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daughters. We were delighted when he married Janet. That was the week before war was declared. And it settled him down so much I hardly recognized him. The responsibility, you see. He’d never had to look after anyone else before. Then Papa died—you remember that, don’t you? We were outside of Ypres just then. I was sent home on compassionate leave—and Rob took Mama home to Janet, rather than leave her in her own home. She was so lost, it was heartbreaking to watch.”
    “Yes, I remember that. How is your mother now?”
    “She’d been writing letters to Rob, telling him that his wife was seeing other men. That she walked out with them nearly every night, leaving Mama at home alone.”
    “Oh, dear,” I said, knowing what must be coming. But I was wrong.
    Taking a deep breath, Sister Burke said, “And then Mama died suddenly. Or at least it seemed sudden to us. Rob came home to the funeral, and the doctor was telling him that Mama appeared to be well one day and ill the next. He had something to say as well about Janet’s care of Mama, and Rob knocked him down. The doctor. It was dreadful. A terrible scene on the steps of the church.”
    I could imagine it, and I said as much. “What did the doctor accuse Janet of? Neglect?”
    “Not precisely neglect. She fed and dressed Mama, took her to the doctor, filled all her medicines as directed. It was just leaving her home at night alone, while Janet went out with other men. Just the way Mama had described. And she wasn’t there the night Mama suddenly took ill in the night. By the time Janet found her, there was nothing to be done.”
    “When was this?”
    “In May. In the midst of that influenza epidemic. But Mama didn’t die of influenza. It was some digestive disturbance.”
    I quickly went through my knowledge of poisons, unwilling to believe it was possible, unable to stop myself from wondering.
    I said, “And all is well still between Janet and your brother?”
    “I’m afraid not. He’s just been told that Janet is going to have a child. And my brother swears it isn’t his. Couldn’t be. I just don’t know. What’s more, I don’t know what to do.”
    Janet Burke wasn’t the first woman who had married one man and then had fallen in love with someone else. And wartime made it easier, it seemed. It had now become something of an epidemic as the fighting went on and on, without an end in sight.
    “Where is Janet now? Still in Norfolk?”
    “No, she’s gone to live with her sister in Hampshire. The Norfolk house has been closed up. It hasn’t been a comfortable pregnancy, she says, and she needs her sister’s care and support.”
    Or she wanted to escape the gossip in Norfolk.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. I just hoped Rob wouldn’t do anything rash when next he had leave. It sometimes happened.
    We worked together, Sister Burke and I, on two men who were shell-shocked, dazed and uncertain where they were, calling for dead comrades and fighting off attempts to dress their wounds because they were determined to return to their lines. We gave a sedative to one of them, he was so difficult, and finally persuaded the other to sleep. I felt deeply for these men, although some of the orderlies treated them with contempt, calling them cowards. The mind can handle only so much despair and horror. Killing didn’t come naturally to most men, although they had to become proficient at it if they hoped to survive. Many blotted out what they couldn’t face, and others buried it deep inside, where only they could see it. And some simply walked into a German bullet to stop the torment.
    They slept, and the next morning got up and went back to the lines, unwilling to leave their men to face the enemy without them. It took tremendous courage.
    And then one night when rain was coming down in sheets and we were trying to get a convoy through to the Base Hospital in Rouen, fighting the mud and the slick road and dodging columns of men moving up the