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she found out that he’d not survived his wounds, then the matter was settled. The money was hers!
    I mustn’t be silly with it.
    She would need to be so very discreet. Pay her rent and leave. Perhaps come up with some sort of a cover story to tell the other girls. She’d tell them her parents had sent enough money
for a ticket to take her back home to Wales. She’d have to leave Whitechapel promptly and find herself somewhere else to live on the other side of London. Why London though? Perhaps even
another country. Some far corner of the empire? America? Africa? India?
    Mary stifled an excited smile. She could become someone else. She’d have to come up with a new life story, a new name. Mary could do that. She could play at being someone else. Do all the
proper talk with a little practice.
    She looked up at a starling swooping across the roof of the hospital. Flying free.
    That’s me. Flying free.
    But one last thing. This last thing. To be sure. To be safe.
    She pushed her way through the large oak and glass doors into the hospital’s foyer, the high ceiling echoing and ringing with voices and the bustle of activity all around her. Weaving her
way through the hospital porters and food vendors, she passed by wooden benches crammed with seated, waiting patients clutching bloodied rags to foreheads, hips, arms, thighs. The usual casualties
of spill-out time from the public houses. She looked for her gentleman amongst them but saw no one who looked remotely like the man.
    ‘Help you, love?’ asked the sister manning the front desk. She look flustered and impatient.
    ‘I . . . I wonder if you can. I, well, I’m enquiring about a gentleman who might have been brought in late last night. Poorly thing. I think someone had stabbed him and beat his
head.’
    The sister looked tired; end of a long night shift. ‘The one from near Soho? Argyll Street? Well-to-do sort?’
    ‘Yes!’ said Mary. ‘Yes, that’s right. It was very late, early hours even . . .’
    ‘That’s right.’ The woman checked an entry book. ‘Came in just after two.’
    Mary steadied her nerves. She could feel her voice fluttering anxiously. ‘I wondered, how is he?’
    The woman looked up at her and saw the anxiety written on her pale face. ‘Are you related?’ Mary sensed the woman evaluating. A few fleeting moments as the nurse took in the crisp
new bonnet that Mary had bought this morning, and the shawl that covered the threadbare seams of her jacket. ‘Are you family?’ There was a hint of cynicism in her voice.
    Mary hesitated a moment too long to get away with trying to say ‘yes’. She realised she was trembling.
    ‘A friend then?’ asked the woman more softly. ‘A close friend?’
    Mary nodded, even managing a tear that tumbled down onto one pale cheek.
    The sister sighed sympathetically. ‘Shouldn’t really do this, love . . . not if you’re not proper next of kin, but—’
    ‘Oh my lord, is he—?’
    ‘Dead?’ The sister smiled, reached a hand over the desk and gently squeezed one of Mary’s. ‘No. But the poor chap’s feeling very sorry for himself this morning.
He’s very much alive, my dear.’
    Mary’s cheeks dampened with several more tears. She smiled. But inside she felt panic beginning to bubble up and give her away. She wondered where the devil she was going to take this
exchange next.
    ‘Come with me, love,’ said the nurse sympathetically. ‘You can look at him briefly, but not too long. He needs his rest.’ She turned to ask a colleague to take over on
the front desk and, with a firm arm around Mary’s shoulders, guided her away from the hustle and bustle of the foyer, through a pair of heavy swing doors.
    ‘I . . . I don’t want to be any trouble. I—’
    ‘I’m finished for today anyway,’ the sister said. ‘Staff cloakroom’s along this way anyhow. It’s no trouble.’ She looked at Mary, glassy-eyed and pale.
‘He is going to be just fine, the doctor said.’
    They walked