The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1083 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The next day was a Friday, and after dropping Julie off to the salon, Trish, Livvie and I did a supermarket shop. Not the most exciting thing to do, but they all like eating and someone has to bring home the bacon. As well as bacon, we bought eggs and loads of other things.

After lunch, would you believe a bacon sarnie, I went to see Maria and Trish asked me if she could come too as she’d liked Daisy. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not–she could construe it as demonstrating what she’d lost and I still had. However, Trish practically begged me to take her although I had to stop the others also coming, drawing the line at Trish.

I let her dress as she wanted; she wore jeggings with a dress over the top and her trainers. Not my idea of fashion, but I suppose it’s the generation gap thing. I put her hair in a plait and we left. Oh I was in what I think the ‘mericans call clam diggers, but we don’t have many clams in Portsmouth, with a white cotton button up top over a lacy vest thing.

Why am I telling you this–well, on the drive to the hospital, I managed to get some chocolate down the front of the white top and ended up going in wearing just the vest–yeah, I know, I shouldn’t be eating chocolate but you can ask Trish about that, she brought it with her.

Maria looked even lower in spirits than the day before, if that was possible. She looked at us with dull eyes, that to me showed that her internal light was almost extinguished.

Trish walked up to her, put her arm around her and kissed her. Maria regarded her for a moment as if she’d just come out of a trance. “Daisy, is that you?”

Trish glanced at me and I wasn’t sure what to say, but she was working to her own agenda. “No, Maria, it’s Trish, Daisy’s friend.”

“Oh,” the tears began to roll down the woman’s face. “I thought you were Daisy for a moment.”

“I’m afraid Daisy isn’t here anymore, but I came to see you because you’re a nice lady and I know that you feel very sad.”

“Do I?” she replied almost vacantly, “I don’t think I feel anything anymore.”

“But you must, Maria, you have a baby who needs you.” I noticed that Trish maintained some sort of contact with Maria all the time she was talking–so I knew exactly what she was doing. I tried to visualise my own energy boosting that of my daughter, so as not to complicate things.

“What do you know? You’re too young to know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know what you’re feeling, Maria, but I do know what it’s like to lose my mummy.” She paused for this to sink in, “And if Mummy Cathy hadn’t found me, I know my life wouldn’t have been as happy as it is. I’d have been very sad all the time and maybe want to stop living.”

“That’s how I feel; I want to stop living and having all this pain.”

“That’s how I felt, Maria,” Trish was gently rubbing her hand up and down Maria’s back, “I never ever thought I’d feel good or happy again. I was sent to a children’s home where they bullied me and one day one of the boys pushed me down the stairs and I hurt my head and my legs wouldn’t work. It was horrid.”

Maria was looking at this little girl–this amazing little girl–with the stirrings of something in her eyes. She put her arm round Trish and pulled her close. “I had to go to a children’s home too, my parents were killed in a plane crash. My daddy was an engineer, quite a clever one and he was going out to Africa to help them do something or other and Mummy went with him, for a week or two–“ she looked into the distance; “the plane crashed into a mountain.”

“You were left on your own?” said Trish with eyes as big as dinner plates.

“I was staying with our neighbours and they told me I couldn’t stay with them any longer, so they put me in a home. I hated it, I ran away twice.”

“I did that too, but they caught me,” said Trish, “an’ I didn’t have any treats for a month.”

I sat totally transfixed by this child prodigy who was finding ways to communicate with this bereft woman that I’d never have thought of, and I knew she’d been in a home as a child. I wondered how much of it was innate or even instinctual and how much was from somewhere else. Did the blue energy which she was pushing into Maria, help her to plug into Maria’s needs and so approach her through them? Whatever was happening, it was fascinating to watch.

“When did you leave the home?” asked Trish.

“When I was nineteen, I met Paul–he was at another home and it was love at first sight. We got married two months later and lived in a pokey little flat. He got some qualifications and I got pregnant, but our lives seemed to take off and we moved to a small but modern house and managed to afford his dream car–the Subaru. It was too fast for me and I crashed it, ended up in Southampton neuro unit where I would have died if your new mummy hadn’t helped me.”

“I still couldn’t walk when they sent me back to the home and Dr Rose asked Mummy to take me for a short time to see if she could get me walking. I didn’t really care–I thought if I couldn’t walk they wouldn’t bully me. I met my new mummy and we had the same surname, which was funny.”

They both chuckled at this. “Like a sort of sign, was it?”

“I don’t know, but she was such a lovely lady but she’s sneaky, she tricked me into walking by having Mima leave a pair of high heeled shoes in the lounge and then she teased me into trying them.”

“Cathy teased you?”

“No, Mummy wouldn’t do a thing like that, it was Mima who teased me. Mummy had me walking by the end of the day.”

“Your sneaky mummy didn’t bring you to get round me, did she?”

“Oh no, she isn’t clever enough to do that–coming to see you was my idea.”

“Do I believe you, Trish?” asked Maria.

“It was her idea entirely. I didn’t think it was a good idea and then when she got chocolate on my top, I began to wonder if it was a big mistake. It seems not.”

“I can’t believe a child of six could reach inside me like that and light something which I thought was dead.”

“When I went for judicial review regarding my fostering of Trish and Mima, because I fell out with a social worker who then was determined to stop me, Trish went after the judge and asked him to let her stay with me–she followed him into his chambers.”

“What? You didn’t, did you, girl?”

“I could see he was a nice man and that he liked my mummy, so I went and asked him–he was okay about it.”

“Wow, I can see you’re a real live wire.” Maria smiled and her eyes lit up perhaps from the energy provided by this live wire–whom I sometimes viewed as a loose cannon, probably self loading and computer controlled. “Will you come and see me again?”

“If you promise to get better, I will.”

“I’ll try.”

“Is that a promise?” asked Trish.

“Yes, okay–it’s a promise.”

“Then I will, remember you have a baby to look after.”

“I know, Trish, I know.” Maria looked at me, “Does she always work you like this?”

“No, she’s been especially gentle on you–just don’t play cards or chess with her and never for money.”

“Awwww Mummmmeeeee,” complained a certain young lady.