“She said you were good friends with another girl called Martha.”

“Oh yes, Martha. I wonder whatever happened to her. And Brenda.”

“You didn’t keep in contact with them when you left?”

“Not really. I always meant to. I did go and see Martha once, at her home in Chatham, but it was a long way and when you are back in the outside world other things come along to take up your time.”

“Margaret, for instance.”

“Yes. Everything changes when you have a baby.”

Hearing her name, Margaret perked up. “Is this the Strand?”

“Yes, darling.”

“If there’s time can we go to Simpson’s for lunch?”

Mrs. Tilbury laughed and squeezed the back of her daughter’s neck. “Of course we can’t. I’ve made you sandwiches and we have to get you back to school.” She turned to Jean. “Last year we came up to London for Margaret’s piano exam, and afterward we went to my husband’s shop and he took us out to Simpson’s for lunch as a special treat. Now Margaret thinks we should go there all the time.”

“Have you ever been to Simpson’s on the Strand?” Margaret asked.

“No, I never have,” Jean admitted. Eating out was something other people did. Over the years she had trained herself not to mind.

“I had roast beef and sherry trifle. I didn’t get drunk, though.”

“When all this is over I’ll take you there to celebrate,” said Jean impulsively and then regretted it.

Who knew how soon and in what way “all this” would be over, or whether there would be anything in the end to celebrate. And it was reckless to make promises to a child that might have to be broken. They never forgot.

“We’re not far from Daddy’s shop now,” said Mrs. Tilbury, coming to her rescue. She gestured vaguely off to their left. “Perhaps we can pop in and surprise him afterward if there’s time.”

“Can we?” pleaded Margaret. “Have you seen my daddy’s shop?” she asked Jean.

“Yes, I have, actually.”

“There’s a ring in the window that costs four hundred pounds.”

“Goodness. I hope he keeps it locked away.”

They had reached Agar Street now and Jean steered them toward a short flight of stone steps leading up to an anonymous wooden door. From the outside, the building looked more like a foreign embassy or a publishing house, but inside the marble lobby was that unmistakable smell, pungent and antiseptic, common to every hospital Jean had ever visited.

A signboard directed visitors to phlebotomy, pathology, X-rays, waiting rooms. A cleaner was working her way slowly down the wide staircase, plunging her string mop into a tin pail of disinfectant and twirling it into the corners before giving each tread a double sweep. There was something almost hypnotic in her rhythmical movements and the clang, slap, swish of mop and bucket. On either side of the corridor swing doors opened and shut with a faint “whump” of compressed air as nurses and orderlies came and went, moving silently on soft-soled shoes but with a tremendous sense of purpose and urgency. The patients, Jean’s party included, tended to walk with less certainty.