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Just before four o'clock Mr Bagley made his appearance—a wiry little man with a neat moustache and a smiling, affable manner. 'It's not that I want to be obstructive, Sister, in any way at all, but I don't want Emily to be traumatised or in a lot of pain afterwards.'

It was at this point exactly that Simon put his head round the door, whereupon he and Mr Bagley repaired to the interview room, leaving Anna to get on with her work and Mrs Bagley—all unsuspecting in the ward— to forage in her locker for fruit.

Roughly fifteen minutes later Mr Bagley sailed in to join her, putting his arms round her ample shoulders and kissing her on both cheeks. Simon, came back to Anna with the notes. 'Is all well?' she asked, gleaning nothing from his expression. He looked hot and tired, she thought.

'Well, he's reconciled now, if not deliriously happy— but there it is. There's no way I'm going to chance laparoscopy on a patient who is carrying at least twenty-eight kilograms of excess weight.'

'She should diet,' Anna said to his back, for he was looking through the viewing window.

'Get the dietician down to see her—couldn't do any harm. Oh, by the way—' he swung round and faced her '—I've just run into Alex Marriner on his way up to Cardiac to fetch his father home, but you'll know about that, I dare say...'

'Oh, Lord, I did!' Anna's eyes flew wide. 'Oh, how could I have forgotten? Alex rang last night to tell me, and I said I'd see Charles before he left!'

'You could still make it, couldn't you?' Simon suggested offhandedly.

'No, I've missed my chance. I'll have to leave it. It'll make too much of a flap if I go up now. I meant to come in earlier and see him just before lunch. The thing is, I'm not really concentrating well. My great-grandmother died yesterday.'

'Did she now?' His expression changed, and he retraced his steps from the door. 'How's Mrs Gatton taking it?' He sat down in the visitor's chair.

'She was fantastic last night when she got back from the nursing-home, but a bit low this morning.'

'Should you be here...? You could have got leave, you know.'

'I suggested that, but she wouldn't hear of it.' Anna pushed herself, and her chair, clear of the desk but still sat there in case he thought she was trying to hurry him off, which was the last thing she wanted. 'My parents are with her now,' she explained. 'They arrived just as I came out.'

'From Reading?'

'Yes. Dad is her son, but I think I told you that.'

'You did,' he affirmed, glancing towards the door as Rosina appeared with a glass of squash for Anna. It was too hot for drinking tea. He asked her what she'd done to her leg but refused her offer of squash, waiting patiently for her to go out again, which, after a sigh, she did.

'Was Mrs Gatton with her mother when she died?' he asked once the door was closed.

'Yes, she was.' Anna sipped her drink. 'They were having tea out in the gardens. . ..Riverside has lovely grounds. Great-Nan was in a wheelchair, thoroughly enjoying it all, when she gave a sort of cry, Prue said, and rolled forward onto the grass. Prue thought she'd arrested at first, but it was a stroke...a CVA... She lapsed into a coma and died three hours later with Prue at her side.'

'Well, at least it was relatively quick and she'd have known nothing about it,' Simon said, gently and sensibly, 'and in time Mrs Gatton will be glad she was there, right on the spot, shocked though she must have been.'

'She's glad now. It comforts her to know exactly how the end came.'

'Your grandmother is a remarkable lady.'

'The mostest,' Anna agreed, warming to his words and smiling at him, getting the kind of smile back that surely wiped out any ill feeling which might have been rumbling around since the night of the party when she'd told him she hated him.

'Let me know if I can help at all,' he said, and she told him she would. Then he got up to go and, desperate to keep him for a few minutes longer, she asked him how Amy Benson was. 'I know, of course, that she's gone home.'

'Went last night,' he said. 'Far too soon, in my opinion, but there you are—that's the way things are these days and we can't change the system. Her mother, a formidable lady in her eighties, is looking after her with the aid of the district nurses, so she'll have all the care she needs. I'll be ringing her up from time to time to see how she is.

'The agency nurse I've got is first rate but, rather to my surprise, I'm missing Amy's bossy presence, even her annoying habit of treating me like a new boy just out of medical school!'

'I'm sure she's anxious to get back,' Anna laughed.

'All in good time. Now, remember me to your grandmother, won't you?' He opened the door to admit Meg, who had come to tell him that he was wanted in Theatre Two.

When Anna got home that night, just before ten o'clock, her parents and Prue were ticking off items on a long list of things to do. The funeral was fixed for midday on Friday, which didn't give them much time. 'But we were offered that slot and didn't want to miss it,' Paul Gatton explained in a quick aside to Anna when Prue was out of the room.

About ten relatives and friends had been notified and eight were coming, travelling, as it happened, from easy distances and so wouldn't need putting up.

'We're taking them to the Ambassador for a slap-up lunch afterwards,' Prue explained, 'making it as happy an occasion as possible, and then on the Saturday, Anna, I'm going back to Reading with Paul and Diane—just for a few days.'

'We aim to hold on to her for a week at least,' said Gatton said, bending down to his mother and planting a kiss on her cheek.

'You won't mind me not being here, will you, dear?' Prue was looking at Anna.

'I'll miss you and I'll be glad to see you back, but you need a little break. I'll see to the garden and everything.'

'Anna—' her mother put in, setting down her nighttime glass of whisky and ginger '—doesn't mind being on her own. She got used to it when she was married, with Danny so often away.'

No one said anything but Paul Gatton's face tightened, whilst Prue looked askance at the daughter-in-law of whom she was fond but deplored her clumsiness.

Once upstairs in her flat Anna telephoned Alex to say how sorry she was not to have seen his father before he left the hospital. 'I truly meant to do so,' she said, 'but this business of Great-Nan threw me and, what with Mother and Daddy coming and everything, it completely slipped my mind. Tell me, how is he.. .how does he seem now he's home?'

'Tired, but we're keeping him in bed for a week on the advice of our GP. It' s great to have him back, Anna, you've no idea.'

'It was a very anxious time.'

'You were such a support...' There was a little pause, then Alex asked how her grandmother was.

'With Mother and Daddy here, much better. Now it's she who needs support.'

'Perhaps I could come over and see her tomorrow, in the evening, if you'll be there?'

'I will be—I'm on earlies tomorrow—but can you leave Charles?' she asked.

'Easily, yes. Imo will be with him,' he assured her swiftly. 'She doesn't mind what she does in the nursing line, which frees me to go to the shop and keep the business ticking over.'

Looks like Simon was right, Anna thought when she put down the phone. Imogen Rayland clearly holds that family together. I can't see her leaving it to live with Amy Benson, she's far too deeply entrenched.

On early duty next day, Anna was up and out of the house by seven o'clock, seen only by her father who was coming in from a stroll in the orchard—a big, broad-shouldered man in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Bending almost double to do so, he put his head inside the car. 'I've hardly seen you, darling!'

'I know—' Anna looked rueful '—but I'll be home by five tonight.'

'How about me riding along with you now, as far as the hospital? The walk back along the sea-front will do me good.'

'Brilliant!' Anna leaned sideways to unlock the passenger door. 'But it's a good mile back, Dad... Think you can manage it?'

'Cheeky monkey, and me in my prime!' He slid into the car, settling the seat belt over his chest and bending the sun-flap down. 'I want to know how things are going for you,' he said as the little car slid down the drive into Romsey Road and turned towards the sea-front. 'I know you sound happy enough in your letters and over the phone, but now you can tell me to my face exactly how things are.'

'I've left the past behind, Dad, and I'm getting on with my life,' Anna said steadily, tailing a long pantechnicon bound for the port. 'I love my job—the responsibility of it—knowing that I can cope. I wouldn't want to go back to staffing. I quite fancy myself as the boss!'

'How do you spend your spare time?'

'Oh, in all sorts of ways. I've joined the hospital recreational club, although I've not been as yet. There's always the lure of the beach in summer and there's Prue's garden too, which takes some keeping in order and I enjoy helping with that. I do go out on dates occasionally, but I don't want to get too heavily involved just yet. I need a little space.'

'What about work colleagues?'

'Absolutely fine. The nurses co-operate, I've got a very good staff nurse, who's a friend as well, and the surgical team are fine.'

'Your grandmother tells me you have a charming consultant.'

'I think,' Anna said, putting her foot down hard to avoid a jogger on the crossing, 'that Prue's fallen for him, hook, line and sinker, and she a hardened case... All because he admired her clematis! There's no doubt about it—the way to Prue's heart is through her climbing plants!' It was necessary to joke to hide her feelings, which she felt must show on her face. Why, even the sound of the word 'consultant' made her tense these days.

There was a little more talk about Prue, and the way she had taken her mother's death. 'I'm glad she's going back with you after the funeral. It'll be just the break she needs.'

'Hope so,' her father said. 'She can help me in the clinic, if she likes. Once a vet always a vet... seventy-plus or no.'

They were nearing the hospital complex, and Anna turned up the slope, driving slowly past Outpatients and the Tower Block to the main building with its porter's lodge. 'This is where I tip you, darling.' As she pulled into the side, a cream BMW passed them and drew to a halt further on.

It was Simon and he'd seen them—Anna knew he had, for he'd glanced at the car as he passed. He was getting out. She could see his legs, then the whole of him as he stood up, turned round and came towards them, shading his eyes from the sun. 'Daddy, this is Simon,' she just had time to hiss at her father before he reached them and then she was fumbling to get out to introduce the two men. Her father, already out on the pavement, was looking with interest at the personable man in his mid-thirties, now at Anna's side.

'Simon, this is my father,' she said. 'Daddy, this is Mr Easter, our gynae consultant.'

They shook hands, each taking a keen look at the other. Then they chatted for a minute or two, Simon referring to Great-Nan's death and Paul Gatton saying that she'd been a game old girl. As for Anna, she stood and looked at the two of them, standing there in the sun.

Comparisons, as she well knew, were odious, but she made them just the same, noting how both were the same height, one casually garbed and one sleekly suited as befitted his job, one dark and the other fair, but both... and her heart gave a little lurch.. .both of them lovable.

They were laughing now, and Simon was saying, 'I understand your patients are the four-legged type, sir!'

'In the main, yes,' her father replied, 'although I have the two-legged, beaked sort occasionally. In my business, Simon, it's the owners who give the most trouble.'

'Now that I can believe,' Simon laughed, and shortly after that he and Anna got into their cars and goodbyes were said. Paul Gatton started his walk down Ship Street to the sea-front, whilst Anna followed Simon onto the parking lot, where he caught up with her again.

'I still think you should have had some compassionate leave,' he said, as they walked side by side to the hospital entrance. 'You could have had more time with your folks.'

'I've got tomorrow—the day of the funeral—off and it's my weekend off, too, so it's not bad, and I'll see so many relatives tomorrow it'll keep me going for years,' she said offhandedly, still shaken to the core by the wash of emotion she'd experienced when she'd seen Simon and her father shake hands.

Once on the ward, though, there was no time to reflect on anything other than jobs to be tackled, patients to be calmed and breakfasts to be served—cereal, or toast, marmalade or jam, eggs, if supplied from home, usually boiled bullet hard for Rosina lost count of time.

For Emily Bagley there was nothing as she was due in theatre at nine. Anna checked her prepping, fixing her identity bracelet on. 'You'll be back with us in no time, Mrs Bagley.' Woozy from the pre-med, Emily smiled and rolled her head as the porters slotted their poles into her canvas, lifted her onto the long narrow trolley and then wheeled her out of the ward.

After Emily a young woman for repair surgery went down, followed by another with tubal blockage, followed by three D and Cs and a hysterectomy. Both theatres were in use, Simon in one and Bill in the other, with Meg assisting Bill. So it was all coming and going—all ducking and diving, as May Fenn, the learner, said. Still spry and eager to learn as ever, she cheerfully supported the heads of vomiting returnees, and comforted them as well.

Anna, on her way to the canteen at lunchtime with Rose Webb from Maternity, caught sight of Simon in the corridor leading to the doctors' dining-room. He turned and waved, then hurried on.

'He fancies you,' Rose said. 'It's those gorgeous boobs of yours, not to mention...'

'He's like that with everyone.' Anna went pink, to Rose's further amusement.

'Indeed he isn't; he's usually pretty tightly buttoned,' she said. 'He doesn't flaunt his charms, or at least he doesn't within these walls. What he does outside them, of course, is anybody's guess!'

'And no one's business,' Anna said tartly, causing Rose, with a glance at her, to change the subject and ask how Alex was.