Wish Upon a Star Read Online Free Page A

presents, Mummy?’
    ‘Yes, they’re in the boot.’
    ‘Will Father Christmas remember we’re staying with Grandma?’
    ‘I’m sure he will: he knows everything by magic.’
    ‘Like God,’ she agreed sagely. ‘Hal says God knows everything.’
    Hal is under-gardener at Winter’s End, the historic house just outside Sticklepond, and lives in a cottage on the edge of the estate, across the lane from Ma. A taciturn man with a bold roman nose and a surprising head of soft silvery-grey curls under his flat tweed cap, he’s been moonlighting as Ma’s gardener ever since she moved up there, and they seemed to have become increasingly friendly …
    ‘I like Hal,’ she added. ‘He makes me sweet milky tea in a special blue cup when he brews up in his shed and last time we came he showed me a dead mole he found in the woods.’
    ‘That was kind of him,’ I said. Hal had created a cosy den in the old shed next to Ma’s studio in the garden, with a little Primus stove where he brewed up endless enamel pots of sweet tea for them both. Just like Dad, Hal seemed to wander in and out of the studio, or sit reading the paper in the corner, without appearing to bother Ma in the least.
    Despite looking so morose he was really a very nice man – and what’s more, he’d slowly brought Ma out of herself a little bit, to the point where, as well as the library, she went with him to the monthly Gardening Club, and the occasional game of darts at the Green Man with the other Winter’s End gardeners.
    Ottie Winter occasionally visited her too, because over the years her early patronage and help had turned into friendship. I’d often met her at our house in Hampstead, and Ma had taken me to one or two exhibitions of her sculptures, which are bold and figurative … sort of. You could say the same about Ma’s paintings.
    Her only other regular visitor seemed to be Raffy Sinclair, the Sticklepond vicar, despite her not being a churchgoer.
    ‘Are we nearly there yet? I wish we lived in Sticklepond. It’s much more fun than home,’ Stella said from the back seat.
    ‘Do you?’ I asked, startled and glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Wouldn’t you miss Primrose Hill and the zoo?’
    ‘No,’ she said firmly.
    Sometimes it was hard to remember that she was only three and a half going on a hundred … But I was just grateful we’d left the tricky subject of God behind and were not again pursuing the question of where people went when they were dead like we had the previous week, after I’d had to tell her that she wouldn’t be seeing one of her little friends from hospital again …
    While I chatted to Stella as we trundled north up the motorway, part of my mind was occupied with how I was to raise the astronomical amount of money it would take to get her to America and to pay for the operation. It seemed near impossible – but how different her life would be if I pulled it off and the operation was a complete success … which it surely must be. If only she stayed well enough, till then …
    But if she didn’t, if things took a turn for the worst and the need for the operation became urgent – which, please God, they wouldn’t – then I had a contingency plan to raise the money quickly, one that I’d need Ma’s agreement to. It would be a
big
ask and even though I’d already declined her generous offer to mortgage the cottage to pay for the operation, I wasn’t quite sure how she’d react to it.
    Will had already started the process of setting up a fundraising website, Stella’s Stars, having had experience of doing something similar with his and Celia’s greyhound fostering one. It proved to be quite a complicated affair: I’d never have managed it on my own. He’d promised it would be up and running by the New Year, though.
    Turning off the motorway as the short winter’s day grew towards dusk, I clicked on the Bing Crosby
White Christmas
CD that was Stella’s surprise favourite and resolutely turned