‘That’s understandable. But to send flowers to someone he has never seen . . .’

The nurse looked as though she were about to say something, thought better of it and merely replaced the card. But when, later in that same day, there arrived a bed jacket, pale blue and pink, pretty enough for a bride, with a scribbled note, ‘Best wishes for a speedy recovery and lots of love, Sally Benson,’ Miss Mayfield began to worry.

‘It can’t be for me. There must be some mistake. I don’t know anyone of that name.’

‘There’s no mistake. It’s plainly addressed to you, at this Private Ward number. Put it on; it’ll cheer you up.’

‘But it isn’t mine. Unless there’s a society or something for providing pretty bed wear for people in hospital. I never heard of Sally Benson, and I can’t see how she can have heard of me. Unless . . .’ Light dawned. Rose, of course. Rose still maintained contact with an astonishing number of friends and relatives, most of them both generous and well to do. The moment she heard that Deb was in hospital, she’d press them into service. On the other hand, it was odd that she had had no word from Rose herself.

‘Yes, I’ll wear it. I think I know how I came by it.’ She allowed herself to be helped into the pretty thing and then asked, diffidently and off-handedly because she was ashamed of the amount of ‘confusion’ the question betrayed:

‘By the way, how long is it that I’ve been here now?’

‘Ten days.’

‘It can’t be as long as that, surely.’

‘Yes. You came in on the twenty-fifth of June, and this is the fifth of July.’

She had something of the feeling that a swiftly descending lift can inflict.

‘Would you mind saying that again?’

The nurse repeated her words.

‘Then where in the world have I been for five months? I left Africa in January.’

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ the nurse said, ‘number seven is ringing his bell.’

As a rule, the Matron came round once a day and asked brightly if everything was all right, nodded and smiled, and vanished. Sometimes she made a remark about the weather and said, ‘I hope you’ll soon be out on the terrace.’ But that evening she came in and sat down; she spoke about the weather – which was thundery – and said she hoped there wouldn’t be a storm, because it would ruin the delphiniums; and then she said:

‘Miss Mayfield, nurses and doctors are all concerned with patients’ physical well-being, and the Almoner is all tied up with their financial problems, so this falls to me. I understand that you are still slightly confused about the immediate past, the time just before your accident.’