The Butterfly Girls

by Anne Douglas

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Rose Burnett, Martie Stweart and Alex Kelsie grew up in the "Colonies", a housing development by the Water of Leith. Only Rose, a lawyer's daughter, did not belong. Still, when Alex and Martie both decided to train as nurses in Edinburgh, they're relieved to see Rose's friendly face- even if she is now Staff Burnett.

Whilst Martie is determined to escape the misery of her childhood and find a rish husband, Alex has more romantic dreams. She's had a crush on Rose's brother since they were children and is secretly excited when he's admitted to the hospital with a mild case of TB. But, though Tim Burnett finally seems to notice her, nurses in the 1950s are strictly forbidden from any personal development with their patients.

They all laugh when one of the patients nicknames them the 'Butterfly Girls' after the Butterfly wards they work on, but, as Rose points out, nursing is for keeping your feet on the ground, not flying. Alex is risking more than her heart in pursuing a relationship with Tom...

Release date: April 4, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

‘Two to the Jubilee, please,’ said the nurses.

They were young, fresh-faced, shaking raindrops from their capes. A morning lecture at the Infirmary had kept them late, they’d had to run through a shower for the tram. Had only just caught it, which was a bit of luck.

‘Might have missed our dinner,’ said Martie Cass, settling into a wooden seat beside Alex Kelsie, as the conductor pressed the bell and the tram moved off. ‘Such as it is. When are we going to get something decent to eat again? You’d think the war was still on.’

The Second World War had in fact been over for four years, but austerity was still with Scotland. There were still shortages of everything. Except, as Martie said with grim humour, TB cases. Always plenty of those.

The girls were in their second year at Edinburgh’s Jubilee Chest Hospital, both good friends, not just as colleagues. They had been brought up together in the Stockbridge Colonies, a little community of terraces by the Water of Leith, a mile or so from Princes Street, where their parents shared a house. It was perhaps not too surprising that both should have chosen nursing, but Alex had had a particular reason for wanting to nurse tubercular patients, and Martie liked to joke and say she was only in it for the extra money.

In fact, if it had been true, Alex wouldn’t have blamed her. Everyone knew that Martie’s folks, Sid and Tilda Cass, were a pair of skinflints, and that Martie, cheerful and outgoing, liked to spend, not necessarily on herself. Tall and strong, with honey-coloured hair and vivid blue eyes, she radiated vitality; she had been born to be generous. Looking at her in the tram that day, Alex thought again how life at home must have been for her an exquisite form of straitjacket.

Alex herself had loved her home. She had one brother, Jamie, who like her, had toffee-brown hair and eyes to match, and the pair of them had thrived in the atmosphere of home like loved and cherished house-plants. When everything changed and the cold wind of tragedy touched them, they had for a time withered, found it hard to recover. Jamie had gone into the army to do his national service and was now working with an insurance firm in Glasgow. Alex, as soon as she was eighteen, had followed Rose Burnett, a friend of hers and Martie’s, into nursing. And Martie, whether or not it was for the money, had followed her. Both were doing well and looking forward to next year and Finals, when with luck they should qualify as State Registered Nurses.

‘Then, who knows?’ Martie once said. ‘The world’ll be our oyster!’

‘The Jubilee’s my oyster,’ Alex had replied. ‘I’m staying put.’

The showers had become heavy rain by the time they reached the stop for the Jubilee.

‘Here we go!’ cried Martie, and they raced up the drive to the nurses’ home, a shabby old house, once part of a large estate that had been acquired for the original hospital many years before. In those days, the Jubilee had been almost in the country; now, it was surrounded by the city, its grounds a little oasis amongst stone and brick. Most patients were housed in large pavilions known as the butterfly wards because of their Y-shaped construction, though some slept in wooden chalets open to the weather. As fresh air was considered part of their cure, no one objected. Even on that cold wet November day, the two nurses could see a few brave souls walking round the lawns or digging in the allotments. Such activity after their long periods of rest in the wards gave them hope. And until the wonder drugs that everyone was talking about actually arrived, hope was mostly what the patients had.

‘Bet it’ll be mince again,’ groaned Martie, when she and Alex had changed from their wet things and made it to the nurses’ dining room. ‘And that rice pudding they make from grit. Or tastes like it, anyway.’

There was no mince, only rissoles, equally disliked.

‘What’s in ‘em?’ asked Martie, ‘we should be told.’

For pudding, there were small squares of pastry filled with strange jam. ‘No’ so bad with custard,’ remarked a probationer, which turned out to be true, so they had second helpings and cups of tea. By which time they had to be on their way again, hurrying to Butterfly Two.

‘Nurse Kelsie, Nurse Cass, may I have a word?’

Staff Burnett was coming down the corridor towards them, looking the very picture of crisp efficiency.

Alex’s heart lurched. She still thought of the staff nurse as Rose, as her friend who had skipped and played games with the children of the Colonies, even though she was not from the Colonies herself but Cheviot Square, which was so much more grand. It had taken a huge effort to accept her as someone quite different at the Jubilee, someone always ahead, a second-year nurse, a third-year nurse, and now a staff nurse. Someone who must be called Staff and not Rose, who, in spite of always being there to help and advise, held Martie and herself at arm’s length, because that was the way it had to be.

‘Oh, Lord, what have we done now?’ whispered Martie.

Alex, racking her brains to think, tried to find a clue in Rose’s expression. But she was only looking her usual striking self: oval-shaped face pale, dark eyes steady under distinctive brows, black hair shining beneath her cap. Rose had always been more than pretty, even as a child, perhaps because the seriousness of her nature added the dimension of beauty. This was not something Alex could ever have put into words; she just felt it and knew others felt it too. Dr Chris Maclnnes, for instance, though it was said Rose never gave him the time of day.

‘You’re on your way to Two?’ Rose glanced at the watch pinned to her uniform. ‘I won’t keep you a moment.’

‘We’re no’ late,’ Martie said quickly. ‘But we were held up at the lecture.’

‘Oh, yes, the lecture – physiology and hygiene, wasn’t it? Find it useful?’

‘Very. We enjoyed it.’

‘Good.’ Rose hesitated. ‘There’s just something I wanted to tell you. My brother is to be admitted to the Jubilee next week. He has a small shadow on his left lung.’

Martie’s jaw dropped. Alex’s hands at her sides tightened. Neither spoke.

‘I know it’s years since you’ve seen him,’ Rose went on. ‘He had to go into the RAF when he left school. But you remember him, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Alex.

‘When he came back from the war, he went to university to read law, felt a bit unwell lately, had tests.’ Rose paused again. ‘Now he’s coming here.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ Alex said softly.

Rose gave her a long dark look. ‘The prognosis is good, he should make an excellent recovery.’

‘So, what’s wrong for you?’ asked Martie with her usual bluntness.

‘It’s my opinion he shouldn’t be coming to the Jubilee at all.’ Rose shrugged. ‘But you can see how it is. I’m here and my mother thinks I can give him special care.’

‘Only natural, Staff.’

‘Maybe, but it’s not possible and the truth is he should be going somewhere privately. It’s difficult to get to Switzerland at the moment, but he could have gone to the Highlands. I could have given him a list of places…’

Rose’s voice trailed to a halt and she looked away, her eyes sombre. It seemed to them that they had never seen her so dispirited. This was not the Rose they knew of old, or the efficient Staff Nurse Burnett.

Suddenly she moved, snapping smartly back into her professional role. ‘Time you two were on duty. It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have kept you.’ With trembling fingers, she adjusted her cap that was perfectly straight.

Alex cleared her throat. ‘Thanks for telling us about your brother, Staff. We’ll look out for him.’

Rose gave an uncertain smile. ‘Yes, well, remember, no special treatment required!’

They watched her walk swiftly away down the corridor, her nurse’s shoes tapping, her back straight, her head, as always, held high. The nurses’ eyes met. Martie gave a long low whistle.

‘What do you make of that, then? Poor old Tim.’

‘Come on, you heard what Staff said, we’re due on the ward.’

‘How about Staff, though? I mean, talking to us like that! She’s never said a word before that wasn’t to do with work. Shows how she’s feeling.’

‘Shows she’s human. Needs someone to talk to, just like everybody else.’

‘And we knew her brother.’

‘We never knew him well.’

‘Might have liked to, eh?’

Alex made no reply, but hurried on down the corridor, her cheeks rather red.

Butterfly Two, a men’s ward, was quiet. It was the rest period, which every patient must strictly observe, and all in the different parts of the pavilion were lying motionless on their beds, eyes closed, systems shut down, in order that their lungs might have as little work to do as possible. While Martie conferred with Jill Berry, waiting to go off duty, Alex trailed in a wheelchair for Kenny Skene, who was to go to X-Ray.

He was from a slum tenement in the Old Town, only seventeen, cheeky and bright. It had taken several baths to cleanse him when he had first been admitted and his head had been almost completely shaved, but now he was scrubbed and rosy in hospital pyjamas, his ginger hair growing again and his eyes full of mischief. No one had told him how ill he was; all he knew was that he must lie in bed and do nothing, and he never complained.

‘Come on, Kenny,’ said Alex, holding his dressing-gown. ‘Time to go for a ride.’

‘Hallo, butterfly girl,’ he whispered. ‘Are you no’ gorgeous?’

She was smiling as she pushed him along to X-Ray. It was silly, to be pleased with a name, eh? But Kenny called all the nurses butterfly girls, because they were beautiful, he said. Because they could fly away from the butterfly wards, and he could not. Because they were free.

Ah, Kenny, thought Alex, you can never tell who’s free.

Lying sleepless in her little room that night, Alex didn’t feel that she was free. Not locked as she was in her thoughts. In her memories. As the autumn wind howled round the old house and she shivered under her thin blankets, Tim Burnett’s fourteen-year-old face kept surfacing in her mind. The more she tried to block it out, the clearer it became, though she hadn’t thought of him in years. It was hearing his name that had brought him back, had brought everything back. Not just that silly time she’d fallen in love with him and endured such terror in case Martie found out and laughed, but all her childhood when she’d been happy. For in spite of sometimes crying into her pillow because Rose’s brother didn’t know she existed, in spite of worrying about Martie, she had been happy. Ma had been alive.

Looking back, she knew that they’d all been happy because of Ma. She was the one, plump and serene, who’d held them all together, listening, soothing, quietly doing her chores or sitting crocheting while Arthur Kelsie did his recitations. Alex could see her father now, short and strong, prematurely silver-haired, snatching up the poker, ready to declaim—

‘ “Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward ma hand? Come, let me clutch thee.”‘ He lowered the poker to look at his audience. ‘ “I have thee not and yet I see thee still …” Are they no’ grand mysterious words, Letty? Do they no’ send a shiver down your spine, thinking o’ that fellow seeing a dagger that’s no’ there?’

‘Aye, they do,’ her mother answered, her crochet needle spinning along with thread and the lace appearing like magic on the cloth she was edging. ‘Is that Macbeth, then?’

‘Letty, Letty, it’s the Scottish play! Never, never say – you ken what. If ma dad had heard anybody say that—!’ Arthur rolled his hazel eyes. ‘Well, he was an actor, you ken, at the Royal Lyceum—’

‘Sceneshifter,’ whispered Jamie, laughing, and Alex remembered laughing too, because they’d heard it all before. All about Dad’s father at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, who might or might not have been a great actor, or might just have made the tea. Anyway, it was true that the poor man had dropped dead of a heart attack in the wings and that Dad had had to leave school and help his mother. He always said he’d been wasted as a factory tool-maker, he should have been on the boards, should have been a household name by now.

As it was, he hadn’t even been able to buy his home in the Colonies but had to rent, unlike Sid Cass on the lower floor, who only worked behind the counter in Dowie’s Grocery, though it was true nobody could slice bacon thinner than Sid, or weigh out carrots closer to the nearest ounce. Never a fraction over for the customer, if you got Sid to serve you, and it was no’ even his shop! Somehow he’d saved up the deposit to buy, though, and it had always been the aim of the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company, who had built the original Colonies, that ordinary folk should be able to buy their own houses and have a bit of garden.

From a grand idea, they had produced a well worked-out scheme back in the 1860s, even arranging affordable loans for working men, but they hadn’t been able to keep the ownership principle going. Over the years sub-letting and renting had come in, which suited Arthur Kelsie. He and Letty had been able to take the pleasant little house in Mason Street and if they had to have Tilda and Sid Cass below, at least those two scrimps were quiet because they wouldn’t buy a wireless and always went to bed early to save the light. Poor old Martie, though!

‘Och, you’d think her folks would give her something better than socks and vests for her Christmas!’ Letty would exclaim indignantly, and always invited the Casses in for Hogmanay, to make sure that Martie had a good time.

Alex could still remember the first time she and the other Colonies girls had met Rose. They’d been skipping, with Martie as usual always stumbling on Rich Man when they played ‘who shall I marry?’ Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggarman, Thief. It was always Rich Man for Martie.

‘Martie, you did that on purpose!’ the girls had all screamed.

‘I didnae! I didnae!’ Martie screamed back, and what could you do? She went to church in a carriage, of course, not a wheelbarrow, and her wedding dress was silk, not cotton, but when they complained she only tossed her head and laughed.

‘It spoils the game if you dinna play fair!’ Jackie MacAllan had said earnestly, and they’d all been arguing when a tall dark-haired girl wearing St Clare’s school uniform came down the Archangel Steps towards them.

‘May I play?’ she asked.

They’d been struck dumb. They didn’t know her, she wasn’t from the Colonies, who was she? Her name was Rose Burnett, she told them, and she lived in Cheviot Square at the top of the steps. Oh, yes, they all knew Cheviot Square. Big tall houses, maids to clean the brass, a garden in the middle with trees and lawns where you could sit.

‘Why’d you want to play with us?’ asked Martie, studying Rose’s good shoes and wrist watch, her middle finger stained with ink.

‘I was doing my homework and heard your voices,’ Rose answered. ‘I thought I’d come down, see if I could join in.’

‘Are there no folk from your school up there?’

‘No, there’s no one.’

‘You know how to skip?’

‘Of course!’

‘How about playing Giant Steps and Baby Steps?’

‘I don’t know that one.’

‘That’s Martie’s favourite because she likes giving us orders,’ Jackie explained. ‘You all stand at the kerb, you ken, and try to get across the street, and the girl who’s it tells you to take big steps or little steps, or do a banana slide, or something like that, and if you start crossing when her eyes are shut, you go back to the beginning!’

‘I’ll play that!’ cried Rose.

She did and she won. That was the start of her coming down regularly, playing all their games, joining in as if she was a Colonies girl, born and bred. It didn’t seem to make any difference that her father was a lawyer, or that her mother played bridge every afternoon and never did a hand’s turn, Rose was just one of them. Unlike her brother. They saw Tim Burnett sometimes, when he came to call Rose home, but he never stayed. Rose said he had his own friends to meet from the Academy; it was understood he wouldn’t stay. Whether he did or not, was of no interest anyway to Alex, she hadn’t been in love with him then. That had come later, one summer afternoon in 1939, she could never understand why. What after all was different about him? But it was as though he had stepped that day from shadow into light. As though she was seeing him for the first time.

They hadn’t been at school, it was the holidays. The grown-ups had been talking about the war but the children never listened. It meant nothing to them, all they knew was that they were finished with school for four lovely weeks. No more standing on the form if you got your sums wrong! No more strap if you were caught talking! Off streamed the boys to play Kick the Can or Tig, or Ginger Man, which involved knocking on doors and running away, and Alex just hoped that Jamie wouldn’t get caught by the polis, or some cross house-owner. The girls, too, were out, ready to play – those who hadn’t had to go for the messages for their mothers, or look after younger children at home. Alex might have had to do that, for she had once had two little sisters, but they had both died in infancy.

‘Aye, they were only lent, the poor wee things,’ her mother would sometimes sigh, and her brown eyes would fill with tears. ‘But I’ve got you and Jamie, Alex, I’m lucky, eh?’

And Alex would put her arm round her mother’s plump shoulder and kiss her soft cheek.

That day they had really exhausted themselves, Rose as well, playing one game after another, with only a break for their dinners. Finally they were too tired to do anything but sit on the Archangel Steps, where they got in the way of passers-by, who were all talking about the war. Rose seemed to know a lot about it. She said her dad had said Hitler was spoiling for a fight, and that if there was a war it might go on for years. Then her brother would have to go.

‘And Jamie?’ asked Alex, in alarm.

‘Och, no’ Jamie?’ whispered Martie, whose blue eyes often followed Jamie tearing round the streets.

‘They say they’ll need women this time,’ Rose answered calmly. ‘If they do, I’d like to be a nurse. I think I’d like to be a nurse, anyway.’

‘No’ a bad idea,’ said Martie. ‘I might be a nurse, too.’

At which they laughed, because Martie was always saying she wanted to marry a rich man. How could she be a nurse as well?

‘Maybe I’ll meet a rich doctor,’ retorted Martie, laughing herself, then turning to look up the steps, because Tim Burnett was there and calling to Rose.

He came slowly down towards them, smiling agreeably, a lanky, fair-haired boy in cricket shirt and flannels, telling Rose in a voice like hers, more English than Scottish, that she was wanted at home. Their mother had come back from bridge early and needed Rose to help with their packing. Had she forgotten they were going to Aberlady tomorrow?

Alex never heard what Rose’s answer was, or what else Tim Burnett said, but that was the mysterious start of it. The light around Tim, the arrow in her ten-year-old heart, the fear that she would never see him again, the sorrow that he didn’t even know who she was and wouldn’t care if he did. Worst of all, maybe, was keeping it all hidden, from Martie, from Jamie, from her mother. There were the sleepless nights with the tears and sniffs, and strange looks from Ma, who never actually said anything, the walks round the square after the Burnetts had come back from holiday, always hoping he might appear.

When she did see him again, it was worse, really, than not seeing him, because those times when he came looking for Rose, or stood watching the boys play their games, never offering to join in, only made it more clear to her that he didn’t know she existed. He was very well-mannered, always smiled and answered politely if anyone spoke to him, but those grey eyes of his never rested on anyone in the Colonies for long. Never rested on her at all. Or, at least, she didn’t think so, but never actually had the courage to look. Sometimes she would order herself to be one of those who spoke to him. ‘Go on, you daft thing, say something – ask him what it’s like at his school – ask him what he’ll do if there’s a war – anything!’ But she was only just beginning to believe she might find the courage to do that, when he disappeared, and for good. Had gone to boarding school, Rose said, somewhere safe, up north, her mother’s idea. Rose might be going away to school, too.

‘And we’ll never see you again?’ asked Alex fearfully.

‘Of course you will! There are holidays, aren’t there?’ But though they did see Rose in the holidays, they never saw Tim. The strange thing was, it no longer mattered. Alex’s love had suddenly died. Just went out, like someone switching off a light, switching off that light round Tim. She could pinpoint when it happened. Having breakfast, scraping out the marmalade jar. Feeling happy, as though released. From Tim Burnett? She was already on her way to forgetting him.

But she was remembering now.

Rose was off duty, spending the afternoon at her parents’ house with Tim, who was due to enter the Jubilee next day. They were in the upstairs drawing room, Rose by the elegant chimneypiece where a fire was burning, Tim stretched out on the sofa, his hands folded on his chest, his feet crossed. He was now twenty-four years old and handsome, with pale straight hair and regular features. Though he had lost weight recently and his eyes were sometimes anxious, he was remaining resolutely cheerful.

‘Do I look like a Crusader?’ he called to Rose. ‘You know, on a tomb? Don’t they have their feet crossed, like mine?’

Rose laughed, but he sensed the strain she was trying to conceal.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t mention tombs? In the circumstances?’

‘Oh, Tim!’ She shook her head and sighed, and he thought how young and vulnerable she seemed out of uniform, with her dark hair loose on her shoulders. Perhaps she was always vulnerable. Perhaps that was something else she had to conceal. They were both good at concealment, he and Rose.

‘I wish you didn’t mind so much,’ he said, getting up to stand by the fire and look down at her. ‘I mean, about my coming to the Jubilee. It doesn’t help, you know.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you can afford to go elsewhere, and there are so many people in Edinburgh who can’t.’

‘You’re really annoyed with Mother, aren’t you?’

Rose shrugged. ‘She’s just being Mother, as usual.’

‘It’s only natural she’d want me somewhere close at hand, where she could visit, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but can’t you see that apart from anything else it’s very awkward for me? Everyone will know you’re my brother and they’ll be watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do.’

‘Expecting you to slip me cigarettes and whisky or something?’ Tim smiled and flung himself back on the sofa. ‘They know you, Roz. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of you doing anything you shouldn’t.’

‘Just don’t play up, Tim, that’s all. Just do as you’re told.’

‘You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to embarrass you. I only want to get well.’

Rose lowered her eyes. She had heard those words so many, many times before, sometimes from those who never would be well. Hearing them now from Tim made her catch her breath with fear.

‘That’s all I want, too,’ she said quietly. ‘But, please, try not to worry. I know you’re going to be all right. You’ll be out of the Jubilee in six months, I promise you.’

‘Six months,’ he repeated stonily. ‘Oh, God.’

They had been sitting for some time in silence, watching the afternoon darken and the lights coming on in the square, when the door opened and a large grey cat strolled in, followed by Mrs Burnett, struggling with the weight of a loaded tea tray.

‘Isn’t it ridiculous?’ she gasped. ‘No maids now. Only girls in to clean, so I’ve everything else to do. Rose, dear, help me to set this down, please. No, no, Tim, you stay where you are, I forbid you to move. You’re supposed to rest all the time, isn’t that so?’

‘According to Rose I’ll be flat on my back for months.’

‘Maybe only a few weeks to begin with,’ said Rose, taking the tray from her mother and setting it on a small table. She stooped to pick up the cat and hugged him close. ‘Hallo, Smoky Joe, you darling! Have you missed me? He does miss me, you know, he’s like a dog, he counts us all.’

‘He’ll miss me tomorrow, then,’ Tim said lightly and Sylvia Burnett, pale and dark-haired like her daughter, gave a little cry.

‘I can’t bear to think of tomorrow, Tim, I really can’t! It’s like a bad dream. I keep thinking I’ll wake up and feel so glad it’s not true!’

‘Tim’s going to get better, Mother,’ Rose said patiently. ‘His case is not serious, he’ll be well in no time. And he’ll have the best of care at the Jubilee.’

‘Exactly!’ Her mother’s dark eyes flashed. ‘And you didn’t want him to go there, Rose!’

‘Let’s not go into all that again,’ said Tim, biting into a buttered teacake. ‘Listen, what are the doctors like? And the nurses? Any pretty ones?’

‘The doctors are excellent.’

‘Especially Chris,’ put in Mrs Burnett. ‘Chris Maclnnes, Tim. You know I play bridge with his mother?’ She gave a meaningful glance at Rose. ‘Joan says he’s very fond of you, dear.’

‘As for the nurses,’ Rose went on, coolly disregarding her mother’s remark, ‘they’re the best. Completely dedicated. Actually, you might remember two of them. Girls I used to play with in the Colonies.’

‘And why you ever wanted to go down there, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Burnett. ‘I was always very worried about your playing in the street.’

‘All children like playing in the street, Mother.’

‘Why would I remember these girls?’ asked Tim. I never went skipping with anybody.’

‘They remember you, they did meet you. One’s called Alex Kelsie, the other is Martie Cass. You’ll call them both Nurse.’

‘Did you say they were pretty?’

‘It doesn’t matter what they look like, they’re both good at their jobs. Alex Kelsie is particularly keen to help TB patients. Her mother died in the Jubilee.’

‘Poor woman,’ whispered Mrs Burnett, giving Tim a frightened glance.

‘Oh, look, her case was quite different from Tim’s,’ Rose said hastily. ‘She had miliary TB – that’s when the TB gets into the bloodstream. Tim has only a small shadow on one lung; he’ll be gardening in no time.’

‘Gardening?’ cried Mrs Burnett. ‘Is that considered part of the cure?’

‘Rest is the cure, rest and fresh air.’

‘And what about these new drugs? Joan Maclnnes said Chris had been talking about them.’

‘They’re not available here at the moment, and it will be years before they are. It’s not sure if they work long term, anyway.’

‘But Joan said they’d tried them in America. If it’s a question of money, Rose—’

‘Even if you managed to buy them, there’s no guarantee they’d be right for Tim. Let’s just leave it to the doctors to decide what’s best.’ Rose stood up. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I don’t think I can wait to see Daddy.’

‘He’s here,’ said Tim. ‘I can hear him on the stairs.’

A moment later, Mr Burnett came into the drawing room, an older version of Tim, with fair hair receding and horn-rimmed spectacles. As he set down his briefcase and Smoky Joe weaved around his ankles, purring like an engine, Rose went to kiss him and he folded her in his arms.

‘How’s my favourite daughter?’

‘Very well, Daddy. Just looked in to brief Tim about tomorrow.’

Mr Burnett looked over Rose’s shoulder at his son. ‘All set then, Tim?’

‘All set, Dad.’

‘Sit down, dear, I’ll make fresh tea,’ said Mrs Burnett.

‘I’ll put the kettle on for you before I go out,’ Rose told her. ‘Daddy, I’m sorry, I have to dash, I want to be back for six.’

‘There’s no need for you to walk!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘I’ll ring for a taxi.’

‘It’s no distance.’

‘No arguments!’

As Mrs Burnett hurried out, Rose hugged her father again, then kissed Tim’s cheek.

‘See you tomorrow, Tim. Remember what I said.’

‘I’ll be as good as gold, Roz. You’ll be proud of me.’

‘I know I will.’

Dark thoughts held her mind in the taxi taking her back to the nurses’ home. It was true that Tim’s case was mild and she had probably been right to tell him and her parents not to worry, but as a nurse she knew that mild cases didn’t always stay mild. It all depended how well he responded to treatment, how well he cooperated. At least, he had given up smoking!

By the time she was back in uniform and busying herself with the medicine trolley, she was feeling better and even beginning to wonder if after all it was best to have Tim under her eye. She would see that he followed the regime to the letter and that should do it. He would be out of the Jubilee in six months, as she had promised.

‘Rose, you’re back!’

She looked up to find Dr Chris Maclnnes beside her trolley, looking down at her with eager eyes. He was a broad-shouldered, ex-Rugby player, who had lost