She prompted a wink from a thirty-something man with an appealing, impish grin who was walking into the pub, and she smiled at the compliment. So she couldn’t be looking all that bad then. She felt like a waif, but she still had strength despite her physical fragility and, even if her ego had failed to notice recently, she raised high brows from low brows wherever she walked. She’d just been too ill and preoccupied to care.

As she neared the immense block that bounded the hospital she felt a sharp thrill: she was tempted to do something really naughty and not go in—like a child playing truant from school. All of her days were in a spin: time for her stood in a separate place outside the real world, so that she constantly felt like Alice falling the wrong way up the White Rabbit’s hole. Nothing seemed real, and she had to force herself to make a mental note of what day, what month, what time she was inhabiting. One hour blended with another; she’d gradually read her way through Wordsworth, J. M. Barrie, and some Schopenhauer—more books on a diversity of subjects than at any time in her life—to help her think deeply. The quilt she was patchworking slowly grew; but everything else seemed as though it happened in slow motion. Outside, there was a memory of another life; and just now she wanted to stay in the midst of that energy and not to return to her cloister. But that would be so unfair to the astonishing team of people who were looking after her. Attending one of the leading cardiothoracic hospitals in the world—one that was at the forefront of so much pioneering technology—she had expected to witness a vibrant performance of clashing egos and a polite lack of engagement with the seriously ill patients; but the opposite was true. Mr. Azziz was one of the most extraordinary people she had ever met, and however busy his surgeries or appointments, he frequently dropped in on her to chat informally, asking her dozens of personal questions and demonstrating real interest in who she was. Sister Cook was all business on the outside, but wonderfully personable once you knew her; and Dr. Stafford never left for the evening without calling in on her and sharing anything with the merest shade of humor that had happened in the hospital that day. With no real family of her own to speak of—and those few relatives she had far away in Sydney—they had adopted her and seemed committed to keeping her smiling as far as possible. They were so keen for her to recover, so determined that she would get through it. Self-doubt wasn’t allowed, they applauded her courage, and she absolutely couldn’t disappoint their faith in her.