If these thoughts had something strangely hard-hearted about them, Jane also knew that she had never needed Emmeline more than she needed her now. It was only to her aunt that she could reveal the dilemma she was in, certain to receive Emmeline’s calm wisdom on how her future might unfold.

Jane held herself very tall as she went in through the high doors of the hospital entrance. The long corridor which led to the room where Emmeline lay was deserted except for a thin woman kneeling on a slatted wooden board, scrubbing the stone floor with carbolic soap and a pail of grey water. As Jane walked by her she removed her coat, letting the woman see her white nurse’s gown beneath and the kneeling woman stared up at her in perplexity, as if she’d seen someone or something unearthly. Jane strode on. Feeling choked by the strong smell of the carbolic, she realised that her heart was beating very fast.

She entered the vaulted space she’d termed ‘the ante-room of death’. As before, it was empty of nursing staff and very dark, with all but one of the window shutters closed. She saw that a large wooden table had been placed between the two rows of beds and on this were laid out small bowls of junket, with, in each one, a stubby wooden spoon, such as one might give to a child to feed itself. Junket was a food Jane found repellent, but at least it was sustenance of a kind, indicating that the dying women were fed from time to time. She snatched up one of the bowls and made her way to Emmeline’s bed.

She was about to sit down beside her aunt and try to persuade her to eat some junket before she prepared her for the journey back to Tite Street when she looked down and saw that the person in the bed was not Emmeline: she was a small woman with a shrivelled forehead and tiny hands, like the claws of a little jungle animal.

Jane looked all around her, then walked slowly down the ward, examining the occupants of the iron cots – pale, startled faces, many scalps shorn of hair, bony fingers clutching at sheets or holding onto the iron bed-heads, as if to anchor themselves to what remained on their time on earth. When they saw Jane, one or two of the women called out to her, reminding her of the way the sick called to her at the Baths. These people did not call her ‘angel’. They did not know who this tall stranger could be, but only that she looked strong and that she was there, and not hiding from them, as the other nurses so often chose to do.

The crying out of the patients did at last bring forth a portly Matron, too fat for her uniform, cramming the last morsel of a jam tart into her cheeks. A few sticky crumbs came tumbling from her mouth as she shouted at Jane, ‘What in the world are you doing here? Did you come to steal the patients’ junket?’