‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,’ she reproached Dulcie. ‘You know she doesn’t have a fancy man. She has to go off and help her mother run the bakery. She’s managing it all on her own, and Beck’s worried that it’s too much for her.’ She pressed her face to the glass, peering into the darkness. ‘If you ask me, it’s too much for Beck, too, working here all day and at the bakery all night.’

‘She should close the place down, in that case.’ Dulcie stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

‘She’d never do that!’ Grace looked shocked. ‘You know how devoted she is to that place. Her father built it up from nothing, she wants to keep it going for him. Besides, she wants something for Edward when he comes home.’

‘That’s her problem, isn’t it?’ Dulcie shrugged, already bored with the subject. ‘So, do you think I should do it?’ she asked.

‘Do what?’ Grace said absently, still looking out of the window.

Dulcie sighed. ‘Be a bridesmaid, silly! Actually, I don’t think I will,’ she answered her own question.

‘Won’t Saunders be disappointed?’

‘Hardly. She won’t even notice, I’m sure, since she’s asked practically everyone in the set to be a bridesmaid. Honestly, there’ll be more bridesmaids than there will be congregation.’

‘She hasn’t asked me.’

Dulcie felt a brief stab of guilt. There she was, going on and on, not realising that poor Grace had been left out yet again.

‘You can take my place if you like,’ she said.

‘Oh, no, Saunders wouldn’t want that. Can you imagine it? I’d probably step on her dress and rip it, or drop my flowers or something!’

Dulcie looked at her friend’s open, smiling face. ‘You’re not that bad,’ she said. ‘I’d let you be my bridesmaid.’

A blush rose in Grace’s cheeks. ‘Gosh, thanks.’

‘Don’t get too excited. I’ll have to find someone to marry me first. And the way I’m going, I’ll probably be the last in our set to get engaged.’ Dulcie shuddered. ‘God, imagine if Trott got married before me. She’d be utterly unbearable, wouldn’t she? Even worse than she is already.’

She could hardly bear the thought of Trott’s smug face, grinning at her from under a wedding veil.

It was so galling, Dulcie thought. The only reason she had come to train as a nurse at the Nightingale was to find herself a wealthy doctor to marry. She had announced as much to the rest of the set the day she arrived.

And yet here she was three years later, with a nursing qualification but no ring on her finger.

And as Miriam Trott had so unkindly pointed out, it wasn’t for want of trying. Dulcie had no trouble getting men interested. It was keeping them that was the real problem.

In her agitation she jabbed herself in the finger with her darning needle and cursed under her breath.

‘It’s no good, I can’t mend these wretched things anymore.’ She threw down her sewing in defeat. ‘They’re already more darn than stocking!’