll of her eyes. "You're still gorgeous Gran."
"How did you find her so quickly?" The aged blonde found she couldn't take her eyes off the photo in front of her. It was clearly a professional portrait of some sort. There was a definite sense of Nurse Mount still there, but she'd softened a bit.
"Through the wonders of Facebook," Lainey crowed with a smugly raised eyebrow.
"Oh not that social media rubbish, I thought I told you to delete it?"
Lainey shrugged. "Suspected it would come in handy someday. So do you want to message her?"
Trixie continued to examine the photo. There she was. Her old friend. In some sense so very near, but might as well be a million miles away. "I wouldn't want to bother her," she sighed.
"You wouldn't be. You were roommates for years, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you."
"But it's been so long—"
"So you lost touch. It happens all the time." The younger woman leant forward in her seat, trying to catch her grandmother's stubbornly averted eye. "I've never seen you this unsettled about anything Gran. What is it? Is there a reason she wouldn't want to hear from you?"
With a tiny shake of her head, Trixie placed the phone down on the arm of her chair. "No, I suppose not. She just might not want a reminder of those days. They can't have been easy for her."
"She's under no obligation to reply Gran. If she wants to she can just ignore the message."
"True." Trixie took a deep breath, a million thoughts thoughts running through her mind that amounted to little more than white noise. "What should I say?"
"The ever eloquent Trixie Franklin is asking me for advice?!" Lainey guffawed beside her.
"These rotten…programs are how you lot communicate! Not me!"
"All right, all right!" Lainey raised her hands defensively, and Trixie cringed at how emotional all this was making her.
Strange how long-buried memories could catch you entirely off-guard.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, reaching out to clasp one of Lainey's raised hands.
"It's ok," Lainey smiled gently, squeezing the fingers holding her own. "Don't think you were expecting the trip down memory lane to go off on this path today."
"Quite the understatement, sweetie," Trixie chuckled. "So, what would you advise in this instance?"
"I'd say, keep it brief. That way there's less pressure on both of you. Perhaps…" Lainey glanced up to the ceiling, her mouth twisting as she thought. She looked uncannily like her grandfather. "'How have you been keeping since Nonnatus?' It's politely distant enough that she won't need to answer extensively if she doesn't want to."
"That sounds rather sensible. All right. Send that please Lainey."
As she watched her granddaughter tap out the short missive, butterflies raged in Trixie's chest. She hoped she wasn't making a mistake, raking up the past like this.
"Done," Lainey stated, with a definitive final tap on the screen. "Now you can go back to pretending Facebook doesn't exist." She made a big show of slipping the phone back into the hanging pocket on the side of Trixie's chair. "And if she does respond, it's just the same as sending a text message."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," sighed Trixie, removing her glasses. "But thank you for your help sweetie. And your patience."
They came to that bridge much sooner than expected, the phone chirping abruptly as they returned to the sitting room after dinner.
The reply was surprisingly jubilant, at least by the standards of the Patsy Trixie had known all those years ago. They sent a few convivial messages back and forth, under Lainey's watchful eye, before Patsy revealed she would be making a visit to London in three weeks time. Would Trixie be interested in catching up in person?
Trixie hesitated. It had been 60 years. They had gotten on so easily when they were young, what if it wasn't the same anymore? But the hesitation was short lived, and she simply replied, "I'd love to."