I was aware they were growing up. In time their old granny, in her fusty old home, would become less and less appealing. They’d be making their own way in life and it wouldn’t involve me.

I wished I’d died. I know that’s a sin even to think, but it was how I felt. I gave in to self-pity, felt a tear roll down my cheek.

‘I know you’ve been through the wars,’ the doctor said, his voice soft. ‘Finding that poor girl and now this. DI Bradley filled us in on everything. You must feel overwhelmed! But you’re strong, Elizabeth. You’re a legend around these parts, and you can and will get through this, and we’ll help you do it. The staff think very highly of you; after all, you were one of us for so long. So it’s our turn to give back to you now and take care of you as well as you took care of all the patients who came through your care here.’

He couldn’t have known I wasn’t crying because of how I felt physically – I was crying because I missed my daughter so badly that I didn’t think I could endure another day without her. And I was crying because I wasn’t a legend at all. I may have been a good nurse in my day, but that didn’t make me anything special. I was as flawed, if not more so, as anyone else.

I’d not done things right and I had a feeling all this could be karma catching up with me. I was reaping what I’d sown and I had no one to blame but myself.

‘Now, you get a good sleep, Elizabeth. You need to conserve your strength. Physio will be around later to have a little chat with you and no doubt your son-in-law will be in this evening, too. He’s very devoted to you, Elizabeth.’

The ward sister who’d been standing at the end of my bed watching the exchange nodded.

‘You’re lucky to have him. Now, Mrs O’Loughlin, looking at your file, I see your daughter, Laura, is listed as your next of kin.’ She spoke so softly, with a look of sympathy that everyone I’d ever spoken to about Laura had worn over the last two years. ‘Should we update it? Maybe to your son-in-law?’

I nodded. There was no point in updating it to anyone else. Michael was the closest family I had left. Everyone else had left me.

Chapter Forty-Four

Rachel

It didn’t make sense. What Michael was saying. I looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. My brain was processing his words but surely he couldn’t have really said what he did? Could he?