‘Oh, I didn’t realise Miss Girling had any visitors.’
Pearl swivelled round on her chair to see a rather rotund nurse blocking the doorway, hands on hips, strands of curly ginger hair escaping her cap.
Pearl was confused, even more than she had already been.
Miss Girling? Who the bloody hell is she talking about? Pearl felt like kicking herself. Why oh why had she got so bladdered last night? Had the bootleg whisky she’d been necking back made her doolally? She shouldn’t be here! She should be with Bill, having a laugh about him ending up in the local loony bin and telling him it served him right for going off for a lock-in.
‘Miss who?’ Pearl asked, her voice croaky. She felt the need for a cigarette.
This was all Isabelle’s fault. She’d never have ended up here – never have got lost – if Isabelle had come with her.
The nurse narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, you’re obviously neither friend nor family if you don’t know the name of the woman yer sat here yammering away to.’ She bustled over to Henrietta, who was sitting, perched like a little bird, on the stool next to the mahogany dressing table, her back to the three-way mirror, her hands clasped together on her lap.
‘You all right there, pet?’ The nurse towered over her diminutive charge.
‘This is my Little Match Girl. Den Lille Pige med Svovlstik-kerne!’ Henrietta explained.
Pearl felt herself stiffen. ‘Little Match Girl’ had been her nickname. Given to her by Henrietta. Mrs Henrietta Havelock. So why was this daft mare calling her Miss Girling?
‘Course she’s your Little Match Girl, pet.’
Pearl was speechless; she couldn’t believe anyone had the audacity to call the mistress ‘pet’. She watched in disbelief as the nurse gave Henrietta a patronising smile before swinging her girth round to face the scrawny, middle-aged, mutton-dressed-as-lamb intruder.
Glowering down at Pearl, the nurse jerked her head towards the door.
‘Hop it!’
Pearl stood up, but as she did so Henrietta leant forward and grabbed hold of her arm.
‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ she pleaded, her face upturned, her eyes desperate.
‘Come on then, chop-chop!’ The nurse was making no attempt to hide her ire at finding a stranger in her patient’s room. Taking hold of Pearl’s arm, she gripped it tightly and forced her towards the open doorway.
‘You’ll come back, won’t you, Little Match Girl?’ Henrietta’s high-pitched, sing-song voice followed Pearl as she left the room.
Once they were out in the corridor, the nurse looked Pearl up and down. ‘Yer’ve not pilfered owt, have yer?’
Pearl didn’t give her a mouthful as she would normally have done; she was barely aware of the busybody nurse uttering accusations. Instead, her attention was fixed solely on Henrietta, whose pupils were so large, her eyes looked almost black.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ The nurse took Pearl’s handbag and looked inside. It was empty save for a packet of cigarettes, a lighter and a small leather purse.
Pearl continued to stare at Henrietta, spellbound.
‘Blimey, yer smell like a brewery.’ The nurse pushed the bag back at Pearl and pointed down the corridor.
‘Walk to the end and turn right. Then follow the signs to reception. And don’t let me see hide nor hair of you again.’
Pearl took one last look at Henrietta, her former employer, still sitting with her back to the dressing table, still staring at her ‘Little Match Girl’. Her eyes still imploring her to return.
As Pearl staggered down the corridor, her mind seemed to have got stuck back in time. She was a young girl again, her only clothes the rags on her back, her few possessions stuffed into a cloth bag, knocking on the doors of the big houses. Desperate for a job. Desperate for a roof over her head and food in her belly. There had been many times since then she’d wished she had been turned away – that she had gone to the park across the road, put her head down and died of cold and hunger. Just like the real Little Match Girl. But she hadn’t. A Russian-doll woman with garish make-up, outlandish hair and wearing clothes that looked from another era, had waved her in, given her a job and, a few months later, brought her to the attention of the master of the house – her husband, Mr Charles Havelock.
As Dr Eris walked down the corridor, she had to allow herself a self-satisfied smile. After a rather disappointing end to the evening last night, with John politely refusing her offer to come in for a cup of tea and giving her a rather brotherly kiss on the cheek, the tables had been well and truly turned. She felt herself blush as she recalled their earlier kiss. It had been rather wonderful – and long enough for Helen to have seen it. Long enough for her to have turned back and returned to where she’d come from. For good, hopefully.
After starting at the asylum in the New Year, Dr Eris had spent the past few months getting to know Dr Parker, chatting to him, making him laugh – making him feel at ease with her. She knew John liked her and found her attractive, but she suspected that Helen might be a potential spanner in the works – that his feelings for his ‘friend’ were not purely platonic.
When she’d finally met Helen in the canteen the other day, her heart had sunk. The woman was a stunner. Glossy black hair, hourglass figure – and the most amazing emerald eyes. A fool would know that John, or any other red-blooded male for that matter, would want to be much more than just friends. But what had perturbed her most was that it was obvious Helen was mad about him. Thank goodness John clearly had no idea. She just had to make sure that didn’t change. After the meeting in the canteen, she knew the clock was ticking. She had competition. Serious competition. She had to act fast before John wised up and realised what was on offer – or worse still, before Helen decided to make the first move. Which was why, when she had seen John yesterday afternoon and he’d told her his scheduled surgery had been put back, she’d taken a gamble and suggested they go for a drink in the Albion.
‘Watch where yer gannin!’
Turning the corner towards the East Wing, Dr Eris suddenly came face to face with a rather bedraggled-looking woman with badly dyed blonde hair who was wearing clothes that were more suited to someone half her age.
‘So sorry, I didn’t see you there,’ Dr Eris said, moving to the side.
‘How do I gerra out of here?’ the woman asked, scrabbling around in her handbag.
‘Just keep going straight down this corridor, turn left and you’ll end up at reception.’
The woman huffed and walked off.
Dr Eris watched as she stopped and lit up a cigarette before disappearing round the corner in a cloud of grey smoke. She wondered whether she should go after the strange woman and check she wasn’t a patient but decided against it. The chances were that she was a visitor. They were always getting lost, which was no surprise; the place really was like a maze. If she’d got it wrong and the woman was an inmate, then Genevieve would know; she’d worked here long enough, and although she was getting on, her mind was still as sharp as a pin. She’d call the orderlies and they’d bring the woman back.
As she continued on her way, her mind snapped back to John. And, moreover, their kiss. When she’d opened her front door and seen Helen – or rather, seen the determined look on her face, combined with the fact that she was done up to the nines – well, it didn’t take a degree in psychology to know she had come for John.
Helen’s unexpected appearance at the asylum made sense after last night’s bombing. She’d seen similar impulsive behaviour after air raids. All those thoughts of life and death followed by a sudden compulsion to live for the day.
Some might say her own behaviour had been motivated by such side effects of war, but, of course, it hadn’t. Her actions this afternoon had been driven by one thing, and one thing alone: her fear that John might be snatched from right under her nose.
‘Ah, Nurse Pattinson,’ Dr Eris said, walking into the room of one of her more challenging patients. ‘How’s Miss Girling doing today?’
‘She’s been letting strangers into her room,’ the nurse said as she smoothed down the divan on the bed. She loved the feel of embroidered silk. ‘Some tramp of a townie,’ she said, taking the pillows and fluffing them up. ‘Reckon she’d either got lost or was looking at what she could pilfer.’
‘I think I just bumped into her,’ Dr Eris said, pulling up the chair Pearl had just vacated. She took hold of Henrietta’s hand and felt her pulse.
‘Dear me, Miss Girling. Feels like you’ve had a quick sprint around the grounds.’
Henrietta looked at the young doctor sitting opposite her, then down at her hands, which were soft and cold. They were milky white. The colour of an opal …
‘Pearl!’ Her eyes widened in glee. She had been trying and trying to bring the name to the forefront of her mind, but it felt as though it had got stuck in treacle.
‘Who’s Pearl?’ Dr Eris asked as she let go of Henrietta’s hand and tipped her head slightly back. She pulled out a small, pen-shaped torch from the top pocket of her jacket and shone it briefly into both eyes.
‘The Little Match Girl.’ Henrietta blinked but kept her face still.
Dr Eris got up and unhooked the chart at the bottom of Henrietta’s bed. She looked across at Nurse Pattinson, who arched an eyebrow.
‘Pearl from The Scarlet Letter,’ Henrietta explained.
‘By Nathaniel Hawthorne?’ Dr Eris looked up.
Henrietta nodded.
‘Miss Girling, you are quite an anomaly, aren’t you? And certainly the most well-read patient I’ve ever had.’
Henrietta smiled at the compliment.
‘Nurse Pattinson, I’m making some alterations to Miss Girling’s medication.’ She started writing on Henrietta’s chart.
‘I want to try and bring her dosage down, which means I need you to keep an extra-close eye on her. If you see any changes, good or bad, I’d like you to report them to me, please.’
Dr Eris smiled her thanks; she knew who really ran the asylum, and it wasn’t the doctors. Nurse Pattinson had been there nearly her entire working life and she ruled with an iron rod. Dr Eris had met nurses like her before and made the mistake of getting on their bad side.
Walking back to her office further down the corridor, Dr Eris opened the door and went straight over to the battered wooden filing cabinet that looked as old as the building itself. She pulled out the top drawer and rifled through the alphabet.
‘Here we are,’ she mumbled to herself, heaving out the two-inch-thick file. ‘Miss Henrietta Girling.’ She plonked the case file on her desk and sat down in her chair.
Rereading the medical notes that spanned more than two decades, Dr Eris started to jot down her observations, but all the while her mind kept skipping back to John. They were going out on a date this evening. A proper date! After their kiss, he’d asked if he could take her out for dinner.
Dr Eris made a mental note to be spontaneous more often.
It had certainly paid dividends for her today.