Dearest, wonderful, darling Delia,

Oh your letter! I can't even begin to put into words how happy it made me. As much as I longed for it I have been so afraid of this moment in case I didn't recognize the girl writing back to me. Now I can't think how I could have imagined you'd be anyone else. I could hear you saying the words to me so clearly it could have been a memory of a conversation we'd had face to face. I feel as though I can take a full breath of air for the first time in weeks and the unaccustomed oxygen has made me quite giddy. When Sister Evangelina handed me your letter I almost put it straight in my pocket without a glance as my hands were rather full of tea and toast at the time. But I couldn't prevent the hope that flared in my chest at the sight and I flipped it over to check the handwriting before I tucked it away.

And it was yours. Not a struggling amnesiacs approximation of yours, but the real, undeniable full Delia penmanship. I know it would be foolish to think this means everything is going to be alright. You have a long and probably confusing and difficult journey ahead of you even if your memory fully returns, and who's to say you will still want what we had? After all what you once said was true, life would be easier for you if you did as the rest of the world insists and married some suitable man who would provide for you. But just for today, while I'm holding this milestone letter I will allow myself the luxury of hope. Because this is so much more than the response I dared to wish for.

Delia, your hands remember. Would they remember me I wonder? If I were there with you might you reach for my hand as naturally as breathing, the way you used to? If the whole world were watching I don't believe I could pull back my hand again if you did. And after all why shouldn't the touch of my skin feel as familiar as the loops and whorls of your written words? "Because you're not really a stranger, are you Pats?" (you called me Pats! I have never signed off that way to you and yet there it is, as if you knew it all along).

Even in one short letter your casual boldness makes me fall a little deeper in love with you all over again. All this time I have been studiously avoiding making requests of you and signing off with carefully chosen regards, and yet you, in your very first letter tell me out right that I must write again, and you signed it with love. Love Delia. If I never get anything else, those words will still be treasures that I can carry with me always.

I love you Delia Busby.

Yours (giddily, joyfully yours)
Patsy

... ... ...

Dear Delia,

I was so pleased to get your letter! I don't think you impertinent at all, I am very glad you didn't cross that part out because it let me know that my letters are doing exactly as I hoped they would and making you smile. And of course I will write again! (where else would I find such a receptive audience for my stories of cats in socks and oddly shaped vegetables after all?).

I loved your description of your room, it sounds utterly charming, just like you (although I think you're right about all the watercolours of flowers. I suspect if you had the urge to paint flowers it would be wild ones in a meadow. Although you never told me you could paint!). I confess that the image of you ice skating across the floor boards helped me keep smiling even when a little girl at the clinic drank an entire bottle of rosehip syrup in one go (goodness knows how she got hold of it or why she took it upon herself to drink it all as usually we can't give the stuff away) then proceeded to spin round in circles until she fell over. She wasn't hurt and I might have avoided disaster if I had just let her pick herself up when the dizziness passed, but a rather boisterous game of tag had started up among some of the older ones and she was such a little thing I didn't want her to get trampled. Unfortunately the moment I had her in my arms she went alarmingly pale and promptly ejected her stomach contents all down my front. That was bad enough in itself, but then the little scamp had the audacity to wrinkle her nose at me and demand loudly that I put her down because I smelled like syrup! Trixie (who was near by and might easily have come to my rescue at that point) promptly discovered something she just had to get from the back room and hurried away to have a good laugh where she wouldn't be overheard. I couldn't stay cross with her for long though as she did cover my patients while I went off to get cleaned up and find a fresh uniform, and I suppose my face when the little tyke told me off for smelling of the stuff she had just vomited all over me really must have been a picture.

I'm having young Timothy Turner pay a guest visit with the cubs this week. He is Doctor Turner's son and back when Chummy was Akela he was among their number. Although he is too old for the group now he is still only just entering his teenage years and found it ever so exciting to be asked as a volunteer rather than as one of the pack. I learned recently that he has something of a penchant for photography so he is going to teach us all how to make a pinhole camera and explain a bit about developing. I think it will be good for the boys to have someone like Timothy teach them. He was so recently one of them he knows the sorts of things to say to keep everyone ticking along happily, but he is also a clever, sensible boy who is just enough older than them for them to look up to as an authority in a different way to how they see grown ups. He's going to develop any photos our lads manage to take for us, so if there are any particularly good ones of the boys I'll ask him for a copy to send you so you can see how they're getting along. You are not forgotten among them you know - more than one of them asks after you regularly and wants to know when you're going to come and teach them about blood (blood! Honestly Deels what have you been promising them? I don't know what it is about boys that gives them such a fascination with the gruesome, but they are certain that, because of your St John's Ambulance first aid experience, you must be an absolute authority on blood).

It's actually all been rather dramatic here this week. On Monday we had a young father run all the way to Nonnatus House from his home several streets away, his coat streaming out behind him like the cape of a knight riding into battle, shoes on the wrong feet and laces trailing, and his two year old son who appeared to be passed out and covered in blood cradled in his arms (although why he came to us rather than Doctor I am sure I will never know, we are nurses and midwives, not surgeons!). I tell you my heart nearly stopped when I saw the tiny little thing covered in scarlet; I thought there had been a murder and the boy's father was completely hysterical. He told me that his wife was sick in bed and he had left the little one alone in the kitchen for just five minutes while he shaved for work, but when he came back he found a great mess of pans and broken jars on the floor along with a large steak knife which he was sure must have run the boy through, though he hadn't stopped to look for a wound before he brought him here.

By now you are probably horrified at the grievous injury of this child and the apparently casual way I'm describing it. But don't be alarmed. I got the child inside and was about to tell the father to phone for Doctor Turner and an ambulance but as soon as the little lad was out of the shadow of his father's coat I could see it wasn't quite what it had first seemed. The blood was a little too red and rather… viscous. When I looked closer I discovered lumps of the stuff caught in the collar of his shirt and squeezed between his sticky fingers. It was strawberry jam. At that point we weren't certain exactly what had happened, but it seemed entirely likely that the boy had recognised his opportunity for mischief when his father left the room and made straight for the shelves where the jam was kept. He must have knocked various things down from lower shelves as he climbed to reach it, then proceeded to eat as much of the jam as he could and, by the look of him, smeared whatever he couldn't manage over his face and clothes. Since his father had found him apparently unconscious he must have had such a full stomach after all that sugary food that he'd fallen asleep right there among the chaos. He got rather a surprise when he woke up to find himself surrounded by people and being checked over by a nurse. There wasn't a scratch on him and he was none the worse except for having very little appetite for breakfast!

Now there, what did I tell you? Boys and blood. Absolutely obsessed, even the babies are at it! The father went nearly as red as the jam when he realized his son wasn't injured at all, he was so embarrassed. He admitted that it was his first time left alone in charge of the boy and he had been so afraid that there would be a disaster that when he found him in the kitchen he had immediately assumed the worst. It's funny how women cope so well with all manner of catastrophes, but give a man a baby and he's quite helpless! (not all of them I know, just look at Chummy's husband Sergeant Noakes who is wonderful with their son Freddie, but some of the men in Popular have such archaic views of child rearing that they have nothing whatever to do with the messier aspects of their children, so without their wives to hold their hands through it they simply have no idea what to do!). I did feel rather foolish after the fact for my own part in the escapade, but all's well that ends well as they say!

I do hope you'll write again Delia, and tell me all about your week.

Love,
Patsy