‘What are you doing, looking at this patient’s blood results?’

‘I’m not. I wasn’t.’

‘Are you not logged into this computer?’

She could see that I was. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Were you not using this computer?’

‘I was, yes. I only stepped away for a couple minutes.’

‘Are these not Mrs Fielding’s results?’

‘They are. But I wasn’t working on Mrs Fielding’s notes. I don’t understand how they got on my screen.’

‘This is a serious breach of patient confidentiality. You are a ward clerk. You have no business looking at this part of the patient’s file.’

I thought again of my bright orange journal and what would happen if Sister got her hands on that. ‘But I wasn’t. I really wasn’t.’

‘I won’t have this, Holly.’

Milly was hovering nearby. ‘It was me.’ Her cheeks were red. She was a terrible liar.

Sister was searching Milly’s face, guessing that she was covering for me, but she held back from accusing her of this. She shook her head in disbelief, but said, ‘Explain yourself.’

‘I needed to check Mrs Fielding’s INR,’ Milly said. ‘Holly’s computer was still logged in, so I used it to save time.’

‘You,’ Sister said, looking at Milly, ‘had better not use anybody else’s log-in again. And you,’ she said, looking at me, ‘had better be sure to log out when you walk away from your screen in future.’ She stomped off to her office.

‘I didn’t,’ I started to say to Milly. The words came out in a stutter.

But Milly just looked at me sadly, as if she didn’t believe it either. She put a hand on my cheek. ‘Go home, Angel. You’re on a half-day today and your shift finished two hours ago. You need sleep.’

I didn’t go to sleep. At least, not immediately. The winter sky was the colour of petrol as I crunched through frozen grass across fields, guided by my torch, then along the path towards my parents’ bench. I felt like a witch, walking beneath the cold new moon in Zac’s loose dark coat, seeming to engage in a ritual as the wind lifted my hair.

I crouched to extract the leak-proof and airtight container that Maxine had planted in the gorse three and a half months earlier. In my hand was a slip of paper on which I’d written the name Jacinda Molinero as well as Albert E. Mathieson’s details. I was so close to slipping it in, but I hesitated.

Again, I looked up at the moon, bone white and lighting my skin with her glow. We were supposed to have an affinity, given that I was pregnant, but there was no magic in that sky. The moon wasn’t going to start talking when she never had before.