I was deeply moved and I said to myself then: I don’t think it is anything much compared with what you are doing for me.

I was moving away from despair, from melancholy. I would never cease to mourn my dead, but I had been shown almost by a miracle that life was not entirely barren for me. There was something worthwhile that I could do.

Lily once said: “I feel better when you stroke my roreneau. It’s something about your hands, Miss Pleydell.”

I looked at them. Long, tapering fingers ‘artist’s fingers,” someone had once said. I had no skill in the arts unless one could call nursing an art.

I was haunted by those people in the hospital and the memory of the few nurses I had seen. They were unclean, blowsy and unkempt; they smelled of gin, and I was sure they neglected the sick and vulnerable.

That seemed terrible to me and I rejoiced that I had been able to take Lily away.

As for myself, I was eating more; tending Lily made me hungry. Special dishes were prepared for her, for Jane and Polly had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the task of, as they said, ‘getting her on her feet’. I would sometimes be tempted yes, actually tempted to share those dishes and nothing could have pleased Jane and Polly more. They were nursing me back to health as well as Lily Craddock.

Sometimes the gloom would descend on me and I would think of my baby crying for me when I was not there, unable to breathe and no one there to care for him . and finally that doctor . that wicked doctor who had come to experiment on him. Perhaps he knew what he gave him would not save his life but he wanted to see the effect.

Somehow the neglect of those hospital patients became linked in my thoughts with that doctor. Those nurses cared only for themselves.

They were unemployable in most things so they came to the hospital.

What a way to choose people for this most important of professions.

Those who entered it should have dedication; they should feel they had a duty to succour the sick. They should be properly trained. Yet what those women wanted was a lazy life, food for themselves and shelter.

And that doctor . in his way he cared nothing for life either. He wanted to prove the effect his drugs had on people and he had no compunction in using them to further his evil experiments.

I remembered hearing of the infamous Madame de Brinvilliers who had lived in the seventeenth century. She had wanted to murder people who stood in her way, and before poisoning them, she had tested her poisons on hospital patients to see the effect, and whether she could administer them without detection.

The hospitals must have been something like the one I had seen. I could imagine that woman visiting, as an angel of mercy, ministering to the sick, bringing them food laced with poison. That doctor was a similar case, only being a doctor he had more opportunity of carrying out his murderous methods than she had.

I was filled with a burning desire to do something. I had changed. I no longer felt that I had finished with life. It was like being born again. I could see a purpose in my life. It was as though I had had a divine revelation. I was being told something about myself, and it was only now that Lily Craddock had brought it home to me so clearly that I realized what it was. My ayah had said, “You have healing hands. It is a gift and the gods do not look kindly on those who do not use the gifts they bestow on them.”

Had I a gift? Yes, I had. It was to save lives. I had seen the suffering in those beds of pain and it had affected me deeply. I felt inadequate. What could I do about it? My own child, I believed, had been neglected. Murdered! That was a wild statement; but if they had called Dr. Calliber in time he might have saved his life. Instead, Aubrey had brought his devilish familiar to my child’s bedside and that man had given him a drug and killed him.

Because he had been my beloved son I might be passionately unreasonable in this case, but I believed that they might have saved his life and had failed to do so. I was going to find that doctor. I was going to confront him; I was going to prevent him from causing the death of someone else with his diabolical experiments.

I had taken a gigantic step forward.

I had a purpose in life. I would grow strong and well and in due course it would be revealed to me which road I should take.

In the meantime I was finding solace and indeed exhilaration in nursing Lily Craddock back to health.

She had been with us for two weeks and was greatly improved, then a melancholy seemed to come over her and progress slackened.

Jane and Polly discovered the reason.

“You know what, Miss Pleydell, that girl’s worried.”

“She has no need to be.”

“Well, she’s getting better. I reckon she’s enjoyed being the invalid.

What she is thinking now is: What am I going back to? “

“You think she’s anxious about the future?”

“She’s that all right.”

“I see,” I said. I had been thinking about Lily’s future for some time.

She was a seamstress, we knew, and finding it hard to make a living.

She had been a country girl until two years ago. She belonged to a big family and rimes were hard; she had had to leave the family circle and earn her own living. She had been in service and had not liked it. She had come to London where she thought the rich lived and that she might therefore earn a good living with her needle.

It was clear to us all that she was not going to do that with any great success.

I explained my feelings to Jane and Polly.

“I am not a rich woman,” I told them, ‘but my father has left me adequately provided for if I am not extravagant. I could offer Lily a job here. She could help you . perhaps sew for us and do the shopping. “

“Not the shopping,” said Jane.

“She’s too soft, with her country ways.

She’d get done all the way round. To put her loose in the market-place with the mistress’s money would be like putting one of them martyrs into the lion’s den. And she’s no Daniel. “

I laughed.

“You had better carry on with the shopping, then; but I could manage to pay Lily a little salary and at least she would be well fed and housed.”

“You’re your father all over again. Miss,” said Polly.

“Don’t worry.

We were wondering about asking you if we could keep her. “

When I put the suggestion to Lily her joy was overwhelming and from that moment there was a change in her. That perpetual nervousness and apprehension slipped away from her.

I thought: I am almost happy.

I used to sit with them in the evenings and gradually learned about their lives before they came into mine. Jane and Polly had had a hard childhood, with a drunken bully of a father whose entrance into the house was a signal for terror.

“He’d knock Ma about something shocking,” said Jane.

“He’d come rolling in, and then he’d roar and it would start. Me and Poll used to hide under the stairs as long as we could … and once we went out and tried to stop him lamming into Ma. He turned on us. He broke your wrist once, didn’t he, Poll?”

“Never been quite right since,” said Polly.

“Give us a bit of rain and it hurts like billyo.”

“I reckon we’d have done for him one day if he hadn’t fallen down the stairs and done for himself before we got old enough ( to do it.”

“What a terrible story,” I said.

“I’m glad that the drink and the stairs killed him so that you didn’t have to.”

“I would have done,” said Jane, her eyes blazing.

“There’s some as ain’t fit to live in this world.”

I closed my eyes and saw the Devil Doctor, mysterious with horns and cloven feet. She was right. Such people should not be allowed to live.

“We had a right old time when he was gone,” said Polly.

“Ma used to go out cleaning steps, and when we was old enough we did all sorts of things, didn’t we running errands, doing cleaning. Sometimes we went hungry, but we didn’t mind that so much because we’d got rid of him.

Then Ma died and we was on our own. We nursed her, didn’t we, Jane? I reckon he had done for her. She was never well. He spoilt everything for us when we was little, didn’t he, Jane? “

Jane agreed that he did.

“You see,” she went on, ‘you marry ‘em . as Ma did him. He must have been all right then or she would never have been such a fool as to let herself in for that . and then, after the wedding, out they come in their true colours, some of them. “

Polly threw a warning look at her sister, which I intercepted. I knew what she meant. I, too, had had a disastrous marriage from which I had just escaped.

Listening to all this. Lily, feeling herself to be one of us, opened out and talked of herself.

“There was ten of us,” she said.

“I was the sixth. I used to look after the little ‘uns. We used to go gleaning, harvest time. And sometimes we’d go picking fruit and lifting potatoes. We had to get out and earn and when I was twelve I went into service.”

“You didn’t like it?” I asked.

“It was all right at first. And then there was this son … he come home, you see. He used to talk to me on the stairs, and come in the kitchen sometimes when no one was there but me. I thought he was nice at first. Then he used to ring the bell in his bedroom. And then ... and then . Oh, it didn’t half frighten me something shocking. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run away but I didn’t know where to run to. Then one day the mistress came in and saw us and I was sent home. Oh, it was awful. I was put out of the house with my tin box.

Nobody believed it wasn’t my fault. “

Then!’ said Jane.

“The bad ones causes grief all right.”

“Ought to be boiled in oil and cut into collops and served to donkeys,” added Polly.

“And then I come to London. There was a girl in our village who was mad to go. She said the streets were paved with gold and you only had to pick it up and be rich. So we ran away together. We got a lift in on a cart which was going to London. We went to an inn and they gave us a bed if we worked for them. We stayed there for three days. There was a lady there who’d torn her dress and I mended it for her and she said that was very neat. She paid me well and said I should be doing sewing for a living. So I thought I would. I found a room, which was more like a cupboard, and I went round to the tailors’ shops for work.

They’d give you shirts to make and men’s coats and waistcoats to make the buttonholes and sew the buttons on. I liked it better than scrubbing, but you had to work all hours to get enough to live on. And the clothes was heavy. You had to take them away and bring them back. My friend . she’d gone off.

I don’t know what happened to her. She said there were easier ways of earning a living. She was very lively. Men noticed her. I think I know what she meant. “

“And what were you doing when we found you?” I asked.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going. I was that upset. I’d just come from the tailor’s. I’d taken in a pile of waistcoats. I’d been doing the buttonholes and buttons and I’d been up half the night because I had to get the money that day. It was a horrid little shop … dark and dingy. I’d seen the man before but he hadn’t been the one to pay me then. I didn’t like the look of him; his face was greasy and hairy and he was so fat. He said, ” Hello, Goldilocks, I suppose you want some money. ” There was a dozen waistcoats and that’s quite a lot. I said, ” Yes, sir. There’s a dozen there. ” He said, ” Well, first give us a kiss. ” I was frightened of him. It reminded me of my first job in service. I screamed, ” No,” and he was very angry. He threw the waistcoats on the counter and put his thumb under the buttons and half pulled them off.

“Don’t,” I cried. He said, “Get out. We don’t pay for work like that.”

“But you did it,” I said.

“It was you.”

“Get out of here, you slut,” he said, “or I’ll have the police on you.” I was so frightened, I just ran out. I was in such a state I didn’t know where I was and then . suddenly I was under the horses. “

I felt angry as I listened. Poor child! To be treated so. No wonder she was afraid of life. I looked at Jane and Polly who shared my emotion. I said quietly: “Nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again. Lily.”

She took my hand and kissed it, looking at me in a wondering kind of way. I thought then: I have to do something. I wish I knew what. But I should discover. Fate had brought her to me and through her I had regained my will to live. And I knew somehow that I had a duty to perform. It was to help people like Lily Craddock.