and then stopped. Brendan was moving them one by one but at high speed, and from this close Belinda could see why. A small pair of feet stuck out from the edge of the pile.
‘Brendan, what’s happened?’ she asked.
He turned. ‘Ah, Nurse Adams. I’m glad to see you.’ She could tell he was keeping his voice deliberately calm in order not to frighten the little boys, but his eyes were dark with urgency.
‘Tell you what,’ said Geraldine, pitching up her sleeves, ‘I’ll give you a hand there if you, nurse, wouldn’t mind checking on these two. No sense in us all crowding round that poor little blighter.’
Belinda could see the sense in that and turned her attention to the two boys, one of whom had a huge cut on his head and was bleeding all over his ripped shirt. The other was pale and sweating, his eyes almost black with horror. She recognised the symptoms of shock and got to work straight away. ‘Now you let me see what you’ve done to yourselves,’ she said, keeping her tone light and friendly. ‘My, that’s a cut and a half, isn’t it? Not to worry. They often look much worse than they are.’
‘He’s bleeding, miss,’ said the white-faced boy. ‘That there wall just came down and squashed us. We didn’t stand a chance, we couldn’t get away.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his grubby hand.
Belinda regarded the wounded boy gravely as she reached inside her bag, the contents of which she could by now identify without even looking at them. ‘You’re going to have to be very brave while I clean you up,’ she said. ‘I want you to look over there,’ she pointed to beyond the ambulance, to distract him, ‘and keep your head very still while I—’
‘Ow, miss!’ the boy cried. ‘That bloody hurts, that does!’
Belinda smiled to herself. Perhaps he wasn’t hurt too badly after all. ‘Yes, it will,’ she said. ‘Not much I can do about that right now, but the main thing is to get you clean. So I’m just going to bathe your cut again …’
‘Miss!’ But he kept his head steady, and she could work quickly to staunch the blood, disinfect the open wound and cover it with a sterile pad, held in place with a bandage. ‘There, you’re being an excellent patient. Almost finished. Just let me get out my biggest safety pin and fasten the end of this …’ she bit her lip in concentration, ‘and there we are, all done. Right, now, as for your friend …’
She turned to the other boy who was even paler now and shivering. At once she took off her navy blue cloak and wrapped it around him. ‘Are you feeling cold?’ she asked gently. It was a warm day; this boy needed treatment, and fast. ‘You’ll feel better with that on, I know I always do.’
He nodded mutely, as behind them Brendan and Geraldine methodically cleared the bricks from the third child. Belinda knew she had to keep her charges from watching.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked the boy with the head wound.
‘George, miss.’ He gulped. ‘Will my head be all right? I didn’t see it but it didn’t half thump me, worse than me ma giving me the back of her hand.’
‘Yes, I can see you must have taken quite a blow,’ Belinda said, wondering how to get hold of his mother. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the other child.
‘Benny, miss.’ He sniffed again, but she could see he had grown no paler.
‘Miss, can I ask you something?’ George seemed to be recovering now. ‘You’re a nurse, aren’t you?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Belinda. ‘That’s how I knew what to do to help your head get better.’
‘And the warden called you nurse,’ George continued. ‘Do you come from that big house near the high road?’
‘That’s right.’ Belinda cast another surreptitious glance at his little friend.
‘We had a nurse from there come to our school,’ George went on. ‘She was nice to us. She showed us how to brush our teeth proper. Course it was a long time ago cos we all know that now we’re older. I’ll remember her name in a minute.’
Frowning, Belinda thought it rang a bell. Some of the others had mentioned it – there had been a local campaign of some kind, but before she had come to Victory Walk. It had come up in conversation but she couldn’t recall who had been involved.
The boy wrinkled his nose as he thought long and hard. ‘Something like water,’ he said eventually.
Belinda grinned at him. ‘Was it Nurse Lake?’
He grinned back. ‘That’s it, miss. Do you know her? She was ever so kind. Didn’t shout at us or nothing, or give us the cane.’
‘I should hope not,’ Belinda said at once, remembering now that this must be how Alice met her teacher friend, Janet. It all made sense. She also thought that Alice might be able to identify these boys if they couldn’t give their addresses.
‘Yes, Larry’s sister used to like her too.’
‘Who’s Larry?’
‘Him, miss, our friend.’ George went to look behind him and Belinda was too late to stop him. ‘Oh no, miss. He’s only little, he’s younger than us and we was meant to look after him …’
Turning around herself, she saw that most of the bricks had been cleared away and the small body could now be seen. It was lying completely still.
Geraldine caught her eye. ‘Swap places,’ she called. ‘We need you here. I’ll come to the other two.’
Belinda grabbed her bag and leapt across the jagged pile of rubble to where Larry lay.
Brendan crouched beside him. ‘I did it as fast as I could,’ he muttered. ‘I couldn’t pull the bricks off any-old-how, I didn’t want to hurt him even more. What do you reckon, nurse – are we too late?’
Belinda lowered herself down to their level, her long legs awkward on the sharp stone. ‘You’d better let me see.’ It would not be the first time she’d seen a dead child but it never got any easier. This one was so young, too – maybe four or five, although the children from the nearby streets were often malnourished and appeared younger than they really were. ‘Larry, can you hear me? I’m just going to reach for your wrist.’ She took hold of the cold little hand, careful not to move the arm in case it was broken, but she had to ascertain if there was a pulse. It was no good. She moved around so that she could try to feel his throat instead. She noticed that the other arm was bent out of shape and the small woollen sleeve of his jumper was covered in a dark red stain.
Maybe she could detect the faintest throb. Leaning forward, the sharp pain in her knees almost forgotten in her concentration, she brought her ear as close as she could to his face and listened for a breath, waiting to see if she could feel it on her own cheek.
It seemed as if she was frozen in that position for hours, every nerve stretched to recognise any sign of life. She was oblivious to Geraldine’s reassuring voice as she tried to command the boys’ attention away from what was happening directly behind them, or Brendan’s anxious shifting from foot to foot. She shut her eyes to block out everything but the slightest clue that little Larry might still have a chance.
Finally, just
