But Gloria did not cry. Meeting Felix, somehow, stopped her from feeling sorry for herself – even though that was how she had spent much of her time since receiving her prognosis. It made her realise that she needed to dwell not on her death but on the life she had left.
So, in the end, it was Gloria who broke away from Felix. The station cat had gifted her however much time she needed – time that was hers to grant, even if she couldn’t stop the larger clock that was inexorably ticking down. Gloria sat with her for almost half an hour, gradually absorbing the magic of the cat, and when she stood at last and told Angela she was ready to go it seemed that Felix was not quite finished with her yet – not with this woman with whom she had felt such a deep connection.
For the station cat followed Gloria out on to the platform, keeping her steady eyes locked on her, as though she didn’t want to let Gloria out of her sight. She lay down on the platform and once more Gloria bent to stroke her. It was hard for her to do, because bending over took what little breath she had left in her damaged lungs, but she persevered for as long as she could, before she came upright again with a gasp, breathing deeply from the cannula running under her nose.
As she sat back, Angela noticed how tired she looked. Angie Hunte had now rejoined them and suggested that Gloria use the station wheelchair for the final adventure of the day: touring the station with all its Felix hidey-holes and secret spots that had been described in her book. Normally, Gloria was embarrassed to use a wheelchair, but the two Angelas made her feel so comfortable with the idea that she accepted their offer.
They took her all over the station, ending up at Billy’s bench in front of his memorial garden, where Felix had spent so many happy hours playing as a youngster. In the softly fading light of the summer evening, it made for a truly peaceful place.
‘How are you feeling now, Gloria?’ Angie asked her.
Gloria smiled. ‘I feel like royalty,’ she said gratefully. ‘You’ve treated me so well. I wasn’t expecting any of this. I don’t think I’ve ever been made to feel this special my whole life long. I can never thank you enough for giving me such a brilliant day to remember.’
Angie patted her hand. ‘It’s been our pleasure,’ she said. ‘We were glad to help.’
By now, it had been hours since Gloria had set off from her home in far-away Tiverton. The battery on her oxygen tank would soon need charging, and after all the excitement she found she felt exhausted. Though part of her wished she could stay at the station forever, she knew it was time to go home. She had come, and seen, and conquered her fears. There was just one thing left to do.
Her farewell with Felix, out on platform one, was as bitter as it was sweet. Sweet because she had finally met her and fulfilled her dream. Bitter because she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would probably never see her again. It was very hard to leave her. But, with a final, loving stroke, Gloria whispered her goodbyes.
As she waited for the train to take her back to York – she would again be travelling in first class, with the Angelas accompanying her – she had one final message for her hosts.
‘It’s been such a lovely experience,’ she told the women. ‘It’s been everything that I wanted – and more. And when the time comes,’ she went on, trying to retain that calm that Felix had given her, ‘I’m going to try my hardest to remember these moments.
‘This is what I want to remember at the end.’
25. Dream Come True
It was visits like Gloria’s, Angela Dunn thought, that summed up everything good about Felix. While some people focused on her staggering number of Facebook fans or the power of her ‘brand’, for Angela it was the near-miraculous, deep personal connections that Felix forged that made her special. Felix changed people’s lives. She saved some people’s lives. For Angela, that was what she was all about. And so it was a pleasure for her to help make people’s dreams come true. In that way, Angela was not just a lady-in-waiting: she had a whiff of fairy godmother about her too.
On 1 August 2018, she waved her magic wand once more …
She was working in the booking office that day, serving customers their tickets and dispensing information. It was another sweltering day so Angela wore a short-sleeved white shirt with her navy-and-purple TPE uniform, occasionally flapping the purple scarf round her neck in an attempt to cool herself down.
She glanced up as a blonde-haired mother and daughter approached her. The little girl was about five, wearing turquoise shorts, a pale-pink T-shirt and a nervous, hopeful smile. As she and her mum came up to the counter, the girl lifted a finger to her face and pushed her big pink glasses up her nose. Angela smiled down at her. She couldn’t help but notice that the little girl was wearing a skin-coloured patch stuck over her right eye, which had some kind of drawing on it. The railway worker asked the family how she could help.
‘Is Felix about today?’ the mother asked, somewhat wearily, as though she already knew that the answer would be no. She seemed unusually emotional to Angela, although it wasn’t anything too evident – more like a deep seam of sadness that had clearly touched both mother and daughter.
‘Bear with me a minute,’ Angela said brightly, always happy to go the extra mile. ‘I’ll just go and see if she’s free.’
Helen watched her walk away, feeling no hope that her little girl’s wish to meet Felix would be fulfilled that day. She and Eva had been coming to the station for the past eighteen months now in the hope of meeting Felix and they were still no nearer to success. With only one station cat, Felix’s time was spread too thinly to be able to accommodate meeting all her fans. All Helen and Eva had to show for their efforts was the framed postcard that still sat on Eva’s bedroom windowsill, next to the photograph of her late grandfather. Every morning, she said, ‘Good morning, Felix! Good morning, Grandad!’ and she bid them goodnight at the end of each day. But she’d never got to say hello to the station cat in person.
Helen glanced down at her daughter standing beside her in the booking office, her heart lurching to see the eyepatch stuck firmly over her good eye. This was a new development that the doctors had prescribed only the day before, and both she and Eva were still adjusting to it.
It had been a very sobering appointment at the hospital. The doctors had told them that the fabric patches Eva had been wearing for a limited time each day were not working. They had hoped that her bad eye, forced to work hard by being the only eye Eva was using, would have started to correct itself from its turned-in position by now – that her vision would have improved. But everything they’d tried so far had failed to work. The doctors confided that they now suspected her bad eye was never going to be any different. Eva, they said, was likely to go blind in that eye.
Helen couldn’t really process that bleak prognosis. She’d been focusing so much on helping Eva – encouraging her to draw so that she really used her bad eye; being diligent about following the specialists’ instructions – that she couldn’t compute that all their efforts seemed destined to fail.
The doctors said they wanted to try one last thing, a last-ditch attempt to try to save her vision: a permanent patch, changed daily, that she would have to wear all day over her good eye.
Eva, normally such a bubbly girl, was very upset about the idea. Her poor eyesight, to her, was normality, so she didn’t take in the ramifications of the wider prognosis. But she did understand having to cover up her good eye all day long. She knew other people didn’t wear patches and she became very quiet and down in the doctor’s office. It broke Helen’s heart to see her.