Free Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French Page A

them near or on Silvia as discreetly as possible.
    She checks through the window to monitor the nurses’ attention, and seeing no sign of the eagle-eyed Winnie, she dives back into the Biba handbag and brings out a plastic exercise ball containing Betty’s granddaughter’s hamster, Justin Bieber. Although only two human years old, Justin is in fact about sixty-five in hamster years and can only do a certain amount of time in the exercise ball without expiring. He’s been in there today for about two hours now and is more than a little hot and sweaty. The hammy stench that comes out of the escape hatch when Jo unscrews the top of the ball is truly unpleasant, in an overheated rodent way. Jo doesn’t want to put her hand into the hole to extract him, so she turns the ball upside down, and along with lots of tiny torpedo poos andcage debris, the shrivelled hamster plops out on to the bed, landing on its back and appearing quite dazed.
    ‘Oh dear, come on, turn over. Lot of mess, just try to … clear that up.’
    Jo tries to straighten up the hamster by poking at it with her glasses and she attempts to wipe the mess from the bed. She only succeeds in making it all much worse, smearing the sheets with fresh hamster poo and causing the little creature to scuttle for safety somewhere behind Silvia’s neck, deep in the crevice of the pillows.
    ‘No, no, come on out of there. You’ve got to nestle up to her, not hide behind her, that’s no good. Come on.’
    Suddenly, the door opens. It is Winnie. Jo hides the ball behind her back.
    ‘Everyting OK?’ says Winnie, a little bit sternly.
    ‘Yes, yes, fine thanks. Just … brought Sissy a new … teddy … a bunnyteddy …’
    From where Winnie is, she can only see the outline of the furry toy. She is too busy to stop for long. Her checks with Silvia aren’t due just yet. And anyway, it’s best to do them when Jo is out of the way.
    ‘Oh. Dats nice. Real nice.’
    Winnie goes.
    ‘Right chaps,’ says Jo, addressing her zoo of two, ‘time for the last hope …’
    Once again, Jo plunges her hand into the Mary Poppinsbottomless bag and brings out a small Tupperware container with tiny holes drilled in the top. She’s not looking forward to this. She prises the lid off. Inside is a big curling leaf of ivy. Jo looks closer. The pet shop assured her they sold her one large Phasmatodea, a giant stick insect. It’s not the cuddliest of creatures, admittedly, but Jo thought that at least she might be able to leave this one in the room after she’d gone, clinging to the blind or something. Even if it only emitted one watt of insect healing power, surely that’s better than nowt? Jo is furious that she has left the pet shop with what appears to be a stack of leaves.
    ‘Damn!’ she hisses.
    The sudden breath of her exhalation wakes up the mighty twig creature who turns out to be the entire contents of the box. It is so surprised that it jumps out and directly on to Jo’s face, where Alien-like, it clamps on. Jo screams at the top of her voice and tries to wipe it off by flapping her arms around wildly. The giant knobbly creature is reluctant to leave its craggy new escarpment home but does a little clinging-on bouncy dance instead. It is positively showing off, wiggling its gnarly bottom over her nose.
    The screaming has summoned a couple of nurses, including Winnie, who, bat-like recognized Jo’s undulcet tones from further up the ward and flew down the corridor at a low stealthy efficient speed, to deal with the noisy crisis. WhatWinnie witnesses as she enters the room is difficult for her to decipher.
    Jo is shrieking and panicking, her arms flailing about dramatically. What seems to Winnie to be a small branch goes flying across the room, coming to rest on the side of Silvia’s face, just above her nasal tube. As Winnie approaches to remove it, a small rat-like creature darts out from behind Silvia’s neck and chomps down on the twig which appears to have sprawling