Albert sat by the bed, waiting. He had seen the doctors, who had simply accepted him as someone with Mrs Williams’s best interests at heart, and had told him quite enough to make him determined not to leave the hospital again until she had regained consciousness. Sister told him that they were now satisfied Mrs Williams had no internal injuries, but she had lost a good deal of blood and now she lay very still with tubes leading from various containers into her good hand. The ‘bad’ wrist had been stitched and rebandaged and her broken bones set, save for the ribs which Sister assured Albert would knit themselves, given time.

What worried Albert most, and he knew it worried the hospital staff too, was the fact that she had not yet recovered consciousness, though he had been immensely heartened when she had returned the pressure of his hand the previous night. But Sister was encouraging. ‘She’s strong and determined; I’m sure she’s just using this period of complete shutdown to help her to mend,’ she had said. ‘So you must not worry, Mr Payne, or she may become conscious that all is not well.’ She had smiled kindly at him, a fat, bustling little woman, always on the go, seldom sitting down for more than a few minutes at a time; a woman in fact very similar to the one now lying so still and silent in her hospital bed. For some reason this gave Albert the feeling that whilst Sister Bowen was on duty his dear Edie was in safe hands, though conversely, of course, it meant that when Sister Bowen went off duty and Night Sister appeared, Albert was reluctant to leave the hospital in case Edie took a turn for the worse.

So now he sat on the uncomfortable little bench, holding Edie’s hand and watching the slow drip drip as the blood transfusion made its way from the bottle into the back of Edie’s hand.

When he heard a soft tap on the door he was so surprised that he let go of Edie’s hand, for nurses and doctors bustled in and out without so much as a by your leave, and since it was only Edie who occupied the small room no one else had any reason to tap on the door. Albert went across with a finger already to his lips, but he had barely got the door open before Tess was clutching his hands, and he saw tears rolling down her white and frightened face.

‘Oh, Albert, I came as soon as I could,’ she whispered. ‘Poor darling Gran! Please may I see her, just to reassure myself that . . .’

But Albert had already stood aside to let her through and in seconds she was bending over the bed, her voice low but full of love. ‘Darling Gran, it’s your Tess; I’ve come home! You must get better, because we’re such a little family, just the two of us, and if one goes . . .’ But the figure in the bed had stirred. And even as Tess turned wildly towards Albert, Gran spoke.