When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. My head was aching and there was a strange glow coming from up above me.
Am I dead? I thought for a second. And then I blinked my eyes open and saw the glow was torchlight shining through a hole in the ceiling.
‘Stay still!’ someone shouted. ‘We’re coming to get you. Are you hurt?’
I tried to speak but my face was covered in dust and my mouth was too dry. I was in the hospital, I remembered with a rush. In the basement. With Jackson. Oh Lord, Jackson. I tried to turn my head to see where he was but I was surrounded by rubble and could barely see two inches past my face. I had no idea where the table I’d been sheltering under had gone but it wasn’t above me any longer.
Up above, an ARP warden with HR written on his helmet was being lowered down beside me on a rope ladder.
‘All right, love?’ he said cheerily as he came to a halt next to where I lay. ‘I’m just going to check everything’s safe before the rest of the crew come down, then we’ll get you out of here. Boiler room is it?’
Whistling a jaunty tune, he quickly but thoroughly checked over the boiler and turned the large wheel on the front. The boiler, which had been making a very loud, very alarming clattering sound, fell silent.
‘That’s better,’ the man said. He shouted up to the people above. ‘All clear!’
Then he turned to me. ‘Anyone else down here with you.’
I tried to swallow but my throat was dry as a bone. ‘Jackson,’ I whispered. ‘Jackson.’
‘Another nurse?’
‘No,’ I croaked. ‘Porter.’
The small room was full of people now, moving rubble from around me and talking in low voices. One of the men helped me to my feet. ‘You’ve barely got a scratch,’ he said in wonder.
‘I was under a table,’ I told him. I looked round. ‘But I don’t know where it’s gone.’ The book had vanished too. Covered in rubble and bricks. Gone forever, I hoped.
‘Can you climb the ladder? There’s someone up top who’ll check you over.’
‘I think so.’
He helped me on to the ladder and with trembling arms I managed to haul myself up very slowly. As I reached halfway, there was a shout from below.
‘Over here!’ one of the men called. ‘We’ve got him.’
‘Is he alive?’ another asked.
I stopped on the ladder, not sure whether I was hoping Jackson would have survived the blast or not.
‘He’s alive!’ came the call. ‘We need a stretcher here.’
I began climbing again, and someone reached down to help me up and then I was outside. It was still dark, though I could see the glow of morning in the distance. Or was that a fire burning? I couldn’t tell. Dazed and disorientated, I looked around. I was at one end of the hospital, or what had once been one end of the hospital. Now there was nothing. But to my amazement, I could see the rest of the building was intact.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the destruction. The heavy rescue ARP wardens were swarming across the rubble like ants, checking gas pipes and stopping water leaks, but I couldn’t see any casualties. Was everyone dead?
I stumbled and someone caught my arm and guided me over to sit on the ground next to an ambulance driver.
‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘We’re just going to check you over. What’s your name, love?’
I tried to speak through dusty, cracked lips but found I couldn’t. He handed me a cup of water and I gulped it gratefully.
‘Elsie,’ I said. ‘I’m a nurse.’
‘Then you can keep an eye on me while I do my job,’ he said.
He gently checked my arms and legs, which were bruised and battered. My left ankle was swollen and painful but I didn’t think it was broken. Then he felt my head carefully where I had a huge egg-sized bump. He gave me a cloth to wipe my face and I was astonished when I saw how dirty it was.
‘You’re ever so dusty,’ he said. ‘You look like a snowman made of brick dust.’
I looked down at my uniform, which was completely covered in reddish dirt from the rubble. My hair felt thick with it and my eyes were gritty. One of the ARP wardens went past me, carrying a rope, and I stopped him.
‘Where are the patients?’ I asked, almost not wanting to know the answer. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘The bomb took out the end of the building,’ he said. ‘But by chance everyone got out before it fell. Apparently, the only thing down that end of the hospital was the operating theatre and the canteen and all the staff had gone to the entrance for a meeting or something.’ He shrugged.
‘To meet the buses,’ I told him as my memories from the night before suddenly resurfaced. ‘The buses coming from the East End.’
‘Well, isn’t that something,’ he said. ‘It’s like a miracle. Could have been a lot worse.’
The shock of it all hit me like a truck and I covered my mouth with my hand as I recalled Jackson threatening me in the boiler room. And Nelly. Oh Lord, Nelly. I stifled a sob.
‘Is that painful?’ the ambulance driver asked, prodding my ankle. I nodded, but it wasn’t why I was crying. My whole body just felt numb. Nelly was dead, and Jackson knew I’d killed her, and I didn’t know if he was going to tell anyone. I thought about the way he’d looked at me in the boiler room – pure disdain and disgust – and I knew that if there was any way he could use what he knew against me, then he absolutely would.
The ambulance driver who’d been examining my ankle, looked up as shouts told us they were bringing Jackson up to ground level.
‘You need your ankle bandaged, and I’d like that cut on your head cleaned, too,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go and help with the chap who was trapped. Can you go to the ambulance over there and say Martin sent you to be patched up?’
‘I will, thanks.’
He watched me stand up. ‘All right?’ he said. ‘Can you walk?’
My ankle was painful but not so much that I couldn’t put weight on it. I nodded. ‘I can hop over there. Go and help, go on.’
I hobbled a little way from where I had been sitting and then paused to watch as they brought Jackson up. He was completely covered in dust, as I was, and he was on a stretcher, motionless but breathing. As I looked at him, I felt nothing but repulsion. Hatred even. I was glad he was hurt, and the thought frightened me.
Walking as quickly as I could with my swollen ankle, I limped towards the ambulance Martin had sent me to, but instead of stopping, I carried on straight past and into the darkness of the street. I needed help, but not from them.
It took me ages to get home because I couldn’t go fast, and two people stopped me to ask if I needed help but left me alone when I assured them I was fine. But eventually I reached our street and to my utter relief, I could see a light on in the front window, which meant Mr and Mrs Gold were home and awake.
Half sobbing, I hobbled up the path and banged on the front door, I saw the curtain twitch and Mrs Gold peek out, wearing her dressing gown and with curlers in her hair, and then she was there, opening the door and catching me as I virtually fell through into the hall.
‘Elsie, oh my God, Elsie,’ she cried. She shut the door behind me and helped me into the lounge. ‘Sit down.’
‘I’m so dirty.’
She waved her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter, sit down.’
I fell back on to the sofa.
‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Was the hospital hit? Are you hurt? Why are you here? You need to be looked after.’
Her questions were coming too fast for me to follow. I put my dusty head against the back of the sofa and began to cry.
‘Oh, Elsie,’ Mrs Gold said. ‘Oh my dear girl. It’s all over now. It’s over and you’re all right.’
I nodded silently, still crying.
‘Was it awful?’ she asked, putting her arm around me. ‘Were there many injured? Oh Lord, is Nelly all right?’
I breathed in deeply. ‘Nelly’s dead.’
Mrs Gold gasped and tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Oh no. I’m so sorry, Elsie.’
How to explain? I looked at her. ‘Do you remember you told me you would do whatever you could to help me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I need your help now.’
‘Tell me.’
Slowly I began to explain about how Nelly had made her request in the pages of the book, and I’d agreed.
‘It was a terrible thing to do,’ I said. ‘A terrible thing.’
Mrs Gold shook her head. ‘It was the right thing to do. She was suffering dreadfully and she wasn’t ever going to get better. You were merciful.’ She patted my hand. ‘I think you’re very brave.’
‘That’s not all of it, though.’
Her eyes widened as I told her about Jackson watching.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t think he’d be there,’ I said, my voice shrill. ‘He’s always there. He’s everywhere I go. He told me he’d watched Harry and me. Together.’
‘That awful man,’ Mrs Gold said, her face pale in the early morning light. ‘There’s something off about him. I’ve always said so.’
‘He scares me,’ I admitted. ‘He scares me so much.’
‘What did he say when you saw him after Nelly … after she’d gone?’
‘He said he’d seen everything and he had proof. He had the book.’ I swallowed. ‘He made me go down to the boiler room with him. It’s where Harry and I … you know.’
‘Did he hurt you?’
Bitter bile filled my mouth as I thought about being trapped in the room with Jackson. ‘A bit,’ I said. ‘He told me we were going to get married. He said I was a slut and that he was going to tell everyone what I did to Nelly.’ My words were coming fast, falling over each other as I remembered. ‘He said I was going to hang for what I’d done. Unless I … unless I let him …’
Mrs Gold took my face in her hands and made me look at her. ‘Did he rape you, Elsie?’
Slowly I shook my head. ‘I think he was going to. But the bomb fell.’
‘And where is he now? Is he alive?’
‘They got him out. He was breathing.’
‘Where’s the book?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said desperately. ‘I don’t know. It was in the room with us. Maybe Jackson still has it, maybe not. Maybe the ARP squad will find it. And then everyone will know.’
I stood up, wincing as pain shot up my leg from my ankle. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said, running my fingers through my gritty hair and watching dust drift down to the rug. ‘I don’t know how to make this better. Perhaps I should go to the police station and tell them everything? Tell them what I did.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Mrs Gold stood up too. She took my hands in hers. ‘You listen to me, Elsie. You did the right thing with Nelly. She was suffering terribly, and you did the best thing for her. This is a war, and any man on the battlefield would have done the same.’
I nodded, feeling my racing heartbeat begin to calm.
‘We can sort this out,’ she assured me. ‘We can make this right.’
‘How?’ I wailed. ‘I killed my best friend. How can we ever make this right?’
‘You ended her suffering like the compassionate, caring nurse you are,’ she said firmly. ‘And I think deep down you know you did the right thing. Don’t you?’
I nodded. ‘She was in such awful pain.’
‘There we are.’ Mrs Gold was thinking hard. ‘We need to tell her family.’
‘Yes, I have a message for them.’ I put my hand to my head. ‘Nelly wrote it in the book, but I remember it. I can write to her mother.’
‘Or,’ said Mrs Gold, ‘you can go to Ireland and tell her yourself.’
It was such an outlandish suggestion that I almost laughed. ‘Of course I can’t go to Ireland. There’s a war on, or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘Ireland isn’t in the war.’
I snorted. ‘How would I get there?’
‘Do you want to go?’
I thought about Nelly’s letters from home, about her enormous family and her mother’s conviction that there were plenty of jobs available in the hospitals in Ireland. Then I thought about how my nerves jangled every time I heard a thump, even if it was someone dropping something heavy. How tired I was from the nightly raids. How I’d lost Billy, and now Nelly, and how Harry wasn’t here, and I was alone. And I thought about Jackson and his threats. I knew no one would be likely to believe his accusations on their own, but if he somehow still had the book then things could be different.
Slowly, I nodded. ‘Could I work? Could I register as a nurse in Ireland?’
‘I don’t see that being a problem.’
‘I would feel bad, leaving the hospital and London when they need so much help.’
‘You’ve given more than your fair share to the war,’ Mrs Gold said. ‘I think you deserve a break.’
Suddenly, going to Ireland seemed like the answer to my prayers and I thought I couldn’t bear it if I couldn’t go. That I couldn’t stay in London for a second longer.
‘I want to go to Dublin,’ I said. ‘But how?’
‘We can get you on a ship. Merchant Navy probably.’
I stared at her, open-mouthed.
‘Don’t ask questions,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you the answers anyway.’
‘But …’
She gave me a little smile. ‘Don’t ask questions,’ she repeated. ‘So, are you going to Ireland?’
‘I am.’ But then a sudden thought occurred to me. ‘No. I’m not.’
‘Why ever not.’
I put my face in my hands. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I mumbled. ‘At least, I think I’m pregnant. I wrote to Harry and told him a few days ago.’
‘Has he replied?’
‘Not yet.’
Mrs Gold gave a brisk nod. ‘Do you think he’ll stand by you?’
I thought about Harry and the lovely things he’d said. The way he’d held me so tightly and told me all about his family. And slowly I nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘This is all going to be all right,’ Mrs Gold said. ‘Do you trust me?’
What else could I do? ‘I do.’
‘First things first. I’m going to go and wake up Albert. We’re going to need him.’
She told me to sit down and then disappeared off into the bedroom, where I heard them talking in low voices. I sat very still, my mind racing. What was happening? Could I really look Nelly’s mother in the eye and tell her that her daughter had died? But actually, I thought, I could. I could tell her Nelly wasn’t alone, that she went peacefully and that she wasn’t in pain. That was all true. Maybe we could organise a memorial for her. Put up a headstone, even. I wondered if I could ask Mrs Gold to make sure Nelly had a proper funeral. I knew that her family would want to know she’d been properly looked after. And as for me and the baby, well … If I was wrong about Harry then perhaps I could buy a cheap ring like Mrs Marsden who’d been on my ward back when the bombings first started, and tell everyone I was a widow. There was so much to do. I felt sick with the worry of it all.
Eventually, Mrs Gold came back into the lounge. She’d got dressed and looked very smart in a suit with proper stockings.
‘Why don’t you go and have a bath and a sleep?’ she said. ‘Albert and I have some things to organise this morning. Can you pack a bag, make sure you have anything important – documents and whatnot – but don’t take too much. We’ll need to leave this afternoon.’
‘My head’s spinning,’ I said.
‘You’ll feel better after a snooze. Come on, up to bed with you. I’ll strap up that ankle for you later on.’
‘Thank you,’ I said as I struggled to my feet and headed for the door.
‘You’re welcome.’ Mrs Gold adjusted the cuffs of her blouse.
‘Mrs Gold?’ I paused by the front door. ‘You’re not really a secretary, are you?’
She smiled at me. ‘Don’t ask questions,’ she said.