AN: I know the last chapter was cruel, I'm sorry! Please don't hate me for that little twist. I honestly didn't plan it that way to begin with, it just sort of... happened. It gets better though I promise :)

Oh my poor, darling Deels,

No! You've got it all wrong sweetheart, you haven't hurt anyone. No one has died and no one else was injured that day. Hasn't anyone explained to you exactly what happened? I'm so sorry Delia, I didn't know. I assumed you had been told about your accident but even if not, I would never have dreamed you'd think THIS. If I had any inkling… but I'll tell you now.

In a way it was my fault you were hurt, so if you want to blame anyone, blame me. You see… Oh there's so much to explain. Maybe I should start at the beginning. That blonde nurse you remember? That was ME Delia. All that 'you'll know me by my hair' business and I never thought to explain that your memories might tell a different story. When I was a child, my hair made me stand out. No one else I knew had red hair and I suppose I always associated it with being an outsider, so when I came to London I decided to start fresh. The day I officially started my nursing training, after the incident with the spider in my uniform, I decided to celebrate by doing something that I thought would make me feel less like school girl Patsy (after all it was only a matter of months – weeks really, since I had been doing my A-levels) and more like the Nurse Mount I aspired to be. So I went in to the first hairdresser's I saw and asked them to make me blonde. It made me feel fashionable and efficient but also unerringly normal to look like everyone else, and I stayed that way for several years. It's only relatively recently that I've decided I don't need to choose between being Patsy and being Nurse Mount and have gone gladly back to my own natural colour again.

I had struggled to fit in when I first started at boarding school and I knew what it was to feel different, so when I saw you looking so lost your first day of course I came and sat beside you. I had wanted to stay and talk to you after the lecture too – I hoped we might go out for a pot of tea after work and get to know each other a little.
I was going to offer to show you round the town a bit and tell you some of the things I wished someone had told ME when I first started (Sister Collins will forgive you anything if you demonstrate that you're willing to work. Volunteer to do the dull or messy work unprompted and the hours spent emptying bedpans will be rewarded next time she is writing up the assignments. Keep out of arms reach of Mr Lacey on male surgical. If he does make a grab for you slip the name Moira into conversation. It doesn't matter if you've never met a Moira, just find a reason to say it – it's his daughter's name and slipping it in reminds him how much he'd like to rip the offending hand off of anyone who tried pawing at her that way. You'll find he behaves himself for at least the rest of your shift. DON'T eat the fish in the dining hall. That dreadful smell in there? It isn't the drains. Eating it won't kill you, but the taste might make you wish it had).

I did wait for a while after Sister Collins waylaid you, hoping I'd be able to catch you when she was done with her monologue but it was no use. Every time I thought she was winding down she'd think of something else to tell you and I was due on the other side of the building to scrub for theatre, so eventually I had to go or risk facing the wrath of the surgeon, whatever senior nurse my tardiness had made look bad in front of him, AND (perhaps worst of all) the smug looks from the surgical students, (who were always glad to see someone other than themselves in disgrace for once).

But after all the just missing each other and exchanging glances across crowded rooms we did eventually meet and over time we became very close... closer in fact than I've ever been to anyone. You are right about one thing Delia. I have been sad since the accident but it isn't because anyone died. That at least I am thankful for every day. What makes me sad is that you were hurt at all, and that you were taken so far away for your recuperation. Of course I knew it made sense, you would want to be with your family at such a time and your mother would want to care for you at home, but I hated that that meant you would be gone from me, especially when I wasn't allowed to visit and you didn't even have a telephone.

I want you to know… I would have looked after you Deels, if your mother hadn't been there. Even if the seizures had continued and your memories never came back, I would have looked after you. You are my dearest friend and there is no one in this world who means more to me than you do, so any sadness you sense is simply that I miss you. And that I miss the life we had been planning together.

I should have told you this earlier, when you first wrote about finding your own flat in London, but I suppose after last time I didn't want to jinx it. Oh that sounds so ridiculous now! I'm not the superstitious type, truly I'm not, but there is a part of me that still can't help feeling that you were hurt because of me, and I suppose I was afraid of it happening again.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Let me explain. The Nurses' Home was downsizing and needed volunteers to take a rent allowance and find alternative accommodation. I had never lived independently (I went straight from boarding school to the Nurses' Home to Nonnatus House) and besides, I missed us being able to visit each other so easily, as we had when we both lived in the same digs (before I moved to Nonnatus House). So when you told me you were going to volunteer to move out and suggested that we should find a place together I jumped at the chance to share a home with you, just the two of us.

And we did it. We found a flat and started gathering cleaning supplies ready to give it a good scrub (it was filthy when we took it, but we saw potential beneath the layers of grime). We never had a chance to live there properly, but we had time enough to share a picnic (on a blanket on the floor as we had no furniture yet) and discuss how we wanted to decorate our new home. That's when you told me that you wanted china with a modern, geometric pattern, and that you wanted the only flowers in the room to be real ones, on the windowsill where they'd always catch the light (that's how I knew what to get you for Christmas. I never meant for it to make you sad).

But I'm meant to be telling you about the accident. After our picnic you had a shift at the hospital to get to so we headed out. Your watch had stopped and it was later than we'd realized, you were afraid you were going to be late… so I told you to take my bike. I teach the cubs cycling proficiency, I should have known better. I knew you could barely keep your saddle and yet I thought it would be harmless. I thought it would spare you a lecture from Sister Reed and would be good practice as you were planning to get a bike of your own for the commute to work anyway. But I was wrong. You were crossing the street when a car hit your bike and sent you flying into the road. Someone called an ambulance of course, but I found out afterwards that when they arrived the crew expected you to die before you reached the hospital, or else slip into a coma and never wake up; you had hit your head so hard.

And I didn't even know. I hate the thought of you being alone through all of that and I am so sorry I wasn't there with you as soon as I heard (even if you weren't awake to realize it). But you know how the rules are. Family only. So without a plausible claim to sisterhood (which sadly wouldn't wash at a hospital we have both worked at for years) or my ring on your finger (and short of cutting my hair off and calling myself Patrick that certainly wasn't an option for us) there was no way I was getting into that room. They wouldn't even tell me how you were over the phone. I wouldn't have known anything was wrong at all until you didn't come home that night if I hadn't been almost knocked off my feet by a hug from Sister Winifred on my way back from getting your keys cut. She had arrived at the scene of the accident just as the ambulance was pulling away and, seeing my bike in the road, had assumed I was the one who had been hit.

But I'm sure that's not what you want to ask about (I know how your mind works). The chap who was driving the car is completely fine, not a scratch on him and not even much of a dent to his fender, so you needn't worry on that score. And the accident wasn't your fault. He was going too fast, he didn't see you coming until it was too late. That's all there was to it. You haven't hurt anyone sweetheart. I promise.

All my love,
Patsy

... ... ...

Dearest Delia,

You thought you had hurt someone. I'm so sorry sweetheart.

When I started reading your letter I was sure you had remembered us. Right up until you asked if the blonde nurse was dead, I thought you were going to tell me that you knew who we were to each other. I couldn't tell whether you were happy about it or not, but either way I thought you truly had worked it out. But no. You were blaming yourself for the death of a girl who never even existed, and all because of my cautious tiptoeing round the truth in these letters and my ridiculous blonde phase.

I never told you why I dyed my hair did I? You told me often enough when I was blonde how fetching I looked, but the first time you saw me with my hair red you just stared for a while until I was afraid you hated it and was wishing I had kept it the way it was. But then you reached out and gently touched a curl with one finger tip 'yes. You look like Patsy now. It's… it's perfect. Why ever did you change it in the first place?' When you said that, it made me wonder how many times you could make me fall in love with you. Before we met I always thought it was something that just happened once (and perhaps not at all to me), but with you, it happened every day. I fell in love with you every time you took my hand, or gave me that particular impish smile of yours, or made me stop in the street and look up because you'd seen a cloud that looked EXACTLY like a squirrel dancing a polka with a chimney sweep (I could never find the things you described and I always suspected you couldn't either, that you came up with the most nonsensical images you could think of just for an excuse to stop and appreciate the sky for a moment). It still happens, every time I read your letters and hear you saying those words in my head, or see you in my mind's eye, sliding around your bedroom in stockings or reading Jane Eyre aloud to a patient.

So when you asked, I wanted to turn my head the half inch that would bring your hand against my cheek and tell you everything – why I went blonde, and why I wasn't anymore. But you were about to leave for work and it wasn't exactly a short story, so I just said I'd done it because I'd felt like a fresh start when I moved to London, and I kept it out of habit. I really did mean to tell you everything, but somehow during the brief times I got to see you after I moved out of the Nurses' Home I could never bring myself to cause that sad look in your eyes that you get when I tell you about my childhood. Not when we were in public and I couldn't put my arms around you and remind you I survived.

Sometimes in the camp it wasn't the guards you had to worry about. You would think in such conditions we would all stick together, but I'm sorry to say it was not always the case. There was a particular group of boys there that took it upon themselves to take control of the other children. They were mostly in their early teens – certainly none was older than 13 or 14 and most were younger, but to a little girl of my age among so many they might as well have been grown men.
Mostly it was fairly harmless. They just made the rest of us call them all 'sir' and do whatever small chore they demanded of us, but they would also 'confiscate' anything worth taking from those foolish enough to let it be seen (generally this meant food and there was little enough of that at the best of times) and they were always on the lookout for reasons to single someone out for 'special treatment'.

When I first arrived at the camp my hair was almost waist length and the same bright copper shade it is today, which made me rather stand out among the blondes and browns of the other children. I don't suppose this would have mattered too much on its own, but in spite of the fact that I had yet to so much as glimpse the spires of Westminster, I had the kind of refined English accent that goes hand in hand with a well born socialite mother and a ship broker father with sufficient funds to procure an expensive education for his daughters, and I was slower than most to catch on to the camp slang that would have helped me blend in. All this led to my nickname, and my victim status. The boys took to calling me 'London' (I wasn't in the least bit cockney, but I think the entire group's knowledge of London was that it was 'where the king lived' so they assumed everyone there must be terribly posh) and mimicked my speech at every opportunity. I didn't really help myself in the beginning – a wiser child would have bowed her head and accepted whatever they doled out in the hopes that they'd get bored. But, being me, I argued back in my prim little voice and made it worse. Then one of them had the bright idea to take the joke a step further and, grabbing my red plait so hard I almost lost my balance shouted out 'hey look, London's burning!'

After that 'London's burning' became a standing joke and I knew that if I heard anyone start up that old nursery rhyme then it was time to run, because by the time they reached the line 'pour on water' it was inevitably going to end badly for me. Sometimes I got away, but often I didn't and it went from buckets of dirty water being thrown (to 'put out the great fire of London') to lit matches and cigarettes being waved dangerously near my head. After one came a little too close and singed my hair rather badly my mother cut it short for me to try and keep it from happening.

It didn't work of course- not straight away. But eventually I learned to survive. I dropped my refined speech, cropped my hair shorter still until it was barely longer than the boys' and bloodied a nose or two until they learned I was not so easy to push around anymore (I wonder if that would shock you? I'm not proud of it Deels, but in that environment what mattered was what you did, and with those bullies there was no other way but to use the language they understood. It makes your tapioca story look rather tame by comparison doesn't it? And there you were, afraid of shocking me with your naughtiness).

After the war was over and life became rather more sedentary my hair still singled me out from the rest. I learned to blend in faster at school than I had in the camp– I didn't need prompting to train my speech back to the refined English I had learned at my mother's knee, but still I wasn't normal. Although I had done my best to arrange it into something approaching a style, my hair was still the short, choppy mess I had made it to gain status with the camp boys (hairdresser's scissors had not exactly been easy to come by so I had made do with whatever cutting edge I could find at the time), and none of the other girls in my school had stories like mine. Most were the children of wealthy families whose greatest privation on a day to day basis was rationing and black outs. One or two had been evacuees or had been in London through the bombing and of course everyone knew someone (however tenuous the connection for some of them) who had died, but even so, it seemed a far cry from camp life. It was as though we had lived through entirely different wars and it took me some time to adjust. Other girls seemed almost to make a competition of their suffering in the war, each girl trying to outdo the others in how hard she had had it, but somehow I knew without ever being told that my own story would be different. I was different. I was too defensive, too used to responding to any perceived threat (and even overtures of friendship were suspect for a while) with prickliness, if not outright hostility. As time went by I learned to become the superficial, social creature that a girl's boarding school demands, but although I made a few casual chums and gained some acceptance as Captain of the hockey team and even Head Girl later on, I don't think any of them quite forgot the wild creature I had been when I arrived.

So when I got my acceptance letter for the nursing course at The London Hospital I decided that it was time to recreate myself. Patsy was insecure and awkward; she had few friends and a head full of nightmares from her childhood that were better forgotten. So I left her behind. On my first full day in London I went to a salon and swapped my now despised flame-red hair for a smooth, fashionable (but ultimately unremarkable) blonde, because this time I wouldn't make the old mistakes again. I was starting fresh as Nurse Mount, the robust, competent no-nonsense embodiment of all I had wanted to be when I was a helpless child watching disease claim the lives of those I loved most.

That's why I was blonde when you met me, and the reason I am not blonde to this day is because I met you. As our friendship developed I found my walls slipping away one by one and I discovered that I hadn't discarded my true self at all, she was still there underneath it all, and what's more I was beginning to discover that I was alright with that.

And so because of you, when I made my next big change and retrained as a midwife then moved on to Nonnatus House, I did it without the armour I had relied on before. I went as Patsy (or at least as someone who was beginning to be the Patsy I am now), red hair and all. In a way, I really have you to thank for the fact that I have a family here at Nonnatus and that I am able to connect with them on more than just a superficial level. You called me your guardian angel Deels, but in reality, you are mine. If I am 'saving' you as you say, it is only because you saved me first.

I wish I could tell you this story for real so you would understand how important you are and know that our closeness has never been one-sided. But how could I do that to you now, after how upset you must have been these past days? I answered your letter the moment I read it of course, but even so the wait for your own letter to arrive and the reply to be sent must have been awful for you. What you needed was reassurance, not me bringing up sad stories of my past. Don't doubt it though, I will tell you Deels, one day soon. There are so many things I should have said sooner. If I had you would never have gone through the last few days thinking you had caused the death of a friend.
But I'm going to change that now. Not all at once, not when you still don't really know who we are to each other. But I can go gently and make a start. No more holding back. A life time habit will be hard to break and I might make mistakes, but I'm going to try. I promise.

All my love,
Patsy