The World Out There - 46. Forty-Six

The shirt hung on the end of the rack straight in front of him, and it was beautiful. It was a pale blue cotton shirt. Its small collar was held in place by a button at each corner. The front of it was held closed with small white pearl buttons, so smooth and bright. Its full, long sleeves had their cuffs buttoned closed with the same pearl buttons. Slowly he reached out and touched one of the sleeves. The cotton was smooth, soft and gentle under his fingers. It felt so fine. So different from the stiff and almost brittle cotton of his old school skirts. Shirts that had to be ironed with force to remove the creases that formed, even if it was just left hanging in a wardrobe. He was sure this shirt didn’t need ironing.

“Do you like it?” Aiden’s voice cut into his thoughts.

“Yes,” Liam replied, as he let go of the shirt’s sleeve.

“You can buy it; you’ve got enough money in your account to easily buy it.”

“I can?” excitement caught in his throat. It was such a beautiful shirt.

Again, he reached out and took hold of the sleeve, the soft cotton under his fingers.

“You can wear it to your birthday party,” Aiden added.

His birthday party. Why was everyone going on about his birthday? It was only a birthday, everyone had them. It wasn’t that special. But everyone seemed to be going on and on about it.

“I suppose I could,” he admitted.

“Then try it on. Janet would kill me if it was too small.”

“What here?” Liam glanced around himself. They were in the middle of an aisle in a clothes shop. He couldn’t undress here.

“You’ve got a t-shirt on under your jacket. Try it on over that,” Aiden replied.

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed.

He slipped off his jacket, which Aiden took hold of, took the shirt off its hanger and slipped it on. The cotton was smooth against his arms, as it slid over his forearms, gentle and comfortable. The shirt itself easily covered his body, fitting around him with comfortable folds, baggy and not tight.

“That really suits you,” Aiden said.

“It feels great,” he replied.

“And that blue suits you too.”

“Thanks.”

“Right. Let’s get this paid for.”

He took the shirt off with a moment of reluctance and pulled his jacket back on. With Aiden, he headed off towards the shop’s cash tills, weaving their way through the lines and lines of clothes racks. Liam kept glancing at the racks of clothes as they passed them. There were so many men’s clothes in this shop. So many different styles and different clothes. So many of them caught his attention, so many of them he’d have liked to wear. As a child, his mother had bought all his clothes for him and always without him. His school uniform for when he was at school and t-shirts and jogging bottoms for when he was at home. The clothes in this shop were the types he’d dreamed of wearing as a child, black jeans and brightly coloured shirts and t-shirts, stylish jackets and pattern jumpers. All the clothes he’s dreamed of being dressed in.

When they reached the cash tills, they found a long line of people, snaking away from it, all waiting to pay. The cash tills, all four of them, were arranged along a long counter with four, no five workers behind it, but only one of them was actually operating a till and she seemed to be working very slowly.

“Jesus,” Aiden muttered, as they joined the end of the queue. “We’ll have a long wait here.”

“Sure,” Liam replied.

They told him it was called “Day Release,” though no one explained to him why it was called that. There had been an MDT meeting, just over a month ago, with Aiden, Janet and Dr Sayeed, and him of course. They had sat together around one of the circular tables in a Meeting Room. Dr Sayeed had said, “We now need to start seriously working towards your discharge.”

“When will that be?” a moment of panic snatched at his mind: where they going to be discharging him soon? No one had told him.

“Not for some time,” Dr Sayeed said.

“Not for a few years yet,” Janet added. “You’re sixteen next month and your sentence says you can’t be considered for release until you’re eighteen.”

“Thank you Janet,” Dr Sayeed said.

“What will happen?” Liam asked them.

“We’re considering Day Release for you,” Dr Sayeed told him.

“What’s that?” Liam asked.

“There’s different levels of it,” Dr Sayeed said. “We have decided that its best for you if you have supervised Day Release.”

“You and Aiden will spend an afternoon together in Rochester. It’s our nearest town. You two will have lunch together or do some shopping or whatever,” Janet said.

“We’ll drive there and back in car,” Aiden added.

“Later, if things go okay, you and Aiden will catch the bus there. But to start off, he’ll drive you there,” Janet added.

“Day Release is a way of you experiencing the outside world in a controlled way, to prepare you for your future release. You’ve been away from the outside world for some time, and this is a way of helping you back into it. We have done this before with other patients and been very successful,” Dr Sayeed said.

“Don’t worry - we’ll have fun and go at your pace,” Aiden reassured him.

The queue for the cash tills was moving slowly. Liam could only see one till that was staffed, though there seemed to be four other people milling around behind the counter, but they didn’t seem interested in serving people. Was this usual? He glanced at Aiden, but he was staring at the counter with an obviously frustrated expression on his face.

His first Day Release had been two weeks before. Aiden had taken him into Rochester for a McDonalds lunch.

He’d been surprised when he first saw Aiden’s car parked in the hospital’s car park, which sat around the side of the building - somewhere else he had never seen before. Aiden’s car was a small, red, hatch-backed one. It had several dents in the side of it and its front bumper had a dent in the far end of it. When Aiden told him he had a car, Liam had expected something different, bigger, and smarter, as stylish as Aiden was. This car just seemed old and rather tired, the opposite of Aiden.

Once he was sat in the front, passenger seat, Aiden said, “You need to put your seatbelt on. It’s the law.”

“Oh yes,” Liam mumbled as he spun around and reached for his seatbelt hanging behind him. He’d been in so few cars in the past, and never in the front seat. Previously, before he came here, he mostly travelled by bus and he’d never been required to wear a seatbelt on them. He had never travelled that far away from his home, even by bus.

Aiden had chatted away on their drive while he never seemed to take his eyes off the road in front of them. However, Liam was too fascinated by the view from the car’s window. It was the first time he saw the landscape around Nurton Cross, the countryside that lay outside the hospital. When he’d arrived here, it had been in the back of prison van with darkened windows - he’d barely seen shadows through that window. Now he could clearly see where he was, his first time outside Nurton Cross since he arrived.

He’d thought Nurton Cross was in the countryside as all he could see through the fence around the hospital garden was trees, unkempt and wildly growing trees. The view from the window of Aiden’s car was different. Once they reached the end of the hospital’s drive and were allowed through the high metal gates, Liam saw that Nurton Cross sat next to a big housing estate. The houses were big, semi-detached and sat on curving avenues off the main road they travelled along. Did these people, in their posh houses, complain about Nurton Cross being there? Did they even know what it was?

They drove to Rochester along a wide main road. At some points, they drove past open fields but not that often. Mostly, they drove by houses and through small towns. Many of the houses they passed looked large and expensive - the rich people’s houses his mother had looked at pictures of in her magazines when he was little. They also passed what looked like a couple of large council estates. They were full of boxy plain houses - no embellishments added to their outsides; all the houses looking just the same. But they were houses - not the tall and soulless tower blocks he’d grown-up in.

Aiden stopped his car in the car park of a McDonalds restaurant before they actually drove into Rochester. Through the car window, he’d looked at the building. This wasn’t like the McDonalds he remembered. They had been gaudy, red and yellow plastic fronted fast-food shops sitting on the local high street. This place looked like a very square bungalow. The front was glass, while the rear was solid, covered panelled green wood, with a very low and slightly sloping roof.

“Come on, we’re not eating lunch in here,” Aiden said as he opened his car door.

“Yes,” Liam replied and unclipped his seatbelt before he got out of the car too.

He watched Aiden lock his car, just by clicking his car key at it, and then he followed behind Aiden, as Aiden walked towards the building.

As he approached the building, Liam could see inside the restaurant was half-full of people sat at the tables inside.

“Aiden,” he called out, stopping Aiden before he opened the restaurant’s door.

“Yes?” Aiden turned back to him.

“There’s a lot of people in there.”

“Yes, but there’s plenty of empty tables.”

“But what if someone… If they… You know, recognise me?”

“You look very different to when you came to us. No one will recognise you.”

“But what if they do?” Nervousness pushed up the back of his throat.

“Then I’ll deal with it. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken someone out on Day Release. Whatever happens, I can manage it. You’ll be safe with me.”

“Thanks,” he replied.

“Let’s go in,” Aiden said.

Inside, the restaurant was bright and noisy, making Liam blink against it for a moment. Fluorescent light flooded the place from square light boxes in the ceiling. People’s voices filled the place, bouncing back and forth, as children’s excited voices cut through it all. Had McDonalds always been this noisy? He glanced around himself, his head turning from right to left. He didn’t try and hide his movements - he had to look around him.

No one stared back at him; no one seemed to be looking back at him; and there were enough people in there - workmen, wearing high-vis vests over their work clothes, sat around tables, hungrily eating burgers and fries; mothers with their young children sat at other tables, their children excitedly eating their kids’ meals while their mothers ate their food with far less excitement; a young man in a black jacket and matching trousers, sat alone at a table, slowly eating his food and staring at his phone. No one stared back at him. No one seemed to recognise Liam.

He followed Aiden who was heading towards the counter.

Aiden stopped before he reached there and asked Liam, “What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you used to have when you came here?”

“We didn’t come to McDonalds much. My mum said they were too expensive. If we did go, I could only have the chicken nuggets. My mum said everything else was too expensive.”

“God, that sounds like your mother. Have you ever had a Big Mac?” Aiden asked him.

“No.”

“Would you like one?”

“Yes, please?”

“Two Big Macs then.”

Aiden walked up to the counter where a young woman in a bright red t-shirt greeted him in an equally bright way.

“Two Big Mac meals, please,” Aiden asked her.

“Eat in or take away,” she replied.

“Eat in,” Aiden told her.

“Two Big Mac meals!” she shouted into the kitchen behind her.

Only a few minutes later, they both had their meals and Aiden was leading him to an empty table in the corner of the restaurant.

Once sat down, his red tray in front of him, Liam unwrapped his Big Mac burger. It was big, containing two actual burgers, sandwiched in the top and bottom of a tall bun. Corners of yellow cheese poked out from under the burgers. A strong and rich smell rose up from it and greeted his nostrils. This burger was certainly something special, not like anything he’d seen before.

“Don’t just stare at it! Eat it! Come on,” Aiden said.

Liam took hold of the Big Mac - it was soft and hot under his fingers - and took a bite from it, as much as he could. The Big Mac was big: he could only force a corner of it into his mouth. Pickle - there was a sharp taste of pickle on his tongue, and his teeth bit into lettuce and onion, through soft lettuce. Then there was a corner of well-cooked burger amongst the soft bread bun. All those flavours should not work together but the overall taste was special and very appetising. He liked it - he liked it very much! He bit into it again. Its mixtures of flavours again filled his mouth. This was good … so good! He hurriedly bit into it again.

“You enjoying that?” Aiden asked him.

Liam just nodded his head in agreement, his mouth too full of Big Mac to speak.

The queue in the clothing store was still moving slowly. The one woman actually dealing with costumers seemed to be taking so long with each different costumer that the queue was barely moving. Liam just stood there with his shirt draped over his arm and waited. There wasn’t anything else he could do. He glanced over at Aiden, again, and Aiden was still tapping his foot with annoyance. Aiden obviously didn’t like queuing, but Aiden was always so patient. Was Aiden different outside of the hospital?

On the drive back to Nurton Cross, on his first Day Release, Liam had again stared out of Aiden’s car’s window. Again, the view fascinated him.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Aiden asked him.

“It was great. That Big Mac was great,” Liam replied. He could still slightly taste the Big Mac’s sauce in his mouth.

“And no one recognised you.”

“No one.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.” Aiden had been right - barely anyone looked at him once in that restaurant. Had he changed so much or had people just forgotten about him? It would be so nice if everyone had forgotten about him.

“What are you looking at?”

“Just the view. It’s so… so different.” It was the first thing that came into his head. It was all so different.

“Things haven’t changed that much,” Aiden replied.

“I’ve never been anywhere like this. I’d never really left the estate I lived on before… well, before everything happened.”

“Didn’t you go on holiday?”

“My mum said we couldn’t go on any because they were too expensive.”

“Didn’t you go on any school trips?”

“School trips?”

“Where your school took you out for the day, usually to a museum or something.”

“We never did anything like that. We just went to school and had our lessons. That’s all,” he told Aiden.

“I see,” Aiden said, still staring ahead of himself as he drove his car back towards Nurton Cross.

Finally, they reached the head of the queue in the clothes store. He was still standing there with his shirt draped over his arm. Aiden was still standing next to him. Finally, the woman standing at the till paid for her goods and moved away.

“At last!” Aiden hissed.

The two of them walked up to the one working till and Liam placed his shirt on the counter.

“That’s a lovely shirt. Is your dad buying it for you?” the woman behind the counter asked him.

He glanced over at Aiden. What was he to say to this?

“I’m his uncle,” Aiden said back to the woman.

“Isn’t that nice,” the woman replied, a very fixed smile on her face.

Aiden paid for his shirt and women folded it and placed it inside a plastic bag, though she did seem to take a long time to do so.

As he walked out of the shop, next to Aiden, he scanned around himself. No one was staring at him; no one was watching him. But still… this was only the second time he’d been outside Nurton Cross and did people really not recognise him?

When they reached Aiden’s car, parked in the shopping mall’s car park, he climbed into the front seat, holding his new shirt on his lap, the plastic bag rustling with the slightest movement. As Aiden settled himself into the driver’s seat, Liam drew in a breath through his teeth. He had to ask Aiden this - the question had been nagging away at the back of his mind for days.

“This birthday party?” he asked Aiden.

“Your birthday party,” Aiden replied.

“Is it too late to call it off?”

“Yes, it’s on Saturday and Janet’s got it all planned out.”

“I don’t want a birthday party.” There, he’d said it. He squirmed at just the thought of it. Everyone there looking at him, him being the centre of attention, and… he didn’t want it.

“I know,” Aiden replied.

“How?” he turned and stared at Aiden. How could that man read minds?

“Because every time it’s mentioned, you go all quiet and a bit distant. I can see you don’t want it.”

“Then why do I have to have one?”

“Because Janet knows it’ll be a good idea.”

“How?”

“You’ve the patient who’s been on the ward the longest and Janet feels a party will be good for ward morale, lift everyone up. And people can see how well you’re going. But she also feels a party will be good for the ward.”

“But I don’t want a party.”

“We can’t just have a party on the ward - they won’t let us do that. There has to be a good reason and your sixteenth birthday is a great reason to have one.”

“Why can’t it be someone else’s birthday?”

“Because it’s yours. You’re growing up, and as adults we have to do things we don’t want to do.”

“But everyone will be there.”

“It’ll only be for one evening,” Aiden said. “There’ll be cake and lemonade. Then you and Ed can hide away in the corner when they get the Karaoke machine out.”

“There won’t be Karaoke?”

“Of course there will be, that bloody machine cost a fortune. But you won’t have to sing.”

“Okay.”

“Now we have got to get going or else Janet will be on the phone wanting to know where we are.”

Aiden turned the ignition key and his car shuddered into life.

<><><><>

Emily and Nick were singing along to the Karaoke machine - some country and western song about a river with islands in it. Liam had never heard it before, or he couldn’t remember hearing it before. Emily and Nick were a little older than him, but only just, and they had only been on the ward for a few months, Nick had arrived first. Emily’s singing voice was thin and soft, barely sounding louder than the backing track even as she used the microphone. Nick’s singing voice was strong and full-throated. He barely needed the microphone to fill the room with his voice.

Liam was sat on one of sofas in the Common Room, not quite in the furthest corner of the room, but as far away from the Karaoke machine as he could. Everyone was still excitedly gathered around it as Janet lined up the next singers.

His birthday party had started straight after their evening meal. Janet, in her commanding voice, had shepherded everyone out of the Dining Room and into the Common Room. Liam was greeted there with a large banner hanging across the opposite wall which proclaimed, “Happy Birthday” in bright colours. Under this banner was a table with a cake on top of it and the infamous Karaoke machine sitting in front of it. Liam wanted to run out of there and hide somewhere else, but he couldn’t. Ed was stood next to him and there were so many people around him that he physically couldn’t leave. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want everyone looking at him.

“Come here Liam,” Janet called to him, as she stood next to the table, under the banner. Trying to not look like he didn’t want to be there, however. he tried to do that - he joined Janet. “Now, let’s all have a chorus of Happy Birthday,” Janet called out to the room.

Liam tried not to stare at his feet, not to look awkward or like he didn’t want to be there, as the room was filled with a rather tuneless rendition of Happy Birthday. The silly little song seemed to last forever - certainly for too long - before it ended with people clapping for him.

“Now, let’s cut your cake,” Janet said, as she produced one of the kitchen knives, the ones used for cutting food.

Liam took the knife from her. It was a black-handled one, the plastic so old that it had worn down to a rough texture. The blade was equally as old and as blunt as the handle was rough. He pressed the knife into the cake and the blade easily slipped into the cake’s soft icing and then sponge, slipping down to the cake’s base.

“My turn,” Janet said, taking the knife off him. “Now, we need to cut this thing into twenty slices.”

It took Janet a few minutes to cut up the cake, slicing it into ever thinner slices - too many minutes. All he could do was stand there and watch her, He couldn’t have just slipped away. When she started to handout the slices of cake, each cradled on a bright red paper napkin, he was finally able ease away, with his own slice of cake held in his hand.

He looked around himself, but couldn’t see Ed anywhere, Ed had disappeared. He’d been stood next to him when Janet called him up to the cake, but now Liam couldn’t see him anywhere.

Quietly he moved over to one of the sofas which was empty at the side of the room and sat down on it. He took a small bit out of his slice of cake: it was sweet, very, very sweet. The rich butter-cream icing stuck to the roof of his mouth. The cake’s sponge was soft, barely any texture to it. It should have been awful, disgusting tasting. But it wasn’t. It tasted so nice and rich… and he liked it! Quickly, he ate the rest of it, biting down on his slice of cake, enjoying its very sweet and sticky texture. Then it was gone. So, he lent back on the sofa.

Karaoke machine was turned on and Tallulah, the Healthcare Assistant, was the first to step up and start singing. She sang a Miley Cyrus song, a song Liam recognised. He wasn’t that interested in pop music - it was just something that played on the radio - but he recognised that song. Tallulah had a nice singing voice, clear and perfect in tune, but not very full. The microphone lifted her voice above the backing track of the Karaoke machine.

Emily and Nick finished singing their song, the one about a river with islands in it. When they had sung the same lines together, Emily’s voice disappeared under Nick’s strong voice. People clapped and someone cheered as Emily and Nick just stood there.

“There you are,” Ed’s voice cut into his thoughts as he dropped down on the sofa next to Liam.

“Where have you been?” Liam asked Ed, as he turned to face him. Ed was here and Ed was with him, at last.

“I was talking with Harper and Col. I thought I’d give you a chance to enjoy your party. The happy birthday and the cake and everything.”

“Oh… Right.”

“You didn’t enjoy it, did you?”

“I hate it when I have to be the centre of everything, the centre of attention. I’m much happier here.”

“But it’s your birthday?”

“Mum didn’t ever make much of my birthdays and… Well, I don’t see the point.”

“Just because your mum was a cow doesn’t mean you can’t even enjoy yourself.”

“I’m not enjoying myself.”

Ed glanced over at the Karaoke machine. Liam hadn’t a clue what was being sung, it was a pop song but that’s all he knew.

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Karaoke is pretty crap. My mum loved it and… she was crap at it too.”

“I’m happier just sitting here,” he told Ed.

“Yeah, I can see that.” Ed lent back on the sofa too, just sitting next to Liam. It was nice, just the two of them sitting side-by-side like this. He liked these moments with Ed, the two of them just being together.

“You’ll have to get used to being the centre of things when we get married,” Ed suddenly said.

“What?” Where had that come from? Why did Ed think they were going to get married? He didn’t think about life outside of the hospital. He couldn’t.

“They made gay marriage legal last year. Why shouldn’t we get married someday.”

“Yes, someday,” he replied. When was “someday”? He was sixteen now - was that day approaching?

The current Karaoke song ended and again people clapped but no one cheered. Then Janet’s voice called out, “Pearl! Come on - it’s your turn to sing!”

“All right! I’m coming!” Pearl replied as she stood up and walked the few paces to Janet and the Karaoke machine.

“What are you going to sing?” Janet asked her, as she held out the microphone to Pearl.

“I don’t need that,” Pearl said, meaning the microphone. “I’m doing the Queen of Soul, Miss Gloria Gaynor’s classic, I Will Survive.”

“I like that song,” Ed told him.

“I don’t know it,” Liam replied. The song sparked no recognition in him.

“You’ll like it - it’s great,” Ed told him.

Pearl drew in a large breath and then her voice filled the room, a rich and strong voice singing every note perfectly and holding everyone’s attention.

“Shit, she’s good,” Liam quietly said.

<><><><>

Liam wrote quickly. He had to get the words down on the page as quickly as he could, to get them all out of his head before he forgot them. The words for that essay leapt into his mind and he had to write them down.

Mrs Williams had him read George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Reading plays no longer felt awkward, as if he was reading only half or a third of a story, reading only the spoken words of that story. Now he could use his imagination and let it fill out the story, provide the images the script didn’t.

Pygmalion was a fascinating play. The language was overwritten in many places, but it was a hundred years old, and the language was certainly of the time. He did like the plot. On one level, it was the story of a very working-class woman being taught to pretend to be a Duchess. But on a deeper level, it was a play about education. The working-class woman was educated to such a high standard that she was on the same intellectual level with a Duchess. The education changed the woman - she was no longer a working-class flower seller, but neither was she a Duchess. What was she?

He liked the questions the play asked about education and the British class system, and he liked that the play didn’t end with a sappy romantic ending.

He lent back on his chair. He had finally finished his essay.

“Liam,” Pearl’s voice called across the room. He looked up and saw her standing just inside the doorway. “Time to go back to the ward.”

“Give me one minute,” he called back as hurriedly closed his workbook and pushed inside it all his loose pieces of paper where he had been writing his notes. He could polish this essay tonight and present it to Mrs Williams tomorrow.

“Come on, Birthday Boy,” Pearl called out, she was now stood just inside the room.

The Birthday Party had been Saturday, two days ago now, and he could forget about it. At least he’d been able to sit on the side-lines with Ed after the cake was all eaten.

He stood up from the table he’d been working at, picked up his workbook, and headed over towards Pearl. Before he was halfway there, the short distance to the door, Peter John appeared in the open door, calling out, “There you are, Liam.”

Peter John was one of the teachers in the Education Centre, though he’d give anyone a lecture if they called him “Mr John.” He was always casually dressed in jeans and a jumper or jeans and a shirt. That day he was wearing a dark red jumper, the bottom hem of which was damaged and beginning to unravel, with his usual faded blue jeans.

Liam guessed that Peter John was somewhere in his fifties, but it wasn’t something he could ask, or ask of anyone. Peter John was tall and his body still thin, though his clothes were always baggy and over-sized, but the man’s hair was white, not grey but white. He wasn’t bald: his hair was cut into neat and vaguely fashionable style. But being so white, Liam really didn’t know how old the man was. Peter John didn’t have a lined or old looking face. He did have a few lines at the corners of his eyes, but Peter John’s face wasn’t creased with age. Was the man’s hair much older than he was?

Peter John taught practical skills in the Education Centre - woodwork, metalwork, and IT - subjects that Liam didn’t take, so he was never taught by the man, but he knew who Peter John was.

“Yes,” Liam replied to Peter John. What else could he say?

“I need you to see something. It’s really important.”

“I need to get him back to the ward,” Pearl said.

“I’ll only take a tick,” Peter John told her.

“All right then,” Pearl said.

He and Pearl followed Peter John down the Education Centre’s single corridor to Peter John’s workroom at the end of it. He followed Peter John inside there.

Inside. he found Ed standing by one of the workbenches. But that wasn’t unusual, Ed spent a lot of his school time in here.

“I made it for you,” Ed told him, indicating the wooden sculpture on the bench.

Liam stared at it. Was it real? It was a wooden sculpture, life size, carved with fine detail. It was a wooden sculpture of his teddy bear, an exact copy of Mr Bear. The wood was so finely carved that he could see every twist and ruffle of Mr Bear’s fur, it looked almost as it would be soft if he touched it. It wore the same expression as Mr Bear, a sort of sad but still happy-to-see-you look. The sculpture was sat in the same position as Mr Bear did. It was an almost duplicate of Mr Bear, though he could clearly see it was made from wood.

“It’s Mr Bear,” Liam quietly said.

“I made it for you,” Ed said. “You weren’t enjoying your birthday coming up, so I made you something you’d like.”

“It’s beautiful,” he quietly replied.

“It’s amazing,” Pearl said. “It looks like a real teddy bear.”

“He’s really talented is, our Ed,” Peter John said.

He turned to Ed, who was smiling back at him.

“Thank you,” Liam told Ed and then he acted on instinct, not thinking about it. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Ed. A tight and close embrace, as Ed’s arms held him tightly too. He held onto Ed, to show Ed how much this meant to him. This was the best birthday present he’d ever received, not that he’d received many of them, but this one was made with such love.

Then he realised what they were doing - they were hugging in front of others - and a flush of embarrassment rushed up the back of Liam’s neck. He quickly broke their hug.

“I’ll get a bag for you, and you can take your present back to the ward with you,” Peter John said.

“Wait a minute,” Pearl said. “This will have to stay here until I’ve okayed it with Janet,”

“But it’s a fine piece of wood carving,” Peter John protested.

“It’s a big, heavy piece of wood. If we just turn up on the ward with it, Janet will go crazy at me. I’ll speak to her, and she’ll come and look at it. She won’t throw it away, not something as beautiful as that, but she has to decide where is best for it. She’s the Ward Manager.”

“If you say so, but Ed put a lot of work into this,” Peter John replied.

“Peter John, I’m not being the bad guy here. I can see a lot of work went into it, but I have to run it past Janet first. It’s not getting thrown in the bin, but Janet has to decide about it. That’s all.”

“If you say so,” Peter John said again.

Pearl shot him a strange look. Was she angry with the man? Was she disagreeing with Peter John? Had something annoyed Pearl? Liam couldn’t tell and the expression disappeared from her face so quickly.

“Come on Jonathan and David. I need to get you two back to the ward,” Pearl said, turning her attention to him and Ed. What did she mean, Jonathan and David? But Liam just nodded his agreement and followed behind her.

As he followed Pearl out into the corridor, Liam glanced over at Ed who smiled back at him.