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back at Henry, and was shocked to find him also looking after her. There was something in his nut-brown eyes that, for once, wasn’t mockery or teasing. Something that, however much she wanted to fight against it, suddenly seemed to make her heart jump and flutter on the wind .

    Rosie thought about Gerard as the bus lumbered on. He’d always been around, but she’d only really noticed him after Mum took off. He’d always had a friendly word for the nurses on his rounds, but they’d mostly just humoured him; his round cheery face and chubby cheeks made him more ‘aww’ material than the latest hunk in Radiology.
    After Rosie had gone with her mum to Heathrow that dank, miserable November Monday morning with an insane amount of luggage and kissed her goodbye, and her mum had asked her one more time if she wouldn’t consider joining her and Pip in the sunshine, she had almost – almost – wavered and changed her mind. But she was halfway through her training and had settled in, and was making her own life now. It didn’t stop her feeling completely and utterly alone, though. She seldom saw her dad, and it tended not to be a great experience when she did. He tried his best but, as he explained when drunk, family life wasn’t for him. Why Rosie was meant to find this useful she had no idea.
    When the cherubic-faced Gerard had popped up on Monday morning as she checked on Mrs Grandle’s fluid levels and asked her if she was all right, he wasn’t to know that he was the first person to ask. Her best friend Mike was on lates so she hadn’t dared phone him. And Gerard, a kindly soul, was genuinely concerned when pretty, bubbly Rosie burst into floods of unexpected tears.
    ‘Hey, hey,’ he had said as she explained. ‘It’s all right.Come and have a coffee on break. Cor,’ he said with some force, ‘I don’t know how I could cope without my mother.’
    This remark had proved to be somewhat prescient.
    But his kindness and sense of fun had helped things along. He had introduced her to silliness and enabled her to rediscover her love of sweet things; he had the dietary habits of a let-loose five-year-old. They had fun eating pick-and-mix at the movies, and every Friday she would find a treat in her locker – a walnut whip, or a little bag of rock. It was cute, even if it hadn’t done much for her waistline.
    ‘Is that it?’ Mike had said, a bit snippily, frankly, when they were discussing Gerard in the pub. Hospitals were small places, without secrets, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. ‘I just thought he’d asked out everyone else and they’d all said no.’
    ‘That’s not true,’ Rosie had protested. ‘He’s really nice when you get to know him.’
    He was funny, and kind, and seemed keen. The idea of someone she already knew, with a steady job, rather than someone she bounced off of on nights out, was beginning to appeal – after all, she wasn’t getting any younger. She explained this to Mike, who rolled his eyes and continued to talk about Giuseppe, who made his life a living hell, but it was worth it because of their unbelievable passion.
    ‘What about when that dies down though?’ protested Rosie. Passion wasn’t everything. The last time she’d felt unbelievable passion, it was for a drummer in a failed rock band who’d given her scabies.
    ‘I’ll just provoke a fight,’ said Mike, getting up to fetch another bottle of wine.
    ‘But don’t you yearn for the nice, quiet, simple things in life? Someone to come home to every night? Being settled?’
    Mike shrugged. ‘Do you?’
    ‘Well, maybe a rest is as good as a change,’ said Rosie, pouring out the wine. ‘Maybe I’d like things just to be nice and calm for a while, no one yelling their head off about moving to Australia.’
    And they had been nice and calm – perhaps a little too nice and calm, but Rosie put that to the back of her mind. Not earth-shattering. Not fast-moving. There were no massively romantic