Return to Tremarth by Susan Barrie

need arose.
    “It might even be worth a trip into Truro,” she suggested, “if you really mean to stock up. I can’t see the importance of strawberries, but you’re bound to get them there if you really want them.”
    Charlotte was immediately captivated by the idea, and then it occurred to her that this would mean leaving the patient. She looked anxiously at Hannah.
    “We can’t do that, can we?”
    “I can’t but you can,” Hannah replied, with the faintest of genuinely amused smiles. “I’m in charge, don’t forget. You’re free to do more or less what you like.”
    Charlotte objected at once that they would have to take turn and turn about, and then it apparently struck her that she was putting forward a line of argument with which neither Dr. Mackay nor Hannah herself would be likely to agree. The most that she would be permitted to do was sit with the patient occasionally, and apart from that it was her job to look after the domestic side. She agreed after a hesitation of several seconds:
    “Oh, all right, I’ll go into Truro tomorrow. You must make me a list of any medical requirements you’re likely to need, and I’ll make out a really comprehensive list of the things I think are needed.”
    Hannah smiled at her more kindly.
    “Don’t spend all your money,” she advised. “Remember he’s a rich man and can afford to be looked after, but you’re only a poor working girl.”
    Charlotte said without having the least intention of doing anything of the kind:
    “I can always present him with a bill when he leaves! ”
    Hannah allowed her to have a peep at the patient before she went to bed — in another of the many bedrooms at Tremarth that she had hurriedly got ready for herself — and she found him lying with his eyes closed in a room that was illuminated very, very softly by a bedside lamp.
    At first she thought that Richard Tremarth was asleep, and she was resisting an impulse to tiptoe to the side of bed to make sure when his eyes opened swiftly, and he turned his head sideways to regard her. “Oh, so it’s you! ” he said.
    Her heart gave a quite extraordinary bound, and with a note of relief in her voice she exclaimed, “Oh, so you do remember me!” Richard Tremarth looked faintly bored, and then he began to look slightly puzzled. She was so obviously delighted because he seemed to know something about her.
    “Well, I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he said. “You’re the redheaded young woman who calls herself Charlotte Something-or-other I’m afraid I don’t seem to have a very retentive memory at the moment, and I’ve forgotten what your surname is. But I’m sure you told me! ”
    “Woodford,” she murmured, advancing very cautiously to the side of the bed. “Charlotte Woodford.”
    “Ah, yes.” He lay looking up at her, and apart from the fact that they had a slightly abnormal look about them his eyes shone with very subdued humour. “You asked me whether I’d seen you before, and I had to tell you the absolute truth that to the best of my knowledge you’re an absolute stranger. That other young woman, too... I didn’t know her from Eve.” “She ... we’re friends,” Charlotte explained. He nodded, and winced very slightly because it obviously hurt his head.
    “That’s what she said,” he said. “I must say I find her soothing and rather comforting. Is she a fully trained nurse?”
    “She’s partially trained.”
    “She struck me as being pretty competent. She told me I wasn’t to talk, and above all that I wasn’t to ask any questions ” His eyes left her face and roved in a puzzled way round the room. “I don’t know why,” he confessed, “but I’ve got a sort of impression that this is a woman’s room. It’s very tidy at the moment, but I seem to see it littered with feminine things.” “My things.” She spoke very, very softly, close beside him, and although Hannah might not have approved she could not resist adding: “This was my