Horrified, I leaned forward to peer down the row. They were holding the soldier’s limb up, the end of his trouser leg flapped for a moment, then concertinaed towards his knee exposing a mashed stump where his left ankle and foot should have been. I bit down on a scream before it escaped. It had started. The terrible injuries I would be expected to deal with, calmly, in my career as a nurse. Someone clutching a brown leather bag scrambled through the boat, which rocked violently again. When the man looked up, I recognised the surgeon.

‘Give me your belt, sailor,’ he said to one of the crew. ‘Keep the limb elevated while I stop the bleeding.’ He fastened the belt tightly around Perkins’s thigh, then he scrambled up to sit next to the priest. He thrust his fingers under the Corporal’s jaw and closed his eyes. After a moment, he shook his head. ‘He’s lost too much blood, I’m afraid he won’t make it to shore.’

After all we had been through and given what I had done, I could not accept that my patient was going to die. Outraged, I yelled, ‘No! Surely there’s something we can do? We can’t just let him die like this!’

‘He needs blood, miss, and he needs it right this minute.’

Right now, I would do anything to save the life of our poor Corporal Perkins.

‘Then give him my blood, I’m O, it does for everyone, doesn’t it, sir?’

He shook his head. ‘That’s very noble, but I don’t have the intravenous transfer equipment with me, miss.’

I remembered the two wide-bore needles, the glass tube and the rubber hose connecting everything together from my training days. ‘Please, there must be another way. What’s to stop you using a hypodermic syringe? Please try!’ I started rolling my sleeve up. ‘Please, sir, if he was your son . . . he is somebody’s son, we should at least try! My brother Arthur, if he’d had blood, perhaps he wouldn’t have died, sir. Don’t you see? Somebody could have saved him if only they had been brave enough. If only . . . oh, sir, you don’t know what that would have meant to my mother.’

He stared into my eyes for a moment, then he shouted, ‘Stop rowing!’

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

SHELLY

Greek island of Kea, present day.

THE TAVERNA OWNER BROKE INTO her thoughts. ‘Hello, lady. What you want, café? Where you from?’ He asked brusquely. His eyes swept over her dark hair, pale skin, and long legs.

‘England.’

‘Ah, is good, I am Makris. You like, frappé, Nes?’

‘Greek coffee, sweet, please.’ A strong coffee would set her up for a swim.

‘Kafé, glykó!’ Makris yelled towards a woman in the open kitchen. ‘You alone? Married? Why you here? Holidays?’

‘I’m tracing my family tree,’ she said. ‘Look, the ferry’s leaving already.’