The ambulance arrived on a December day threatening snow, and against the grey clouds it looked very white and clean. Turning into Springfield Road it seemed to be moving in slow motion, stopping outside our door with a final shudder of the engine. ‘She’s here!’ I cried. Aflutter with nerves, I forgot I was alone in the house, calling out only to myself. A man wearing a blue cap jumped down from the driver’s seat and scuttled round to the back of the vehicle. He opened the door at the back and I saw him reach out a hand. Olivia was dressed in a black sable coat and black boots. Elizabeth must have seen to that. She was carrying a small overnight bag. I saw immediately that they had already removed the plaster cast from her arm. As she stepped out of the ambulance she hesitated, her face screwing up as if in pain after the darkness inside, even though it was not a bright day. She looked down for a moment, chopped hair falling forward round her cheeks, in a gesture of surrender. It was only once they had stepped inside the gate that she looked up again in bewilderment, taking in our new house, part of a long red-brick terrace, with Russian vine spiralling up the drainpipe, the green front door and wide bay window in which I stood with my hand raised to greet her.
