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her.
    “She’s seventeen, Achim. When you were that age you didn’t even live at home.”
    “That was different,” he protested, “I was a boy. And it wasn’t the same.”
    Achim had been at university, so he was right, it wasn’t the same. A bright boy, he had got a place at Heidelberg University, a three hours’ drive away from his family home. After graduating he’d moved to England to study for his Masters in business studies. It was where they had met, in Durham. Bridget had just arrived back in England after a nursing placement in Africa, and was itching to get away from her parent’s home, sleeping in her childhood bed, until a new assignment was offered to her. She longed to be back oversees, the excitement of the unknown. Being home was a trial, as neither parent understood her need to get away. “Aren’t there sick people here in Durham?” her mum would ask, and Bridget knew that there was no proper answer for that.
    She was only in the bar because it was cheap, a student hang-out, and Achim had appealed to her because of his German accent. Even in Durham she wanted something different and foreign, and that was what he seemed to offer. But still, her work came first, and when Médecins Sans Frontières offered her the posting in Tizi Ouzou she took it without even thinking of him. The relationship should have ended there. It would have ended there, if not for his persistence. Meeting up on rare breaks, showing her a different world from the war-torn camp where she tried her best to mend what was broken.
    That last placement, the one in Tizi Ouzou, she had nearly taken a very different path. She had been devoted to the country, and its people.
    Achim had graduated by then, got a job in Heidelberg. It seemed that they would never even meet again.
    Of course, when she discovered she was pregnant, she knew a baby would mean she had to give up her job. An abortion was the only option, and this meant arranging a trip back to Europe. It was all in place, and she had no doubt it was the right decision.
    And then the solider arrived with the baby and thrust it in her arms.
    It changed everything.
    Once Bridget had decided to keep the baby she resolved to give birth in Algeria in order to continue working as late into the pregnancy as possible. Achim would not hear of it, a child of his being born in an area where tourists were warned not to travel and healthcare was basic. There was no counter argument, either, from MSF. A pregnant nurse was a liability; her work with them was over. So Bridget turned her back on her vocation and moved to Heidelberg, to start a life with Achim, even though she knew they were from different worlds. It wasn’t what she had planned, but she came to see that Achim had given her a gift.
    He had given her Ellie.
    In Heidelberg, Bridget was restless, and also bored. Having a toddler was no substitute for the adrenalin-filled frenzy of working on a MSF camp, so when Achim had suggested she get a job at the university hospital, she leapt at the idea. The vacancy was in a new department, the Ion Treatment Programme for cancer sufferers, the first of its kind in Europe. Once she started to work she felt needed again.
    They should never have left Heidelberg.
    Achim’s company had offered him a promotion to Luxembourg and it seemed he simply couldn’t say no. She had hoped her nursing skills would be useful there too, but Luxembourg was the one country where she couldn’t practice, because she lacked the necessary language skills. French, she had, but after years without use it was rusty, and she had no knowledge of Luxembourgish. For MSF the fact that her French was poor had never been an issue, it was the language of nursing that was so desperately needed, and she had developed both skills at a rapid rate in Tizi. But in Luxembourg she was grounded, relegated to a housewife and recent evidence was that she wasn’t cut out for the job.
    How could she be? When her daughter had now been