The only sign of life in the fog of the evening gloom was a colourless shape walking up the incline towards her. The shadowy figure made a lonely vision against the empty windows of the village street and it took Mary Kate a few seconds to work out who it was.

Tears filled her eyes, she dropped her case and ran. ‘Bee! Bee!’ she shouted to the woman she’d not seen in many years, the woman she’d originally travelled to Liverpool to meet. Within moments she’d thrown herself into her arms, her mother’s nearest living relative. Bee, her great-aunt.

For what seemed like the first time, Mary Kate felt her heart breaking as Bee whispered into her hair, ‘Not to worry. I know. I know all about everything. About your lovely man, God rest his soul. Cat wrote to me. Rosie and me, we are the only ones who know, and God knows, we are glad to see you. You’re all right now. Unburden yourself, your secret is safe, Mary Kate – you are home in Tarabeg.’

*

Dr Gaskell walked beneath the bright lights of the ward, closely followed by the retinue of doctors known as his firm, and a gaggle of medical students. ‘And what have we here?’ he said, stopping at the foot of a patient’s bed, lifting the clipboard and examining the chart.

The patient’s complexion was tinged with yellow, and he seemed very nervous; Dr Gaskell noticed his hand was trembling. He turned to his retinue of white coats. ‘Go to the ward kitchen, all of you,’ he said. ‘Tell the auxiliary nurse and the kitchen orderly that I’ve said you all need some tea and toast before I can get any sense out of you. And ask Sister to give me five minutes alone with this new patient before she brings me his case notes.’

The silent pack spontaneously burst into exclamations of thanks and hurried back down the ward before he could change his mind.

Dr Gaskell sighed and smiled at the patient. ‘Do you mind if I sit here in the visitors’ chair and rest my feet for a moment?’

The patient stammered his reply. ‘Er, no,’ he mumbled, not sure what else he should say to the doctor who was a legend on the Dock Road.

‘Ask if you can see Dr Gaskell,’ his wife had insisted when she’d left him in casualty earlier that afternoon. ‘They say he’s the best man in the country for chests, they do.’

‘I can’t ask that,’ he’d replied through the rubber oxygen mask as he’d gasped for his breath on the trolley.

‘Yes, you can,’ his wife had insisted, folding her arms and leaning over him. She was a woman used to getting her own way. ‘If you don’t ask, our Bert, you don’t get.’

Bert now looked up at the kindly face of the white-haired doctor. No one in his life had ever asked him whether he minded if they sat down in his company, let alone a doctor who was also a legend in his own right.