I couldn’t speak, and it was so like her to do what she did next. She didn’t say another word and as though it were the most natural thing in the world she walked over to me and hugged me. Such an instinctively kind thing to do, I’ve never forgotten it. I cried and cried until the shoulder of her white coat was sodden and bit by bit she got it all out of me.

‘Beth, I’m so very sorry,’ she said, and I could tell that she was. Someone tried to come in but she put her foot against the door and said in a grand sort of voice, ‘This one’s taken, thank you very much. Try the next one!’ and then she winked at me and I laughed. She talked so much sense that morning, she was so gentle and comforting. ‘Listen, my love,’ she said, ‘I know things feel very, very bleak right now, but you will be a lovely mum one day, I know you will. You’re still so very young. In a year, or two years, things will look different, you’ll see.’ The words would have sounded like platitudes on anyone else’s lips, and I suppose they were, but nevertheless they did help because I could tell she meant them, and having someone like her saying them did make me feel less hopeless about it all.

After that day, whenever I passed her in the wards, or saw her in the canteen or the tea room or whatever, she would make a point of stopping me, to ask how I was and put a hand on my arm. It was nice, supportive – I didn’t feel any better about my situation, but I did feel less alone.

And then something entirely unexpected happened that solidified our friendship – or our connection, I suppose you’d call it – even further. Because I had grown used to looking out for her, taking special notice when she was on shift at the same time as me, a few months later when I was back on the paediatric ward I noticed a change in her. She’d always taken such good care of her appearance – beautifully cut and coloured hair, lovely make-up, nice clothes – but suddenly she seemed to let herself go entirely. She’d turn up to work looking haggard and ill, her clothes crumpled, her face lined with tiredness, as though she hadn’t slept in days. There was clearly something very wrong, but I felt too shy to ask – it would have seemed too forward, I think.

A few weeks later, however, I came across her in the Ladies. I was washing my hands at the sink when she came out of one of the cubicles, her eyes red and raw as though she’d been crying. ‘Oh,’ I said before I could stop myself, ‘Rose, are you all right?’