Bridie’s lip pulled up on one side, almost a smile. More like eight or nine. And here’s the thing—if your charge got into mischief, you’d both be punished. And if she took sick, that was on you too.

I struggled to take this in. You’re saying you’d be blamed for her illness?

Bridie nodded. And the little ones were sick all the time. Loads of them went in the hole at the back of the buildings.

I’d lost the thread. You’re saying they caught something from playing underground?

No, Julia! That’s where they got put…after.

Oh. A grave.

Bridie said, Just one big hole, with nothing written.

I thought of the Angels’ Plot in the cemetery where Delia Garrett’s unwoken girl would be buried. Small children did die, poor ones more often than others, and unwanted ones even more often than that. But…

The injustice of that, I said, to hold an eight-year-old child accountable for a toddler’s death!

Well, said Bridie flatly. I have to tell you, the odd time I was so hungry, I couldn’t help robbing my charge.

Robbing her of what?

She hesitated, then said, I’d eat her bread. Drink half the milk from her bottle and fill it up at the tap.

Oh, Bridie.

We all did it. But that’s no comfort.

My eyes were prickling. This young woman had survived by whatever means necessary, and I found I couldn’t wish that it had been otherwise.

I’ve never told anyone these old stories, said Bridie.

(Old stories, she called them, as if they were legends of the Trojan War.)

She added, I probably shouldn’t be telling you either.

Why not?

Well, you know what I’m like now, Julia.

What you’re like?

Bridie said it very softly: Dirty.

You are not!

Eyes shut, she whispered: Things happened.

To you?

Things were done to lots of us. Most of us, I bet.

My pulse was thumping. Done by whom?

She shook her head as if that wasn’t the point. A workman, a priest maybe. A minder or teacher, she’d pick one girl to warm her bed and give her a second blanket after.

I was sick to my stomach.

She added, Or a holiday father.

What on earth’s a holiday father?

A local family would request a child for the weekend, to give her a little holiday, like. You might get sweets or pennies.

I wanted to block my ears.

She went on, One of the fathers gave me a whole shilling. But I couldn’t think what to do with that much money or where to hide it, so I ended up burying it in the ashpit.

Bridie, I said. (Trying not to weep.)

It’s probably there still.

None of this dirt is yours, I told her. You’re as clean as rain.

She kissed me, but on the forehead this time.

Voices on the roof behind us; strangers coming out of the same small door we had.

Bridie and I lurched apart.

I said in a loud and false voice, Well, I suppose we’d better get some breakfast.

(I promised myself that there’d be more time for kisses and for telling all the stories.)

By the time Bridie and I collected our blankets and picked our way past the orderlies, they were lighting their cigarettes and agreeing with each other that it would be over any day now. Uprisings in various German cities, the tossing down of bayonets, secret negotiations, the kaiser on the very brink of abdication…

I hoped the dark hid my flush.

Fancy a smoke, girls?

No, thanks, I told him politely. I held the door for Bridie but she stumbled into the jamb. Careful!

She laughed. Clumsy me.

I said, That’s what we get for staying up all night out in the cold.

But I found I was wide awake, entirely alert.

On the main staircase, as we went by the big windows, I looked down at the electric beams of a motor launch creeping by. No, a motor hearse. Another funeral, then; the day’s cavalcade was starting up before sunrise. As if some dread angel were flying from house to house, and there was no mark one could put on one’s lintel to persuade him to pass over.

Two haggard older doctors passed us as they plodded upstairs.

One of them said, I was pulled over for having only one light on my car, and I found myself rather hoping they’d send me to jail so I could have a rest.

The other’s laugh had a hysterical edge to it. I must admit, I’m sucking Forced March like barley sugar.

When they’d passed, Bridie asked me, What’s Forced March?

Pills supplied to soldiers, or anyone who needs to stay awake and sharp. Powdered kola nuts and cocaine.

Her eyebrows went up. Do you take them, Julia?

No. I tried once, but I got a racing heartbeat and the shakes.

She covered a long yawn.

Are you shattered, Bridie?

Not a bit.

In the lavatory, we splashed our faces with water, and she bent down and lapped at the stream from the tap, puppyish.

At the mirror, using my comb to neaten myself, I met my eyes. I was old enough to know my own mind, surely, and to be aware of what I was doing. But I seemed to have stumbled into love like a pothole in the night.

On the landing, yesterday’s poster hooked my attention:

WOULD THEY BE DEAD IF THEY STAYED IN BED?

I had an impulse to rip it down, but that probably constituted conduct unbecoming to a nurse as well as treason.

Yes, they’d be bloody dead, I ranted silently. Dead in their beds or at their kitchen tables eating their onion a day. Dead on the tram or falling down in the street, whenever the bone man happened to catch up with them. Blame the germs, the unburied corpses, the dust of war, the random circulation of wind and weather, the Lord God Almighty. Blame the stars. Just don’t blame the dead, because none of them wished this on themselves.

In the basement canteen, Bridie and I lined up for porridge.

She didn’t want any sausage; she seemed fuelled by hilarity this morning.

I asked her in a low voice, What’s the worst that could happen if you just never went back to the motherhouse?

Sure where would I go, Julia?

I had an idea. I wanted to ask her to come home with me tonight and meet Tim. But would that sound rash, even unhinged? I couldn’t decide how to phrase it; the words died on my lips. I told her, I’ll think of something.

Yoo-hoo, you’re in early.

Gladys! I blinked at my pal from Eye and Ear. All I could add was Yes.

She asked, Keeping your chin up?

Rather.

Gladys frowned a little as if she sensed something off about me this morning. She sipped her coffee. Her eyes didn’t even go past me to the young woman with the cracked shoes; she wouldn’t have had any reason to guess that Bridie Sweeney was anything to me.

The queue loosened ahead of us.

I took two steps forward and gave Gladys a wave. Well, ta-ta.

When she’d left, I wondered how I should have introduced Bridie.

And what in the world would Gladys have thought if she’d seen us kissing on the roof? More than that, what would she have done?

I’d stepped so far away from my old life, I wasn’t sure I could ever go back.

When Bridie and I entered Maternity/Fever together, Sister Luke looked up from the desk. She didn’t like our being friendly, that much was obvious. She asked, Well rested, I hope, the pair of you?

I assured her that we were. If she didn’t know about the nurses’ dormitory having been shut, I wasn’t going to mention it.