Mary Kate looked at the nurse she had vaguely known as a girl on a farm back home and if she could have, she would have hugged her. Then she turned and fled the ward before she broke down in tears.

By the time she arrived home, what with waiting for the tram and then the bus, she had just the hour to eat and get back to the ward. The pressure of this routine was beginning to take its toll. She pulled the woollen scarf Mrs O’Keefe had knitted her last Christmas away from her throat and her fingers momentarily caressed the emerald heart and her velvet ribbon. Then she looked over at Joan and Mrs O’Keefe and managed what passed for a smile.

‘I do have some good news, though. Matron has said that from tomorrow I don’t have to come back home in the afternoons. She’s going to move Nicholas into the side room near to the office so that I can stay between afternoon and evening visiting and I won’t have to rush home and leave him at all during the day.’

Hearing that, Mrs O’Keefe’s own eyes stung with tears of gratitude at the kindness of Matron.

‘The nurse who is sitting with him is an angel. Dana Brogan. She does the clinics with Dr Gaskell, she told me, and she knows Nicholas, God love her.’ Mary Kate removed her coat, placed it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and dragged it closer to the fire to dry out.

‘Here, let me do that,’ said Mrs O’Keefe. ‘You get upstairs and wash the hospital off your hands.’

Mary Kate pulled the pin out of her wet felt hat and laid it on the range shelf. ‘She’s from near to home, Nurse Brogan is. She’s older than me, but Daddy knows the Brogans from Belmullet – we all do. We buy from him and her daddy is a farmer. I remember going in the van with Daddy to their farm and she was always there. She’s just lovely. She told me that sometimes, when Nicholas is asleep and she talks to him, he thinks it’s me because we sound the same, because we have the same accent! Imagine that – someone who knows my whole family being on the ward and looking after him. She said she won’t leave his side until I get back tonight.’

Mrs O’Keefe circled her arm around Mary Kate’s shoulders. Her words came tumbling out, as fast as her thoughts were churning. ‘Right, well, that’s very good news indeed, and maybe when this is all over, you two will become friends here in Liverpool. But right now our job is to look after you too, because the last thing that man needs is for you to get sick yourself. If you don’t keep your strength up, you’re no use whatsoever to anyone. Catch your breath, come on.’

Joan held out a cup of tea that rattled on the saucer. The past few weeks had taken it out of her too. ‘Fetch it upstairs with you,’ she said to Mary Kate.