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are ghosts here. I admonish her, and I watch her when she comes to this room. She might be serious, but I doubt it. She has no names for these ghosts. Maybe they are silent, like her.
    Monday, 9 December
    My new nurse called this morning. She tells me she will be my permanent carer, subject to war conditions, which means she’ll attend me one day at a time. Her name is Rose Sansom, and she’s both a Queen’s Nurse and a district nurse. She’s based inPooley Bridge on the northern tip of Ullswater, but she reports each month to Barrow-in-Furness, where the Cumbrian HQ of the Queen’s Nurses is based.
    I was wrong. Rose isn’t fat and she’s no bossier than any nurse I’ve dealt with till now. In fact, she’s very slim and as pretty as her name, and I feel quite smitten. I’ll have to watch myself. Of course, she has the upper hand. She cleaned and dressed my wound with the greatest gentleness, just as Alice MacDonald used to do. It hurt, as it always does, but I put on a brave face throughout, and I fancy it hurt less than before. She’s the first nurse since Alice I’ve had confidence in.
    ‘You’re healing well,’ she said as she finished putting on a new bandage and fastening it with adhesive tape.
    ‘You nurses all say that,’ I objected. ‘You don’t have to keep the truth from me.’
    She gave me a look I shall never forget. She’s quite short, with short auburn hair and soft red lips. I’ve already learned that she can look at me in a hundred different ways, all of them capable of making me uncomfortable.
    ‘I never mollycoddle my patients,’ she retorted. ‘Whatever I tell you will be the truth, however unpalatable it may be. We’ll get on well if you learn to trust me.’
    I nodded timidly, well admonished. Of course, I didn’t tell her I trusted her already. It’s not the done thing. Or is that just my family’s attitude, where nobody ever trusts anybody, except Octavia and myself? She made me feel something of a child, though from the look of her I guess she’s a year or two younger than myself.
    As she was helping me back into my pyjamas, the door opened and I saw Octavia come in. They had met earlier, when Nurse Sansom arrived, but now I introduced them properly. Nurse Sansom wasn’t in the least flustered by Octavia’s disability as somany are. She made sure she was looking straight at her when she spoke, and she was able to do some primitive gesturing, which delighted Octavia no end.
    When Octavia left again, Rose – for that is what she already insisted I call her – sat beside me again.
    ‘Tell me about Octavia,’ she said.
    I told her what there was to know. That she’d been born with good hearing but that at the age of five she’d contracted mumps and gone completely deaf. Rose listened gravely, and I had a feeling that she took a special interest in the matter.
    ‘I’d like to help her,’ she said. ‘I have a cousin, John, aged fifteen, who was deaf from birth. He’s been to all manner of teachers and advisers, most of them useless. But a couple of years ago he was fitted with a hearing aid. Doesn’t Octavia have one?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘We heard they weren’t very good.’
    ‘Well, that’s understandable, the new type were only developed a few years back. But they can do a lot of good. I’ll look into what’s possible. I take it your family have money?’
    It was hard to dissemble. The house itself and its furnishings spoke for themselves, and though I was bed-bound, I was wearing a smoking jacket that had been bought in Paris at a little shop my mother knew, in an impasse in St Germain.
    ‘Normally, quite a lot. With the war, things aren’t so good.’
    ‘Well, if she gets an Amplivox, it shouldn’t cost more than thirty pounds. It’s a lot of money, but if your parents can meet the cost . . .’
    Just then, Octavia came in again, gesturing.
    ‘I’ve been in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s really cold. It’s even cold in here.’
    The living