Dear Pats,

I'm sorry to hear you didn't have big family Christmases as a child. I rather like imagining a darling little red haired girl bouncing about in her pyjamas, all tangled in wrapping paper under a Christmas tree, or sitting up at a big table surrounded by a dozen red headed relatives with a mince pie in each hand! If you were to paint 'Susan' I think I would be tempted to respond with a 'baby Patsy on Christmas day' scene, even if it were a made up one! I hope you didn't spend all your Christmases away at school. From what you've told me I can't quite picture your Mother Gertrude being the type to wear a paper crown and sing about figgy pudding over her Christmas dinner.

But even if you spent your girlhood Christmases in solemn prayerful places I'm glad you're making up for it now! Do tell me all about your Christmas morning with Barbara and Trixie. I love the way you all look after each other, just like sisters. Did Barbara come in in her pyjamas as soon as she woke up, clutching her stocking as you said she would? Barbara sounds like such a darling; I hope she enjoyed the day even if she couldn't be with her father in Liverpool. I was so touched that she sent me some of her shells so I could have my own winter seaside! Will you tell her that I've put them out on display, and that I think them beautiful? Oh, and did Trixie like all the little things you picked out for her at the market? You are such a sweet friend Pats, quietly fixing it so that everyone would have a merry Christmas.

I can't wait to be well enough to be a part of that life in Poplar again! I know I wasn't one of you Nonnatus midwives, but I feel so close to it all through your letters it's almost as though I have lived there myself. Perhaps when I come back I could find something similar with the other girls in the Nurses' home, or even convince a good friend or two to live out with me (I know you wouldn't be interested in that when you are so close to your friends at Nonnatus House so I shan't make you find a polite way to turn me down, but perhaps I could find a place not too far away so that we could visit each other). But I'm getting ahead of myself. After all who knows how long it will be until the doctor signs me off as fit to return to work? (Do you think they'll make me go all the way through training again, or could I just resit the exams to prove myself competent when enough of my memories are back?) I'm not sure of the protocol for nurses with amnesia and mam won't even discuss the subject. She wants me to take the job being advertised at the post office in the village and forget all about coming back to London (as if I haven't done enough forgetting to last a life time already!), but I'd be bored stiff selling stamps and sorting letters all day. I want to be a nurse. And as picturesque as it is, I want to get out of this little village that seems so far removed from real life. I have been careful not to argue over this with mam for the last week though. Since I read about all the kind things you've been doing to give the people you love a merry Christmas I've been determined to do the same for her. I know I keep writing about how mam drives me to distraction with cosseting, but really it's only that she loves me and I gave her such a fright, almost dying the way I did. She's put her whole life on hold to care for me, so I've been thinking on ways to recreate some of her happiest Christmas memories.

The last Christmas I remember before this one was the year I was ten and my family was still determined I should believe in Santa Claus. We were all staying with my grandparents for the holidays – my aunts and uncles and cousins as well, so it was quite a squash, but a cheerful one. All of us children were sharing the little attic room, sleeping on grandma's big old fashioned mattresses full of honest to goodness straw ticking (they lived on a farm so straw was easy to come by, but even so I bet you never imagined people still sleeping on straw mattresses in this day and age, even just for extended family visits!). Apart from the baby I was the youngest, and I was small for my age even then so everyone was treating me as the family pet. I think I must have realized on some level that although I was at an age where I wanted to be seen as mature, what my family (and particularly my mam) wanted more than anything was to get to have the kind of magical Christmas that only exists through the eyes of a child and what they needed from me was to be that child. I know, I sound very wise for my young years, but I have come to believe that children understand much more than they are given credit for. I remember climbing onto my grandfather's lap (though I felt much too old for that) and asking for stories of his boyhood Christmases, simply because I knew it would bring that happy, faraway look to his eyes when he talked about it. I remember pretending not to know that the clip clop noises like hooves in the yard outside were made by my uncle and not reindeer as I called out excitedly to my cousins.

That Christmas Eve mam and my cousin Dilys and I made jam tarts especially to have something to leave out for Santa, and to this day I think that time is the happiest I remember seeing my mam, her face smudged with flour and her cheeks rosy with laughter as we all sang carols and dolloped jam into pastry cases. She didn't even scold me when I licked my spoon clean afterwards, just winked at me and licked her own spoon, then hid it behind her back when grandma came into the kitchen as if she were the little girl being caught at mischief by her mother, for all she was grown up with a child of her own!

Since grandma has passed on now and my cousins are all scattered to the winds with families of their own I couldn't arrange a big family get together like that one this year, but on Christmas morning I set my alarm clock to go off very early so I could be up first to surprise her. I got the fire lit and did all the morning chores so that by the time she woke up it would be all spotlessly clean and cosy, and set out the ingredients for jam tarts on the kitchen counter, in deference to that long ago day. When everything was in place downstairs I took mam her breakfast up on a tray, the way she used to for me on special days. She protested a bit when I climbed into the bed next to her, but when I made to get up again she put a hand on my arm to stop me and tucked her blankets more snugly over my feet 'like little blocks of ice cariad! You ought to wear your slippers'. In the end we shared the boiled eggs and buttery toast soldiers and swapped our best childhood Christmas stories. Mam remembers most of mine herself of course, but I didn't know all of hers. It turns out she could be quite the little scamp herself as a girl!

There was one particularly memorable occasion when she had found the Christmas treats too tempting to bear and had eaten every other chocolate drop from round the edge of the cake, thinking no one would notice. Of course they did notice and she spent the rest of the week leading up to Christmas genuinely terrified she would find nothing but a lump of coal in her stocking! She even wrote a letter to Santa apologising for what she'd done and promising to give half her Christmas chocolate to her mother to make new chocolate drops out of, if only he would forgive her and not put her on the naughty list. She had taken the letter right into the post office instead of just dropping it in the box and asked very seriously that the man make sure it reached Mr Claus before Christmas Eve, or he might not get it in time to change his mind about her. The man must have been deeply touched when she explained why she was sending the letter, because in addition to her usual presents (among which there was not the slightest trace of coal of course), on Christmas morning she found a mysterious little parcel wrapped in green and red striped tissue paper, with a note saying 'For the cake, With love from Santa's Post Elf'. Inside was a packet of chocolate drops, even nicer than the ones she had stolen.
Mam laughed a little when she told this story and said she'd never dared tell it to me when I was a child, because she just knew that if she had I'd have been bound to try it out for myself!

Mam's always an early riser, so even after our long lie in and leisurely breakfast it was only just after seven when she went off to have a wash and get dressed, and while she was occupied there was plenty of time for me to get back to my room for our promised meeting at 7.30.
How is it you seem to know just how to make me happiest, even from so far away? We must have been very close friends before all this happened. I feel as though even now you know me better than I know myself. Perhaps better than I have ever known myself, because surely even if I had all my memories I could never have picked out so perfect a gift for myself as you did. It's a little frightening, as though you can see right to my truest heart and read it as plainly as your morning paper with all its faults, and yet I don't even know the sound of your voice. Did I know you so well once too, or are you truly a guardian angel as you seem? How did you know I was longing for the bright cheer of fresh flowers, when I didn't know it myself? The first order came today and even as I'm sitting here writing this my eyes keep being drawn to the sunny reds and oranges of them on my windowsill. They are such a warm mix of colours I feel as though you truly have sent me a little piece of summer, especially as I have arranged Barbara's shells all around the jug. With them there I can almost imagine the sound of the wind and rain outside to be warm waves breaking on the golden sand of a faraway beach.

Tell me Patsy, did I once own something like this jug? I feel almost certain I've never seen it before, and yet it seems somehow that I know it. I'm not sure how to describe what I mean exactly, but it makes me feel more than such a simple object has any right to. When I unwrapped it, before I'd even read your note about the flowers or had time to do anything but hold the jug in my hands and see the pattern, I started trembling so hard the paper rustled in my lap. I felt so happy when I saw it, as though a little piece of a dream I held dear had been given to me, and yet at the same time it made me want to cry, as though I was waking up to find that whatever dream the jug symbolizes had faded forever beyond my reach. Surely a pretty trinket couldn't inspire such strong feelings all by itself? Please tell me Patsy, why this present? I feel as though the memory is so close, but I can't quite grasp it. Does it mean something, or am I just being silly? In truth, I'm still a little afraid I might be crazy.

But enough of this talk! This is meant to be a Christmas letter after all, and should be full of good cheer. Please pass on my gratitude to all the people in Poplar that sent me such wonderful gifts, I am touched beyond words by their kindness and I love every one of my presents. Mam and I took the gingerbread men along to the church carol concert and shared them out with the children after they were done singing (I hope the nuns will approve of this and won't think it a rejection of their present. There were far too many for just the two of us to eat and it was lovely to see the children's excited little faces when we gave them the treat! There was just the right number for everyone to have one so I think perhaps that this is what they were meant for all along). I haven't quite been brave enough to try Fred's ginger beer yet, but Mrs Buckle's dress fabric is ever so pretty! Mam gave me a white dress with blue polka dots for my Christmas present, so I think perhaps I will use this fabric to try and make her a blue one with white dots! (not a matching pattern of course, that might be going a step too far; but it is the sort of sentiment that mam is very keen on and since our Christmas morning together I find myself wanting to please her even if it seems a little twee).

I want to send special thanks to Timothy and the cubs too. Besides yours (which is incomparable in its perfection) their presents made me feel most truly loved and remembered. Fancy Tim spending his own pocket money on a ribbon, and taking the time and care to develop copies of those photos for me! And the card with all its sweet, funny messages from the boys was so lovely, I can almost hear the clamour of them all. I've replaced some of the floral watercolours on my walls with the pictures of the cubs' Christmas Carol performance (Alfie does look funny as Tiny Tim! And Steven makes a wonderful Scrooge. Is Jack in any of them, the boy you told me of in your very first letter? It makes me so happy being able to set faces to the names I've been hearing about for so long!) and already my room feels friendlier and more like my own. I've blown up my Susan balloon (I laughed out loud when I found it tucked inside my beautiful vase) and have it tied to my curtain rail as a shiny red reminder that wishes really can come true, be it a small girl's wish for a balloon at the fair or a recovering amnesiac's wish for her memories to return!

Thank you so much Patsy, for your friendship and for your lovely gifts. I hope one day, when I'm well again and back in London I will be able to repay you for all your kindness. Or perhaps even sooner? As soon as the weather starts warming up, let's have that trip to the seaside and I shall spoil you rotten! I feel so impatient for it, but I know it's still too cold to go off immediately. Do you think you could bear a beach holiday in March, or ought we to wait until the warmer days of April or even May? Don't let me bully you into a miserable wet weekend with my impatience will you Pats? I think you are the sensible one of us, so if you say we ought to wait I will agree with good grace no matter how much I want to see you immediately!

Love,

Delia