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CHAPTER ONE
HER ROOM in the Nurses’ Home was small and cramped. She still found it hard to believe she was where she was; sometimes she would hover in the warm half-world between sleeping and waking, blinking in surprise when eventually her eyes opened.
The walls had once—unbelievably—been painted in a dark olive green emulsion, she knew this because great murky patches showed through the present light green colour, which was peeling off in handfuls. But Claire didn’t care, the gloomy surroundings didn’t matter—even they could not quell the enthusiasm which had been bubbling up inside her for weeks now and was threatening to spill over at any time. As she pinned the brand new fob watch on to her uniform, the sunlight caught the glass and it flashed brilliantly—a symbol of the bright new future that lay ahead of her.
She rubbed her finger along the inside of the unfamiliar stiff, starched collar and surveyed her image in the mirror, really starting to believe for the first time that she was now Student Nurse Scott. The girl who stared back at her was no longer the leggy, successful top model, whose wide professional smile for the camera concealed a growing awareness of her shallow life-style, but one of the general public’s very own ‘angels’.
Her copper curls—once her most bankable trademark—had been tied and tamed, and now only their colour appeared riotous beneath the white linen cap. She wore a white starched apron over the pale blue striped uniform dress, and the white belt which covered her waist marked her out as one of the Introductory Block, or ‘new girls’ as they were known at St Anthony’s. The fine black stockings and neat shoes accentuated her slim ankles and shapely legs. She had been in the School of Nursing wearing mufti for almost twelve weeks, but today was to be her first on the wards proper.
She could hear echoing sounds of laughter and chattering outside her room, presumably in the direction of the canteen. She had just drunk a cup of tea which she had made in her room earlier—she knew that they served a variety of breakfasts from as early as six a.m., but she felt far too excited to eat anything.
She glanced at her fob watch for the twentieth time. She still had over ten minutes before she should start out for Belton Ward, and just for a moment she allowed herself to think of him. Luke Hayward. She would not be standing in a nurse’s uniform if it were not for him. Her whole life had changed direction and Luke Hayward had been the catalyst, and she knew about him—what?
Practically nothing really, she mused as she gave the regulation black shoes a final flick with a cloth. Except that he had seemed dedicated to his work, and very caring. And that he had intelligent grey-green eyes, firm lips, a strong jaw and hair which was a curious mixture of golden and brown. Which was little more than she knew when she had first seen him from across the other side of a crowded restaurant . . .
It had been a fashionable fish restaurant in North London and he had been sitting with three women, including a slim woman with pale hair who had been smiling up at him lazily. Claire had been dining with Simon Saunders—he had been asking her out for months and eventually she had agreed to have supper with him.
She had been aware that her colleagues would have been envious if they had known that she was out with the tall, shaggy-haired photographer, but she had been bored by his gossipy comments about the other models he worked with. It seemed that he was as superficial as most of the other people she usually hung around with.
Claire had looked up, vainly trying to stifle a yawn, when she had found herelf staring into a pair of very amused grey-green eyes, and he had raised his glass to her and smiled, with a kind of elegant old-world courtesy which had charmed her, and she had blushed.
That had been all, but the questioning look in those eyes had planted a seed of doubt in her mind, causing her to begin to analyse the quality of her whole lifestyle—never realising that at their next meeting he was to help her change it irrevocably.
She sighed as she gathered up the scarlet-lined woollen cloak and a slight frown appeared between the dark brows which framed slanting eyes of hyacinth blue. She was longing to see him again, longing to tell him that she had thrown caution to the wind and had taken his advice.
She took a final glance around the room as she opened the door—it really was tiny; the expression ‘no room to swing a cat’ might have been invented for the nurses’ accommodation at St Anthony’s Hospital!
A narrow bed and rather scratched bedside locker had somehow been squeezed in. In the corner of the window stood a large old-fashioned white enamel wash-basin. At least the view made up for it—the rather Gothic architecture of Hampstead contrasted dramatically with the unexpectedly wild sweep of green which was Hampstead Heath.
It had been drummed into the nurses how lucky they were to be training in North London, since apparently at another famous London hospital, the Nurses’ Home backed on to a very large prison!
Mrs Haynes, her tutor, had explained that they liked the Introductory Block to live in the Nurses’ Home for the first twelve weeks—partly to get to know each other and partly to become fully integrated into hospital life.
‘I have no objection to your living out in a flat after that,’ she had told Claire in her first week. ‘Although I do think that you might find it a bit of a trek to get here on time from Notting Hill, especially on an early duty. Why not move closer?’
Claire had taken her at her word, had put her old flat on the market, sold it almost immediately, and was due to move into her new flat in Primrose Hill that weekend, only a couple of miles from St Anthony’s.
She set off for the main hospital building, which was a short walk away. Today was an important day. Today, as Mrs Haynes had joked to the class, they were about to be let loose on the patients! They were each to spend the Friday morning on their allotted wards, as a kind of gentle grounding before they started on the wards full-time next week.
Claire was to report to Sister Thompson on Belton Ward at seven-thirty a.m. She felt excited yet slightly apprehensive as she carefully smoothed her spare apron over her arm, trying not to crease it.
Mrs Haynes had warned them that the first day on a new ward was often a baptism of fire. ‘Some are smitten, others take longer to like it, while some can’t stand it and come straight to my office with their notice written out.’
Claire hoped fervently that she wouldn’t be amongst the last group. She had enjoyed her time in the School of Nursing tremendously, but the wards were a different story completely, with different demands. She prayed that she would find them a challenge rather than daunting.
At least in class she had already found herself a friend. She had found herself sitting next to a small, dark girl with an infectious grin, called Mary Wells. The two girls had shared an immediate bond as they had both worked at other jobs before starting nursing. The other twenty-four in the class had all come straight from school, and to Claire they seemed much younger.
As she walked towards Belton, she could see huge silver trolleys being trundled down the main corridor by the catering staff, with hot breakfasts on their way to each of the wards.
She had been a student nurse for eleven and a half weeks, but in all that time she had not had the opportunity to speak to Luke Hayward. The School of Nursing was quite separate from the main hospital building, and she had never seen him at lunchtime in the canteen.
She could of course have had him bleeped and arranged to meet him, but what on earth would she say? She could hardly blurt out, ‘Hello, Luke—it’s Claire Scott. I’m the
