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then at the patient in the bed next to him. ‘Why don’t you just ask Mr Maudsley to give you his, as usual?’ she said.
    ‘Me, Sister? I don’t do anything of the kind!’ Eric Maudsley tried and failed to look innocent, but all he managed was a sheepish grin at his neighbour. He was as thin as Mr Anderson was fat, and Frannie knew the two men were firm friends.
    ‘I reckon we’ve been rumbled, Eric,’ Mr Anderson sighed.
    ‘True,’ his friend agreed. ‘Sister’s got eyes and ears everywhere.’
    ‘Indeed, I have,’ Frannie said. ‘Really, Mr Anderson, we haven’t put you on this diet to punish you. If you could just—’
    ‘But I need to know!’ The young man’s voice bellowed again, drowning Frannie out. ‘Where’s Richard? What have they done with him?’
    ‘I know what I’d like to do to that noisy beggar!’ Mr Anderson muttered.
    ‘Quite. Now, as I was saying—’
    ‘Is he dead? Is that why no one will tell me anything?’
    ‘Listen to him going on!’ Mr Maudsley tutted. ‘Strewth, I hope he ain’t going to keep that racket up!’
    ‘Oh, he won’t. Believe me.’ Frannie replaced the chart and smiled sweetly at the two men. ‘Excuse me for a moment, would you?’
    As she walked away, she heard Mr Anderson chuckling, ‘That’s done it, Eric. He’s got her on the warpath now.’
    ‘That’s right, Sister. You give him what for!’ Mr Maudsley called after her.
    Effie O’Hara, the student nurse, whipped round as Frannie swished aside the screen. ‘I-I’m sorry, Sister,’ she stammered, her blue eyes wide with panic. ‘I’ve been trying to calm him down, but—’
    ‘It’s quite all right, Nurse, I know you were doing your best.’ Frannie turned a severe expression on the young man in the bed. He was in a sorry state, his leg raised in a Hodgen splint, a complex metal contraption of wires and pulleys. His right hand and arm were also in a plaster cast, and his face was splotched with bruises. But there was a truculent expression in his green eyes as he looked at her.
    ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Are you in charge here?’
    Frannie had already studied his notes when he was first brought up to the ward. Adam Campbell, twenty-one years old from Pimlico. Fractured forearm and femur and a severed femoral artery. He seemed very angry for someone who had narrowly escaped death.
    ‘Indeed I am, Mr Campbell,’ she replied. ‘Now, what seems to be the matter?’
    ‘I want to know what’s happened to Richard.’
    ‘Richard?’
    ‘Richard Webster. My friend. He was driving the car when it—’ He swallowed. ‘Is he all right? I keep asking, but no one will tell me anything.’
    ‘That’s because we don’t know anything. And shouting at poor Nurse O’Hara is not going to change that.’
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘But,’ she held up her hand as he started to argue, ‘if you do as you’re told and try to stay calm, I will find out what’s happened to your friend.’
    He eyed her warily. ‘And you’ll let me know?’
    ‘Of course. But you have to stop shouting and disturbing the other patients. Do we have an agreement?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ he said grumpily.
    ‘Good.’ Frannie nodded to Effie O’Hara, who followed her through the curtains. ‘Now, Nurse,’ Frannie said. ‘Do you think you can cope with this patient, or would you like me to find another nurse to take over?’
    Effie O’Hara squared her shoulders. She was a tall, slender girl with typical Irish colouring – milky-white skin, startling blue eyes and an abundance of wavy dark hair escaping from her cap.
    ‘I can manage, Sister,’ she said.
    ‘Keep him as quiet as you can. You have nursed a post-operative patient before?’
    Yes, Sister.’
    Frannie glanced towards the screens. ‘Try to find out if he has any friends or family, too. Surely someone must be looking for him.’
    Adam Campbell drifted off to sleep shortly after Sister Blake left. Effie sat at his bedside, watching him anxiously, trying