“Do you have a local telephone directory?” Jean asked.

“Somewhere,” Miss Trevor replied, giving the overflowing desk a baleful glance. “It’s not usually like this,” she confided in a lowered voice. “We’ve got a bunch of interviewees coming tomorrow and I’ve just changed offices. Everything’s at sixes and sevens.”

“I won’t get in your way,” Jean promised. “I’m trying to track down someone who used to work here when it was a private clinic. I’m hoping she’s still in the area.”

The secretary had ducked under the desk and bobbed up again holding a slim yellow booklet with an air of triumph.

“I knew I had it somewhere. What name are you after? Goodness, this type’s small.”

Jean began to find her lack of confidence in even the simplest administrative task rather disarming.

“Halfyard,” said Jean. “There surely can’t be many.”

Miss Trevor stopped peeling through the pages. “Alice Halfyard? Well, I can tell you where she lives.”

“You know her?”

“She’s a friend of my mother’s. She lives on Wickfield Drive—the corner house. You can walk from here—it’s only a mile or so.”

“She used to be the head nurse at St. Cecilia’s?”

“Yes, that’s right. She worked here right through the war up until it closed.”

“I don’t suppose you know any of the other people who would have been working here just after the war?”

Miss Trevor shook her head. “No. I didn’t have any connection with the place until the school took over the buildings. I only know Alice because she was a friend of Mother’s. I used to call in myself once in a while after Mother died, but I’ve got out of the habit. I expect she’ll be glad of a visit. She’s had a rotten life really, but she was always happy to see me.”

The telephone started to ring again and so Jean was able to escape without hearing the detail of Alice Halfyard’s rotten life, which Miss Trevor looked all too eager to relay.

It was now midday, so Jean decided to postpone her trip to Wickfield Drive until the afternoon, on the basis that a former head nurse would surely have strict views on visiting times. She cycled back into town and sat on a bench overlooking the beach to eat her sandwich—Cheddar cheese and the last of the green tomato chutney from the previous year. It had to be made, and once made it had to be eaten, but it gave her no pleasure. I have measured out my life with preserving pans rather than coffee spoons, she sometimes thought.

Down below on the sand were encampments of deck chairs and windbreaks, tiny children toddling in the waves, parents sunbathing, old men with trousers rolled to the knee, a few brave souls jumping over waves. Jean longed to join them, but it would have to wait.

There was hardly a cloud in the sky, which was the deep blue of midsummer, and just the right amount of cooling breeze. Jean had thrown off her cardigan, exposing her winter-white arms to the sun. By evening they would be pink and prickling, and the V of skin revealed by her open-necked blouse would be a fiery red, but for the moment the heat was delicious and comforting.