Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

‘Am I in the right place?’ she asked in a strong Cockney accent.

‘This is room fifteen,’ Lily replied.

‘That’s me then,’ said the girl, and came into the room properly, dragging a suitcase that looked bigger than she was. She was tiny, like an older version of Shirley Temple with those curls, but her laughing, cat-shaped eyes made her appear a little more grown up.

‘Maisie Higgins,’ she said. ‘Lawks, crying already!’ She stared at Diana’s tear-stained cheeks. ‘I heard the matron was a bit of a Tartar, but I didn’t think she’d be cracking the whip already.’

The first weeks in the grand old hospital on Gray’s Inn Road were hard and exhausting. Lily and Maisie at least were used to getting up early – Maisie had been an apprentice in a hairdressers’ – but Diana found it a nightmare. Food in the home was good, despite rationing. But the hardest part was getting used to dealing with actual patients. Anyone thinking there would be a lot of theory and lessons before they worked on the wards had been in for a shock.

Despite being students, they were thrown in at the deep end.

‘This is wartime,’ said one of their nursing tutors that first day as she led them from ward to ward, letting them see the size of the great hospital. ‘Sad to say, but it’s a great time to learn because you’ll see things that you’ve never seen before. A quarter of last year’s intake have dropped out, didn’t have the stomach for it. So, ladies, it’s up to you.’

One of their number vomited at the sight of a burn victim having his dressings changed. Lily felt like joining her. But she forced herself to stand up straight and proud at the bedside. If she was to do this job properly, she’d have to learn to deal with worse sights. She would not be dropping out.

‘You all right?’ she whispered to Diana, who was looking very green under her starched nurse’s cap.

‘Not really,’ Diana murmured, wobbling on her feet.

‘Think how hard it’ll be for the poor man if we all run like headless chickens,’ Lily said, her eyes still on the patient’s face, taking in the terrible charred edges of the burns and the raw pink skin underneath.

‘Righto,’ gulped Diana. ‘I understand.’ She smiled at the man.

‘Well done, Nurse Belton,’ said the tutor. ‘Thought we’d lost you for a moment there.’

‘Not a chance,’ said Diana, squeezing Lily’s hand tightly.

Lily was surprised and pleased to discover that there were women medical students at the Royal Free.

‘Wonder if they’re like us and get the dirtiest jobs?’ Maisie said thoughtfully.

‘Not bloody likely,’ said another of the trainees.

The student nurses undoubtedly got all the worst jobs on the wards, mainly bed-pan duty and sponge-bathing patients. One of the more sadistic ward sisters took an instant dislike to Diana and gave her all the most horrible jobs, including reapplying a dressing to a wounded man’s groin area.

Diana nearly died of embarrassment, she told the other student nurses that evening in the home’s tiny common room.

‘I don’t know which of us went pinker,’ Diana sighed, ‘him or me. Poor chap.’

‘Poor chap!’ parroted Cheryl, a tough girl from Walthamstow who never missed the opportunity to tease Diana over her cut-glass accent. ‘Bloody toff,’ said Cheryl. ‘Who’s she think she is – Lady Muck? She should have stayed at home with the butler. We don’t want her sort here.’

It had been another in a series of long days and Lily was dead on her feet. But even so, she could recognise that something needed to be done.

Easing her tired body out of her chair, Lily stood up and put her hands on her hips. ‘You’ve an awful mouth on you, Cheryl,’ she said coldly. ‘Diana doesn’t look down on you, so you ought to stop looking down on her.’

This stopped Cheryl in her tracks. ‘Me look down on her?’

‘Do you look down on me, too?’ Lily went on. ‘Am I a big thick Irishwoman when I’m not here to hear it?’

‘No,’ shot back Cheryl. ‘You’re different…’

‘We’re all different,’ Lily said sharply. ‘It’s high time you got used to it.’

‘Or else?’ Cheryl’s pointed face hardened.

Lily drew herself up to her full imposing height. ‘I was raised right beside a farm. My father’s a blacksmith and my mother’s in service, and I can launder a lady’s camis as handily as help shoe a horse. There were lots of knocks in my life before I came here and I’m not putting up with any more from the likes of you, madam. I don’t believe in raising my fist to anyone, but if I did, I’d knock you from here to kingdom come and you wouldn’t get up in a hurry, I can tell you. So leave Diana alone.’

‘The wild Irish girl!!’ cheered someone.

‘Fine,’ snapped Cheryl and left the room in a huff.

‘Thank you so much,’ Diana said, grabbing Lily’s arm. ‘That’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’

She had tears in her eyes. Lily realised that at some point she’d have to explain to Diana that, when she was feeling vulnerable, she adopted an icy demeanour that gave entirely the wrong impression.

‘Think us three ought to stick together,’ added Maisie. ‘Lily can handle all the trouble, Diana can get us into the posh restaurants, and I can do our hair. What do you say, girls?’

The three of them looked at each other and grinned.

‘Sounds good to me,’ Lily said. Who’d have thought that one of her friends would turn out to be someone every bit as aristocratic as Lady Irene? Wait till she told Vivi.

TEN (#ulink_0b2ec3b5-e015-5700-8299-0f1c841ee8aa)

Izzie, Anneliese and Brendan sat at the kitchen table around untouched cups of tea. The tea made Izzie realise she was home, for sure: only in her birthplace was everybody convinced that, when all else failed, making tea helped.

Her father sat opposite her, looking much older than he had the last time. She hadn’t been home in over a year – how was it that time between visits home seemed to expand the longer you lived abroad?

The plus of emigration was that you never spent long enough at home to be irritated by all your family’s annoying little idiosyncrasies, stuff that niggled when you were in close contact. The minus was that your family aged so much in your absence.

Every time she came home, she had that feeling of watching another frame in a speeded-up piece of film.

Dad was sixty-seven and when she said it fast, it didn’t sound old at all, until they’d embraced in the hospital and she felt that he was no longer her solid father, just skinny, diminished and older. But then, she was older too.

Older, just not much wiser, she thought with bitterness. Joe had left two messages on her phone. She’d listened to his voice and wished she had the strength to erase the messages without having to hear all of them. But she couldn’t do that. Like an addict, she had to hear his voice, just in case he said what she longed to hear above all else:

I love you and need you. I’m coming to be with you, Izzie.

But that wasn’t what he’d said. Instead, he’d gone for a safe message that managed to say nothing:

‘I know you’re upset, but please call me back, I hate to think of you away with us not talking, call me.’

Call me.

Izzie knew what she wanted to hear him say: I was wrong, I love you, I totally understand what you want from me and I was stalling for time in New York.

But even when she’d gone away from him, saying she didn’t want to see him again, he hadn’t said those words.

For the first time, she began to link up the two Joes – the one she loved, who was funny, warm and sexy; and the business version, who obviously hadn’t become wealthy and powerful by being Mr Pushover. Had she made the classic female mistake of thinking that underneath the tough businessman was a teddy bear only she could see? And all along, the only thing underneath the tough businessman façade was a tough man.