Wish Upon a Star. Trisha Ashley

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      I was sorry to have missed Ottie (as a little girl, I had attempted to call her Auntie Ottie, but it had been too much of a mouthful), who had always been kind and prone to arrive with unexpected presents.

      Stella was fast asleep on the battered old chaise longue, with a fistful of pheasant feathers from the collection she kept in the studio loosely splayed around her, but woke as soon as she heard my voice.

      She was still pretty sleepy, though, and after lunch went willingly off for her nap just before Will and Celia arrived for our fundraising session.

      Will had put the finishing touches to the Stella’s Stars website and it was about to go online, which was exciting.

      ‘The fundraising will really get going then,’ Celia said.

      ‘I only hope you’re right, because it’s such a lot of money to raise quite quickly. I mean, Dr Beems wants to do the operation before she’s five, so the latest date she’d have it would be spring of the year after next … and he did warn me that if her condition suddenly deteriorated, it might have to be much sooner.’

      ‘We’ll hope it won’t; that’s just the worst-case scenario,’ Celia assured me.

      ‘I know, but I’ve had some sleepless nights thinking about what I’d do if it came to it and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I could raise the money in time would be by selling the flat.’

      ‘Sell the flat?’ echoed Celia. ‘But you still have a mortgage on it, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes, but because Dad gave me a good deposit and I bought it just before prices went through the roof, I’d make a huge profit,’ I said optimistically.

      ‘But then you’d still have to rent somewhere for you and Stella to live,’ Will pointed out, ‘and that’s likely to cost more than your current mortgage payments.’

      ‘Well, that’s the thing – we’d have to move up here and live with Ma for a while.’

      ‘I think that would be a bit hard after having your own place – and would Martha think it was a good idea?’ asked Celia. ‘I know she loves to have you visit, but that’s a bit different from your being here all the time.’

      ‘I don’t know, but I think she’d do it because she loves Stella – they seem very alike in some ways. And it would be only until Stella had had the operation and recovered, then I’d move back to London and pick up my career again.’

      We talked through lots of fundraising ideas and drafted a standard email that we could send out to everyone we could think of who might help, with a link to the website. ‘And everyone in your address book,’ Celia suggested, ‘even if you haven’t heard from them in years. If you give people a positive way of helping, I’m sure they’ll do it.’

      ‘Yes, everyone loves to support a good cause, especially where a child is involved,’ Will agreed.

      ‘I’ll organise a couple of events too. My knitting circle can have a sponsored knitathon, perhaps, and in the spring we could have a Crafty Celia garden party. I’m having lots of ideas,’ Celia said enthusiastically. ‘Will could put one of his sculptures in if we had a selling exhibition, too.’

      He nodded, ‘Good idea. And maybe Martha can get some fundraising going in the village?’

      ‘She isn’t really tuned in to village life,’ I told him. ‘She’s been to one or two sessions of the Musical Appreciation Society and she goes to the monthly Gardening Club, and to the library, but that’s about it. She did suggest mortgaging this house and giving me the money, but I wouldn’t let her: she isn’t that well off.’

      We tossed ideas around a little more, while eating warm mince pies, then Ma came down from the studio and Stella woke up, so we all had an expedition to the gatehouse at Winter’s End to buy bunches of the mistletoe they grow there, a local tradition.

      Later, I asked Ma the important question.

      ‘I mean, I really hope that Stella stays well and it won’t come to it, but I wanted to ask you now, just in case …’

      ‘I see what you mean,’ she said, ‘but I hadn’t thought of that possibility.’

      ‘Well, do, but don’t answer me now, have a think about it, because I know you like your own space and so it would be a big ask.’

      ‘It’s not so much that, but I think you’d find it very difficult getting back on the property ladder in London when you moved back.’

      ‘I know – impossible, in fact; we’d have to rent. But at least Stella would be well again …’

      ‘Let me sleep on it,’ Ma said.

      Ma wasn’t much of a churchgoer, except to admire the architecture, monuments and windows, but she’d attended every Midnight Carol Service at All Angels since moving back to the village. I think it was the music: her tastes were very eclectic and she often said that Mr Lees, who was the organist there, had to be heard to be believed.

      And actually, I had heard him, because he often played the organ at the strangest times, and a fugue distantly haunting you in the dead of night when the wind was in the right direction certainly got the hairs standing up on the back of your neck.

      I’d never been to the services with her, because taking Stella out in the freezing cold night hadn’t seemed like a good idea, so that evening Ma went off with Hal, who called for her. While she fetched her voluminous black cape, which made her look like a smaller and more rotund version of the woman in that Scottish Widows advertisement, I asked Hal why he didn’t fly out to New Zealand and spend Christmas with his daughter and her family and he said he wouldn’t go in an aeroplane ever again for love nor money, but he’d be off up to his sister’s in Scotland for Hogmanay instead.

      ‘I couldn’t miss the Winter’s End Christmas party,’ he added. ‘I’m the Lord of Misrule and we have a grand time.’

      ‘I don’t know about Lord of Misrule, but you’re an old fool, getting dressed up and prancing about at your time of life,’ Ma said, reappearing.

      ‘There’s nowt about my time of life to stop me prancing, and anyway, you never come to the party so you don’t know what goes on.’

      ‘I’ve heard things, though.’

      ‘I’d love to go, and Ottie invited us, but it would be a bit much for Stella,’ I said.

      Stella was already overexcited by the thought of Father Christmas arriving during the night and it had taken me ages to get her settled down that evening. Still, finally she’d gone to sleep and later I’d tiptoed in and hung her stocking on the bedpost, then arranged the presents beneath the little pine tree, before eating the gingerbread and carrot left out for the great man and his trusty reindeer.

      Ma had already put her presents under the tree, roughly wrapped in brown paper and tied up with green garden twine, so they looked strangely trendy.

      When she came back from the service she looked cold and the tip of her nose was scarlet. Once she’d divested herself of her woolly cape, I handed her a warm mince pie and a glass of Laphroaig, her favourite whisky.

      ‘How was the service?’

      ‘Very good – all the old favourite carols and hymns, sung to the right tunes, although Mr Lees played us out with “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, which was a slightly odd choice. It was worth going, just for that.’

      She put her feet up on a red Moroccan leather pouffe, sipped her whisky and said, ‘Well, our Cally, I had a good think about things while Raffy was doing his sermon, all about the Nativity. And, of course, there’s always room at this inn.’

      ‘You mean … we can come and stay, if I have to sell the flat?’

      ‘Of course you can, you daft lump. I was hardly going to turn you down, was I?’

      I