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– and he, for all she knew – might lament that state of affairs, she had to be practical.
    Because Sister Wren had needs. And since those needs could never be met by the man she loved – unless a terrible accident befell Mrs Cooper – she had to find someone else.
    She eyed that morning’s edition of
The Times
, which lay across the arm of her chair, folded open at the Personal columns. There, among the births, marriages and appeals for missing people to come forward to ‘hear something to their advantage’, were the Lonely Hearts advertisements.
    Sister Wren went through them every morning when the maid brought her breakfast, circling any likely prospects. Then, while having her midday meal in her sitting room, she would write letters to be posted discreetly at the Porters’ Lodge that afternoon.
    Rather discouragingly, most of her letters went unanswered. But every so often she would find herself taking tea with a gentleman. Unfortunately, the ones she met seldom bore any resemblance to James Cooper.
    There was a soft knock on the door. ‘Enter,’ said Sister Wren, stuffing the newspaper out of sight behind a cushion. The door opened a fraction, and Ann Cuthbert, her staff nurse, peered through the crack.
    ‘Sorry to disturb you, Sister, but they’ve just rung to say the new admission’s on her way up.’
    Sister Wren sighed with annoyance. She hated new patients arriving on the day of the consultant’s visit. They took a long time to settle in and made her ward look messy. They had to be washed and prepared, there were charts to fill in, and then usually one or other of the nosy women in the nearby beds would want to start chatting, all adding to the general disorder.
    ‘Thank you, Cuthbert. I’ll be with you shortly.’
    As soon as the nurse had gone Sister Wren placed her cap back on her head and tied the bow under her chin, being careful not to ruffle her artfully teased curls. She added a dab of rouge to colour her sallow cheeks and smudged on some pink lipstick – even though make-up was forbidden on the wards, she couldn’t countenance meeting Mr Cooper looking anything but her best – then stepped out of her sitting room and back on to the adjoining ward, to find out which of her nurses needed the sternest reprimand.
    Frustratingly, they seemed to have been hard at work in her absence. The ward was swept, dusted and scrubbed; the floors shone and a satisfying aroma of carbolic hung in the air. Even the leaves of her prize aspidistra gleamed like polished leather. The beds were neatly made and every patient was sitting propped up, hair brushed and wearing a fresh nightgown in honour of the consultant’s visit.
    The student nurses all stopped what they were doing and looked at her expectantly, waiting for her nod of approval. All except one.
    Doyle was chatting to one of the patients again. Sister Wren felt her hackles rise as she watched them laughing together. Hadn’t she warned her nurses not to be too familiar with the patients? Most of them were coarse East End types with rough manners and loud voices – not the kind of women decent young girls should associate with, in her opinion. It made her shudder sometimes to see them in their shabby nightgowns, yelling to each other across the ward as if they were in Petticoat Lane, not a hospital. And as for their jokes . . . no respectable woman should have to listen to some of the things they said.
    And yet there was Doyle, laughing with one of them. Worse still, it was that awful Mrs Patterson, a costermonger’s wife from Haggerston, who had been admitted with a prolapse. Hardly surprising, Sister Wren thought, since she had given birth to hordes of children. They swarmed to the hospital to see her every Sunday, and it took all Sister Wren’s efforts to stop them all coming in at once. Time and time again she’d taken the trouble to explain that only two visitors at a time were allowed, but still it hadn’t sunk in. They would stand outside