HETTY, IS that you?’ I sat up, dazed, squinting in the sunlight. I didn’t have any idea how long I’d been lying there on the sands. I’d cried for so long, but then I must have fallen asleep. Perhaps I was still dreaming now, because a strangely familiar child was squatting beside me, calling my name and looking at me with concern – and yet I felt sure I didn’t have a friend in the world. ‘Hetty, don’t you remember me? I’m Maisie. We met on the train,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. I stared at her. I’d only met her a day ago, and yet it seemed like months and months. I’d been travelling with such joy and optimism, so happy at the thought of seeing Mama. Yet now she was incarcerated in the infirmary, and though I hoped otherwise, I wasn’t sure she would ever walk out. I had been trying so hard to do the best thing by calling the doctor, but maybe it would have been better to do nothing. Then Mama would at least have had her position and we could have been together.
