‘Why, hello again, Jasper. Can’t keep away from this ward, can you?’ she asks flirtatiously. Then she notices Amber. The nurse straightens up. ‘How can I help, Doctor?’

Amber looks from the nurse to Jasper and back again. Was she imagining it or was there something going on between them? She feels jealousy curl like a snake at the pit of her stomach. Silly really. It’s been ten years, after all. Jasper must have had many relationships since.

Jasper coughs, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘We’ve come to see the girl who was found on the beach.’

‘Ah yes, our Jane Doe,’ the nurse replies.

‘She’s not dead,’ Amber snaps.

The nurse’s face hardens. ‘I didn’t say she was.’

‘Amber found her,’ Jasper says quickly, trying to diffuse the tension. ‘She’d like to visit her.’

The nurse nods. ‘Right, well, come with me then.’

Luckily, the ward looks different from how it was ten years ago. New paintings on the walls. New beds. New curtains around the cubicles. Amber tells herself it isn’t the same one where she held her daughter as she died. It helps that there are Christmas decorations everywhere too, the staff wearing different items as nods towards the seasonal time of year: gingerbread tights, tinselled hair.

The nurse leads them to a cubicle at the end of the ward concealed by a blue curtain with fish shapes on it. She opens the curtain and peeks in with a smile. ‘We have a visitor for you, love.’

Amber walks in with Jasper, feeling bad she hasn’t brought anything. Grapes. A magazine even. The girl sits up in bed and smiles weakly. She looks worn out, even paler than earlier. A thick dressing is wound around her head and her thin arms stick out from a pale green smock.

‘You came back,’ she says when Amber walks to her bed.

Amber bites her lip. She should never have left. ‘Of course! I just needed to make sure I shut the shop properly, that’s all. How are you?’

The girl scratches at her dressing. ‘Confused.’

‘I presume Doctor Rashad explained about your injury?’ Jasper asks, looking at the clipboard at the end of the bed.

The girl nods. Amber sits down next to the girl’s bed and Jasper takes the seat on the other side. As he does so, Amber gets a flash of that night ten years before, one either side of Katy’s small bed, right in this very ward, one small hand in each of their hands.

Jasper catches Amber’s eye and she can tell he’s thinking the same.

He looks back at the girl. ‘So, any memories come back to you?’

The girl nods. ‘Little things. Like a man with a beard, a black beard. Curtains with robins on them.’ She scrunches up her covers in frustration. ‘But that’s it. That’s all I can remember.’