The following morning, as Holly returned to her duties, heavy-eyed after a sleepless night, Sister Flynn called her into her office. She looked care-worn and exhausted, and with a terrible dread forming in the pit of her stomach, Holly braced herself for news of Richard’s death. But it wasn’t Richard she wanted to talk about. With tears in her eyes, Sister told her that the Le’Fete family had been shot for harbouring the enemy.
‘What? All of them?’ Holly gasped.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. They entered the farmhouse while Pierre and Francine were bringing you and the patient back here and it seems they discovered the trapdoor into the cellar. They took Pierre’s wife out and shot her in cold blood then waited for him and his daughter to get home and shot them too. And they were such good people.’
‘Yes they were,’ Holly said in a choked voice as pictures of their faces flashed in front of her eyes. Francine would never get to marry the love of her life now or bear his children. A whole family was gone in the blink of an eye and she couldn’t forget how dangerously close she had come to being with them when the trapdoor was discovered. If it hadn’t been for Pierre insisting they leave, she would have been there too.
‘And is there any news of which doctor was killed yet?’ she asked. ‘Surely they could identify him from his dog tag?’
‘Neither doctor was wearing one. It seemed too dangerous while they were working behind enemy lines.’
Holly lowered her eyes. This uncertainty was unbearable, and despite the guilt she harboured about Harry, her thoughts were only of Richard in that moment as she remembered the days when they had thought they would spend their whole lives together.
Somehow she managed to get through the rest of the morning although her face was haggard and she felt quite ill. She was violently sick shortly after lunch and realised with dismay that she must have caught James’s sickness bug as she made a dash to get to the rather primitive toilet block.
Sister immediately had her put into a small isolation bay. The last thing they needed was for this infection to sweep through the patients. Most of them were so weak they would never have survived it. One of the doctors who had been shipped in to replace Harry and Richard came in to see Holly shortly after and once he’d examined her he told the sister, ‘Her temperature is sky-high and as well as having the sickness bug she is very tight-chested. It could turn to pneumonia if we aren’t careful. I think the wisest thing would be to have her shipped back to England as soon as possible. Infections like this can spread like wildfire and we don’t want an epidemic on our hands.’
Holly felt as if she had a steel band tightening in her chest and felt so ill and wretched that she listened with only half an ear. She was grieving for Richard, Harry and the Le’Fetes, and didn’t much care what they did with her. Suddenly everything was just too much.
Her condition deteriorated over the next two days and Angela, wearing a face mask and gloves, was allocated to nurse her. ‘Come on, please,’ she implored Holly as she tried to tempt her to eat. ‘You’ve got to at least try. This is so not like you!’
But Holly just turned her face away, she didn’t care any more. A telegram was sent off to her mother who insisted that once she arrived back on British soil she should be returned home and after some consideration the doctor and the sister decided that this might be for the best. She would be shipped back then transported by ambulance to her home when they reached England.
‘Bloody hell, gel. I’m really going to miss you,’ Angela said tearfully on the morning Holly was due to leave.
Holly gave her a weak smile. ‘I’ll … miss you too.’
But then the stretcher-bearers were there and she was whipped into the back of a waiting ambulance. She vaguely wondered if she would ever see Angela again. She hoped so. Sister Flynn came to say goodbye too, but her eyelids were drooping. She was tired all the time now and before the ambulance had even left the hospital she was sleeping.
‘Ah, so you’re back in the land of the living again, are you?’ a soft voice she recognised said as her eyes wearily blinked open. The light hurt and was so bright that she promptly closed them again.
‘I-is that you, Mother?’
‘Yes, my darling, it’s me. You’re at home although you’ve given us all quite a scare.’
‘Home?’ Holly was confused. The last thing she vaguely remembered was saying goodbye to Angela and Sister Flynn but after that everything was a blank. ‘But how?’
‘You’ve been home for almost a week.’ Her mother’s voice was gentle and filled with relief. ‘And for a time there we thought we were going to lose you. You developed pneumonia and it was touch-and-go.’
Holly was confused. How could she have lost all that time? And then the pain of what had happened back in France stabbed at her afresh and there were tears in her eyes again.
‘Oh sweetheart, don’t cry.’ Emma wiped her forehead tenderly with a tepid cloth. ‘With every day that passes you’ll start to feel better now.’
As a thought occurred to Holly she asked, ‘But what are you doing here? You live at Walter’s house now.’
‘Yes, I do and I will again when I know you’re completely better.’ Emma was smoothing the sheets across her, secretly terrified at the amount of weight Holly had lost. ‘You didn’t really think I would trust anyone else to nurse you, did you?’
‘B-but Walter …’
‘He perfectly understands that I would want to be here with you. In fact, he’s been in to see you every single day since you’ve been home and he’s been almost as worried about you as I have.’
Her words reinforced what Holly had thought for some time. Walter was a truly kind and gentle man.
‘I … I think I want to sleep again now …’ Holly said drowsily and her mother was only too happy to let her. Sleep was a great healer and now that Holly’s fever had broken she would hopefully start to recover.
Over the next two weeks Holly slowly grew stronger, physically at least, but mentally she was crippled and her eyes looked haunted. Sleep became something she dreaded, for while she was asleep the nightmares came. Terrible nightmares from which she would wake in a tangle of damp sheets with her heart thudding painfully. Sometimes in the dreams she would see Francine and her family being led outside and shot and at other times she would see a German bending down to set light to Richard’s body. And then there were the bodies of all the young men she had prepared for the morgue.
‘There’s something troubling you. Why don’t you share it with me?’ Ivy pleaded one day. ‘You know what they say, a trouble shared is a trouble halved.’
And so finally, after concealing such dark secrets for so long, Holly broke down and told Ivy everything. About discovering that Richard was in fact her brother and of the missions she had gone on behind enemy lines.
‘I knew you were sweet on that young doctor,’ Ivy said when she had finished. ‘How awful it must have been for you to find out he was yer brother. An’ as for the French family … ’ she shuddered as she thought of their fate. ‘But my Lord, you were brave.’
‘Not really,’ Holly said dully. ‘I’ve always thought it isn’t the ones that come home that are the heroes. It’s the ones who lay down their life fighting for what they believe in.’
‘Like my Marcus you mean?’ Tears welled in Ivy’s eyes but she could also smile as she thought of the happy memories they had made together. ‘I still miss him every single day, yer know. An’ yet now I realise I’d rather have had the short time we had together than a whole lifetime wi’ someone else. It were different for you, o’ course. You had to end it an’ I understand that but what are the chances o’ that happenin’, eh? They must be one in a million. Still, a lovely lookin’ girl like you is bound to meet someone else someday.’
‘I won’t.’ Holly shook her head. ‘I thought for a time that Harry and I might have a future together but as soon as I saw Richard again in France I knew it could never work. My heart will always belong to him. I wish I hadn’t finished with him as I did now, though. I think he hated me after that.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Ivy said kindly. ‘But come on now and eat some o’ this ’ere soup Cook has made you. She’ll be chewin’ me ear off again if I take it down untouched an’ I’ll be in trouble wi’ yer mam an’ all.’
Content that Holly was now definitely showing signs of recovery, Emma had returned to her husband leaving Ivy in charge of her precious girl with strict instructions that she should contact her immediately if there was anything at all she was concerned about.
Holly sighed and forced a few spoonfuls down and, satisfied that she had at least made an effort, Ivy carried the tray back down to the kitchen leaving Holly sitting in the chair by the window staring vacantly at the grey, overcast sky.
Although she had only gone home the day before, Emma was back mid-afternoon to check on her.
‘Walter was saying at lunchtime that they’re going to turn Weddington Hall into a hospital for injured servicemen,’ she told her daughter. ‘And I was thinking that if you insist on going back to work when you’re well enough you could perhaps consider working there? At least I wouldn’t be fretting about you all the time if I knew you were a little closer. What do you think?’
Holly shrugged. She didn’t want to think about anything at the moment. It was as if she was trapped inside a little bubble of relentless pain.
And then suddenly, quite out of the blue two weeks later, something happened that gave them all heart again. Emma came bounding in one morning with a smile that lit up the room, waving a telegram.
‘Ivy! Where’s Ivy? I must speak to her straight away.’
Holly and her grandfather, who was reading the newspaper to her, frowned. ‘She was in the kitchen feeding Alice the last time I saw her,’ Gilbert told her but before Emma could leave the room Ivy appeared in the doorway with Alice perched on her hip.
‘Did I hear my name?’
‘Oh my darling, darling girl. The most wonderful, wonderful thing has happened.’ Emma was so excited that she could barely get her words out. ‘This telegram came this morning. Marcus is alive! He’s in a military hospital in Plymouth.’
Ivy stood staring at her, her face impassive, wondering if this was some sort of cruel joke. But then it slowly dawned on her that Emma would never be like that and her face slowly crumpled as tears of joy fell from her eyes. ‘Are you quite sure? There can’t have been a mistake can there?’
Emma shook her head. ‘There’s no mistake, I promise you. Apparently he was injured in battle but managed to drag himself to the side of the field where a French family found him and gave him shelter until he could be safely moved to a field hospital. Unfortunately his eye had become very infected by then and the doctors had no option but to remove it and then he was kept there until he was well enough to be shipped home. Walter has already spoken to the matron at the hospital in Plymouth but … well, I have to tell you … Marcus has suffered a breakdown as well as being blind in one eye.’
‘But he’s alive!’ Ivy cried joyously as she swung Alice into the air. ‘When can we go and see him?’ she asked next. The fact that he might never be the man she had seen march off to war again didn’t seem to bother her at all. He was alive and that was all that mattered and to her it was a miracle.
‘Walter thought we might catch the train there this weekend. We could stay in a hotel overnight. That’s if Cook and Father think they can look after Holly for us?’
‘I don’t need looking after, I’m quite capable of looking after myself,’ Holly told them flatly.
‘Hmm, well just in case Cook and I are here to keep an eye on her,’ Gilbert added, grinning broadly. It was lovely to have some good news after all the bad things that had happened.
‘Perhaps things are looking up,’ he said cheerily and they all nodded, praying he was right.