took the blue envelope from the post-woman at the front door and recognised the neat handwriting of her former sweetheart.
A kind-hearted Scot and uncle of little Alice, Callum had given up his teaching job to serve as an officer in the Royal Navy for the duration of the war. It was in the senior service that Sally’s fiancé, George, had been so tragically killed when his ship was torpedoed back in 1942.
Taking a deep breath, Sally slipped the envelope into the pocket of her outdoor uniform.
‘See you later, Olive. Bye, Alice, be good,’ she called before slamming the front door behind her.
Sally was grateful to Olive for looking after little Alice while she worked at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where, as the newly appointed Sister Tutor, she trained the new intake of probationer nurses. If it wasn’t for Olive, Sally thought, desperately trying to ignore the rustle of the envelope in her pocket as she cycled to St Barts through the rubble of war-scarred London, she would not be able to continue the work she loved so much.
Her mind drifted back to the days when she was very young and carefree, when her wonderful, beloved mother was still alive, and before she came to London to work at Barts before the start of the war. For that had been the best of times.
However, her mother’s passing was the very reason Sally had left Liverpool – or rather the aftermath: when her one-time best friend, Morag, had shown compassion to her widowed father in a way that Sally thought disgustingly inappropriate. She had come home early one day and caught Morag kissing her father in such an intimate way that it left little room for doubt about their intentions, and Sally knew immediately she could no longer stay in her home city.
Callum, Morag’s brother, had tried to make her see it from his sister’s point of view – well, he would, wouldn’t he? He was bound to take her side. And Sally had keenly felt the betrayal from all of them. They were the people closest to her in the whole world and yet they had stolen the security of her home life as surely as if they had killed her mother.
She left as soon as she could and never went back. Her father and Morag married – and had a daughter without her even knowing. But it was the night Callum brought little Alice to her that really changed Sally’s life for ever.
He looked so handsome in his officer’s navy-blue greatcoat and cap, carrying a tiny Alice in his arms – bringing her to London when Hitler’s bombs had rained down on Liverpool back in May 1941. That was the night Sally discovered that her former home and family had been wiped out, all gone except for the child she didn’t know existed until then.
As she pedalled through the rubble of half-bombed streets, Sally felt that niggle of shame as she recalled wanting nothing to do with her half-sister, whom she so desperately wanted to send to an orphanage, and how Callum had begged her to keep Alice safe until he was able to come back and take care of her. She wanted to forget her outright refusal to comply with Callum’s wishes and how she had let the other residents of number 13 Article Row dote on her baby sister.
But little Alice eventually did to Sally what she did to everybody who met her: she claimed Sally’s heart with such a fierce love that she could not imagine a life without Alice in it.
‘Time is a great healer,’ Sally said, just loud enough to stop the memories flooding into her mind and preventing the worry about what the future held for any of them. Alice was all that Sally lived for now. Since George, a navy surgeon, had been killed, she couldn’t allow herself to get close to a man again – especially Callum.
While she had secretly been more than flattered to receive his friendly letters when George was alive, and had looked forward to Callum’s lively banter more than any engaged woman ought to have done, she could not contemplate reading them now her fiancé had gone.
Sally also realised now that, as unseemly as it sounded, she had looked forward to Callum’s letters far more than she had enjoyed George’s more placid, informative epistles, and that there may be some doubt in her heart that she had ever loved quiet, amiable, steadfast George at all.
The thought caused her skin to tingle and grow cold as she approached the gates of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Of course she loved George! She had agreed to marry him. She had given herself to him in the knowledge that they would be man and wife. But once again that knowledge brought on a new episode of uncertainty.
Sally suspected that she would have had her head turned by Callum; she may even have betrayed George, had he lived. The thought riddled her with shame and made her feel small. So the least communication between them the better, she felt.
Callum was genuinely interested in Alice, as the only child of his departed sister. He was obviously eager to know how Alice was progressing, and he had made no secret of the fact that receiving Sally’s letters, with news of his niece, was important to him. He would also ask how Sally herself was faring, although thinking about it now, she reasoned that would have been because she was bereaved. Sally had been so angry with George for joining the navy without consulting her, and she had been even angrier when he had got himself blown up and killed!
Now Callum’s blue envelopes only reminded her that she had not been as honest with George as she should have been: she had never even mentioned their regular communication to her fiancé – not once. And although nothing untoward had ever taken place between herself and Callum, she could not rid herself of the gnawing drag of shame each time his letters arrived.
How could she read Callum’s letters now, knowing she had been a fool to be so pleased at his sweet talk when he probably only wanted news of his sister’s child? Sally’s mind was racing as she slowed her bicycle and secured it in the bike shed. She knew she had done the right thing by not ever replying to Callum because now she could concentrate on Alice without being side-tracked by the handsome officer, and make sure Alice enjoyed a secure childhood, with her, in a happy place in Article Row. Sally refused to contemplate the idea of Alice being evacuated as Olive had suggested.
The bombing was now less fierce, and there was even talk that the war might be over by Christmas, so it was possible that she could give her little half-sister the kind of secure childhood Sally had enjoyed before … before … She chided herself for raking up yet another bout of resentment about her father and Morag, and began to hum a little tune that kept uncharacteristically unkind thoughts at bay.
As much as she tried, Sally could not keep her mind from Callum today. She wondered why, all of a sudden, she had missed reading his tales of the sea, which she had enjoyed before George’s tragic demise. Callum had a natural gift for absorbing the world around him and excitedly sharing what he had learned with others. Alice would miss all that because Sally could not let him into their life again.
She could not bear to think of her little sister getting close to Callum, as she had with George, only for him to succumb to a watery grave. She had a duty to give Alice permanence, and there would be none of that if Callum dropped in and out of her life at irregular intervals. What if the worst should happen? She would have to go through all that heartache again. Although, as she now headed up the long, shiny corridor towards Men’s Surgical, Sally wondered who she was most worried for, Alice or herself.
She couldn’t understand why Callum kept sending letters even though she didn’t reply; if she had been in his place she would have given up long ago. Didn’t he understand that she had no intentions of letting Alice get close to him? It had been fine while George was alive, because Callum knew where he stood: he was allowed to visit his sister’s child and that was an end to it. But now that George had gone, she didn’t want him getting any funny ideas …
‘Good morning, Sister.’ The young probationer’s greeting brought Sally out of her reverie.
‘Good morning, Nurse. Busy night?’ Men’s surgical was Sally’s ward, which she was proud to run with extreme efficiency.
‘Just one emergency admission who was taken down for immediate surgery,’ said the night duty sister as the night staff handed over to the day staff, who gathered in Sally’s office for morning prayers
‘That will