Dear Patsy,

I am utterly intrigued! I wonder what I could have promised those cubs to have them all clamouring for blood like a flock of pint-sized vampires? (Do vampires come in flocks or is that just sheep? A herd? A gaggle? None of them quite fits. What do you think?). Whatever it was it sounds as though I must have been quite a handful as a friend! I wasn't terribly gruesome and ghoulish was I? I don't feel any particular desire to hear stories about blood myself. Except yours of course, which I loved reading! But that was really about jam so I don't think it counts.

I am learning so much about myself now that I'm allowed to do more than sleep (I don't think I ever want to see another sedative again as long as I live). I know how to knit! Did you know that? So far I've made a stripy tea cosy from all the left over bits of wool mam had lying around and I'm thinking of starting a new project soon. Something special. I'd really like to make you a Christmas present as a thank you for all your patience and kindness since I got hurt. I had planned it as a surprise, but then I realized I really don't know what you need. Maybe a scarf? I'd like to think of it keeping you warm when you're out catching babies in the middle of the night. What's your favourite colour? I was thinking of a nice rich red or maybe a dark green but then I started worrying: what if your favourite colour is pale pink, or if you only ever wear designer silk scarves? Maybe a hand knitted, homely woollen scarf wouldn't be your cup of tea at all. Or maybe you have a dozen of them already. I could send a box of chocolates or a bottle of sherry instead? I'm sorry to be breaking with tradition and asking you for tips on your own Christmas present, but you're the only one I still know outside this village and I can hardly ask the milk man! Ordinarily I would just guess and hope that the thought would make up for any short comings, but for some reason it feels important that I should get this right.

How did the pinhole camera session go? I would love to see photos of the cubs at their games, but if I get to choose I'd much rather have a photo of you Pats. Sometimes I forget that I don't know what you look like and then when I remember I'm surprised and confused all over again, because you've been my friend as long as I can remember, even if that is only a few weeks. Are you tall, or little like me? What colour are your eyes? And your hair? I don't like the thought that I could walk past you in the street one day and never know it, though I know that's silly with you all the way in London and me not even going as far from my room as our village post box yet.
I know from mam that you came to visit in the hospital but everything was still such a blur then, I can't really remember anything before being here. Except… I think you were crying, and it made me want to put my arms round you and make it better only I couldn't because I was what was making you cry. I'm sorry I made you cry Patsy. I wouldn't ever want to do that.

Oh but Pats! I do have news. It might not be as far as the post box but I'm not confined to my room anymore, and today I spent almost the whole morning out in the garden. It feels so good to be outside! I wonder if this is what a child experiences when they're still young enough that the whole world is new to them. If so it's a great shame that we ever grow out of it. I actually felt the urge to point out birds and clouds and holly berries like a toddler in my delight at seeing them without a pane of glass between us at last. I know that sounds daft, but I couldn't seem to help myself. It isn't that I didn't recognise things (thank goodness the damage to my brain wasn't that severe), it was more like... like there was colour in the world for the first time and I was the only one noticing it - I just wanted to share my discoveries so someone else could be as happy as I was (have you ever really noticed how round a holly berry is, or how good cool clean air tastes, or that whooshing sound a pigeon's wings make as it takes off?).I know I'm not making much sense, so you will simply have to trust me when I say it was utterly thrilling after nothing but the walls of my bedroom and glimpses of the street from the window for weeks.

So much so in fact that the only thing that stopped me taking off my shoes and wading right into the stream that runs behind the house was my mam threatening to send me straight back to bed for the rest of the week if I didn't keep wrapped up and go slowly. She's terrified of seizures (or my 'funny turns' as she calls them) and I do still have them every now and then, but they're not so bad really. I don't remember the part where they're actually happening; I just wake up afterwards on the floor feeling slow and uncoordinated and play 'where have I bruised myself this time'. But since it's true that I'm not the one who would have had to drag me out the stream if I were unlucky enough to have one of my rare fits while I was wading (and alright, the water might have been pretty chilly, but I'm sure it would have been worth it), I couldn't really argue back too fiercely when mam said I wasn't to go in, no matter how thirsty my feet suddenly felt for that splashing silver water. In the end we spent the time usefully employed in harvesting the last of this year's leeks and parsnips together and chatting about what to plant in the spring. I found it a little hard to talk about that actually, because mam spoke as though everything would be just as it is now, but I so want to be better and back to my real life by then, the idea that I might still be here struggling to remember things while we plant carrots and potatoes is too upsetting to bear.

Luckily mam just thought I was tired by the work and made me sit in a lawn chair with several blankets tucked about me and a hot cup of tea, and by the time she was sitting down beside me she seemed to have forgotten the conversation we'd been having. Instead, she told me stories from her own childhood. Just little things that the garden put her in mind of, like how every day she'd be given her grandad's flask of tea to carry down the road to the allotment when she was a little girl, and while he drank it he'd let her sample his vegetables fresh from the ground. She told me about one time when she couldn't have been more than four and had bitten into a raddish without knowing what it was: grandad laughed so hard at the appalled expression on her face when she tasted it that his dentures went flying out his mouth and lodged so firmly in a turnip that he had to use his pen knife to gouge them out. I like hearing those sorts of stories more than anything, because there's no expectation that I should recognise them from my own memory or gain some greater meaning from them. They let me just feel normal for a little while, and help me get to know mam again in a way I couldn't otherwise (at least until I regain some of my own memories of her). They're rather like your letters in that respect! (although truly your story about Fred's Buckle Sprouts and Sister Monica Joan's objections to them surpasses even mam's toothy turnip).

Until Friday then Patsy (I will be waiting by the door at seven when the postman comes).

Love,
Delia