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stay at St Aidan's while they waited for the X-ray.
    Anna listened attentively, even though the old lady tended to repeat herself. Consequently, she had little opportunity to talk to her colleagues, but she heard Bryan tell Sheila Haggerty about the split duty, and Sheila, a sharp-eyed troublemaker, raised her brows in disbelief.
    'You're on again at five then?' she called across to Anna, who shook her head, her mind half on what Mrs Norton was telling her about her great-grandson.
    'Half-past four,' Anna said, absently. If she had been alert, she would have noticed the pleased way Sheila sat back, lips pursed determinedly. Anna knew well that Sheila liked to complain about the hospital or the training if she could.
    This was Sheila's second hospital. She had started her training at a London teaching hospital but found the discipline too restrictive. At least that was the reason she gave everyone. Anna had her doubts and believed Sheila and the hospital had parted by mutual consent!
    It was nearly one o'clock by the time Anna returned Mrs Norton to the ward. Then she had to listen to the old lady's reminiscences once again, as Mrs Norton insisted that Anna should help settle her in a chair by the bed for her lunch. Eventually Anna was free, and dragging on her raincoat as she ran, she hared downstairs towards the entrance. Lunch would be ruined and Mother would be in hysterics. Anna could, from vast experience, picture the scene all too clearly.
    She ran outside, glad to see the pale winter sun, then nearly collided With a man on her short cut across the car-park.
    Strong arms steadied her when she would have fallen, and a deep, masculine voice asked if she was all right.
    Flushed and breathless, Anna gazed up—into a handsome if heavy-featured face, and dark eyes. 'Oh! I'm very sorry!' she said, struggling to regain her breath. Was this a consultant? she wondered in dismay. Probably he was just admin, but he was very well-dressed.
    'The devil himself chasing you, is he?' the deep, amused voice asked, brown eyes assessing her shrewdly.
    ' No I'm sorry, really. I 'm late for lunch. That's all.' Anna longed to resume her wild run but the dark man's hand was still holding her wrist, where her pulse was pumping away.
    'Is lunch far away?' he asked, releasing her.
    'Only Brightling Hill. If you will excuse me?' Without waiting for his permission, she scurried away. She wondered again, briefly, who the man was, but her thoughts were mainly for her mother, who was sure to be worried and distressed.
    Mother was worried and distressed. Though distraught might have been a better word, Anna thought glumly, eyeing mother's pale, tear-stained face and shaking hands.
    Jennifer Curtis had been an actress before she married and everything was over-dramatised. Even before her coronary every little setback was magnified a million times. Anna suspected her mother enjoyed acting, loved a meaty, tearful scene, but she would never voice her suspicions. Actresses and actors lived in a permanent world of make-believe, Anna reckoned, and who was she to insist they lived in this dreary world? Let Mother enjoy her scenes, insist on star-billing. If she was happy, then so was Anna.
    The fact that Anna had no social life and few friends didn't matter just then, as she hugged her mother, smoothing back the still fine red-brown hair. Hair that was greying rapidly now, adding to her mother's grief.
    'I got held up, Mother. I had to take an old lady to X-ray, then on the way out of the hospital I nearly knocked a man down!' Anna laughed, trying to cheer her mother up.
    'Oh?' Jennifer's tears dried miraculously, as she signalled to Mrs Jenkins to bring in the lunch. 'What sort of man? A handsome consultant?'
    'Well, he might have been,' Anna acknowledged slowly. 'Anyway he was well-built so I didn't knock him flying!'
    Anna hurried upstairs to change, the brown-eyed stranger vanishing from her thoughts.
    When a refreshed and well-fed Anna returned to the