‘He’s just had his morphine. I’m trying to reduce his dose, but he gets so distressed. Poor man. I hadn’t realised that he didn’t know the extent of his amputation,’ she said hurriedly, sighing and holding her hand over her mask for a moment. ‘I guess he was so heavily sedated, it simply didn’t register when they told him.’ She stuck a thermometer in my mouth. ‘I have to report on your condition in five days. If your temperature goes down, they’ll probably pick you up in a week or so.’ She read the thermometer. ‘It’s over a hundred. You’ll be feeling pretty rotten.’

‘I am, but at least I still have two legs.’ We both looked at Perkins. His eyes had closed. ‘Will they send us back to England?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, to be honest. You might be picked up by a ship on its way to Lemnos. I’ve heard they’re awfully short of nurses. I’ll probably go there too. I’ve been meaning to ask, are you the woman who gave him blood in the lifeboat?’

I nodded. ‘I want to train to be a proper nurse, as soon as I can.’

‘Have you told anyone?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I am now.’

*

At sunrise, eight days later, I walked out of the school room. Weak, but deliriously happy to be back on my feet, I took myself to the old chest on the quayside and sat in peace, enjoying the wonderful view of the harbour and surrounding village. Although it was the first day of December, the air had a spring-like quality. The windows in square white buildings flashed gold, reflecting the rising sun. The day was fresh and still and made me feel oddly weightless. The bay, mirror flat and crystalline, and on the rocky seabed, hundreds of silver fish darting in and out of the green-brown sea grass. I moved to the edge and gazed into the water.

Instantly, my mind flashed back to the bay at home and the Sunday afternoons of my childhood, kneeling at the edge of the water with Sissy beside me. Mother’s voice calling, ‘Don’t let her fall in, Sissy! I don’t want her to get wet stockings.’ The sound of cork on willow as Father played cricket on the sand with Arthur. Mother spreading a table cloth and unwrapping paper parcels of sandwiches and pouring homemade lemonade. Later, Father and Arthur skimming stones and arguing about the number of bounces. Big white fluffy clouds. My wonderful childhood.

I looked up. There were no clouds here, and the sky was ten times bluer. How I wished dear Sissy could be with me.