Nurse Hopkins giggled softly. ‘Hello, Ron,’ she whispered. ‘What on earth are you doing here in that get-up?’

‘It’s a long story,’ he said, tipping her a wink. ‘I need to see how Danuta is.’

‘If Matron catches you we’ll both be in trouble,’ she replied, looking over her shoulder towards the door. ‘But Danuta’s doing very well, considering, and the surgeon is quite hopeful she’ll make a full recovery. But it’ll be a long haul. She suffered some terrible injuries.’

Ron could see the girl had been moved by Danuta’s plight – just as she had when she’d nursed Kitty through her painful recovery. ‘Can I see her?’

‘Just for a second, then you must go, Ron.’ She cast another fearful look towards the door, then led him to the bed in the corner.

Ron’s heart twisted as he looked down at the tiny figure that was almost lost in the whiteness of that hospital bed, and the cage which had been placed over her feet to take the weight of the bedclothes. Danuta’s little face was bruised and battered, her nostrils plugged with bloody gauze beneath the thick strip of tape. Her fair hair had been hacked in lumps from her head, one arm was in plaster, the fingers of both hands heavily bandaged; and as he gently lifted the sheet at the bottom of the bed, he saw that her feet were also swathed in bandages.

‘What did those devils do to her?’ he managed hoarsely.

‘We were told she’d been caught in an air raid,’ Nurse Hopkins whispered back, ‘but we could all see she’d been tortured.’ She blinked back her tears and replaced the sheet over the cage. ‘Her nails had been torn out, her nose and arm broken, and there were burns.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Burns all over her body. Someone had punched her so hard the surgeon had to remove her spleen – and …’ She swallowed again. ‘There were other things, Ron, too awful to mention.’

Tears blurred his sight as he reached down to gently touch Danuta’s wrist. ‘You’re home safe now, wee girl,’ he managed gruffly before he turned away. ‘Thank you, Nurse Hopkins. I’ll be back at visiting time.’

He strode out of the recovery room before he made a fool of himself by bursting into tears. Dragging off the white coat, he rammed the stethoscope back in the pocket and left them on a nearby chair, and then hurried outside into the rain.

Ron could feel the rage building inside him as he gathered up his jacket and broke into a run towards the trees. And once he’d negotiated the five-bar gate, he let it out in a great anguished roar that echoed through the trees and down into the valley.