Sarah nodded. ‘That’s why I’d like to stay. I can’t bear to think he might die alone.’

The girl nodded her understanding before going quietly to tend to another disturbed patient who was crying out for someone called Billy. Sarah marvelled at her strength of mind to be able to cope with such tragedy surrounding her day after day.

Sybil and Jane came to sit with her for a while, and then took it in turns to bring her something to eat and drink – although she wanted neither. A couple of hours later, Sarah realised they were both in shock at seeing Philip in such a bad way, and in the end she couldn’t bear to see her mother’s distress, and ordered them both to go back to the bungalow to rest.

Sarah sat by Philip’s bedside through the long reaches of the night. She whispered to him, hoping he would hear her, and gently squeezed his hand, wanting a reaction, but he slept on.

As one of the nurses opened the window shutters and Sarah saw the first pearly grey of a new dawn and heard the birdsong, Philip opened his eyes and seemed to look straight at her.

‘Philip,’ she said urgently, clutching his hand. ‘It’s me, Sarah.’

He made no reply, closed his eyes, and with one last ragged sigh was taken from her.

22

Sybil was distraught by Philip’s passing coming so soon after hearing of Jock’s death, for it emphasised all that was lost. The energy she’d once had seemed to drain from her, leaving her listless and unable to face the bustle and noise of the orphanage.

The others rallied round her, but Sarah found that her mother’s collapse was too difficult to cope with as she battled with her own emotions, so she returned to her work at the hospital.

She didn’t really know how to feel, for one minute she was crying for her father, the next mourning the man she’d once known as Philip Tarrant, but who had become a stranger. And then there was the guilt of having betrayed him by loving another man – and the awful sense that she should have felt more than profound pity for him as he’d lain there dying.

Her thoughts and emotions were so complex and painful that she found it impossible to talk about them, even to Jane, who might have understood what she was going through. For how could she explain the terrible void that had opened up in her life? How to admit that despite everything, she longed only for Delaney – to hear his voice, see his beloved face and feel his arms about her? And how could she ever accept that he was gone from her life just as surely as her darling father, and there would be no second chance to put things right between them? Her future stretched emptily before her, leaving her lost and very much alone.

Sarah knew her mother would be shocked to the core if she’d had even an inkling of her true feelings, and the redoubtable and ultimately practical Elsa would probably have told her to pull herself together. Amah was a sad, gentle presence, who’d tried to comfort her and get her to talk about her troubles – but she would never have understood, so Sarah kept all the anguish inside, escaping to the hospital office where she had little time to think of anything but her work.