The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,167

I’m sure.’ Constance recovered her composure as she handed the photograph back.

‘But something happened to Staff Nurse Brown. Something rather shocking, I’m afraid.’ Miss Hanley gazed at the photograph for a moment longer. ‘I’ve never had anything to do with gossip. Even as a cadet, I kept myself to myself and never joined in when the other girls gleefully spread rumours about each other. I think it’s rather ghoulish to derive enjoyment from other people’s misfortune, don’t you? But even with my head in a book, I still heard stories. And the one about Staff Nurse Brown was just too difficult to ignore. Everywhere I went in the hospital, people seemed to be talking about it.’

She put the photograph back in her bag and snapped the clasp shut. It echoed around the silence of the room like shotgun fire.

‘You see, this unfortunate young woman fell in love with a doctor. A much older man, and married, too. Anyone with any sense could see straight away that he was just toying with her – apparently this man was notorious in the hospital as a seducer of innocent young nurses. But the poor, besotted girl truly believed that he loved her as she loved him, and that one day he would leave his wife and they would be together.

‘Eventually, of course, their affair was discovered, and there was a huge scandal,’ Veronica continued. ‘Suddenly this poor young woman’s folly was exposed in front of everyone. But she still didn’t care, because she genuinely believed that her lover would rescue her. But he didn’t. He avoided the scandal, kept his wife and his position at the hospital, and this girl was left to face the music alone. A dreadful business.’

Colour swept Constance’s taut cheekbones, but she said nothing.

‘Of course, she was sent away in disgrace,’ Veronica said. ‘She’d lost everything, including her good name. She had no choice but to leave the town where she’d grown up and move somewhere else. Start all over again, if you like.’ She shook her head. ‘I sometimes wonder what happened to her. I like to think she was able to start again, become the respectable, upstanding person she was always supposed to be, and find someone who was worthy of her love. I also like to think that her experience might have given her some kind of compassion and understanding. Especially where her own children are concerned.’

‘It might just as easily have made her want to protect those she loved from suffering the same fate.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Veronica agreed. ‘But hopefully she would also be wise enough to see that crushing the spirit out of them could only make them more determined to rebel against her. It might even drive them to make the same mistakes she did.’

She gazed at Constance who was now staring fixedly out of the window, as still as a statue. Only the convulsive movement of her throat showed she hadn’t been turned to stone.

‘I think Staff Nurse Brown would bring up her children to know right from wrong,’ Veronica continued. ‘I also think she would trust them to make the right decisions when the time came.’

There was a long, heavy silence. Veronica held her breath as Constance Tremayne turned to face her. Her face was a carefully blank mask.

‘It’s a very nice story,’ she said pleasantly. ‘But if you’ve quite finished, I do have my committee meeting?’

‘Of course. I won’t take up any more of your time.’

Miss Hanley heard the front door close behind her but didn’t look back until she reached the end of the drive. She’d half expected Mrs Tremayne to be standing at the window, watching her go, but she was nowhere in sight.

She cursed herself for coming. She didn’t know if she’d made it better or worse for Helen Tremayne by trying to talk to her mother. And there was so much more she wished she’d said, too. She wanted to assure Mrs Tremayne that she would never tell her story again, not to another living soul. She wanted to tell her how much she respected and admired her, how she looked up to her.

Just as she’d once looked up to poor Constance Brown.

Chapter Fifty-Six

‘I’M SO SORRY,’ Helen said.

She had never felt more wretched in her life than she did at that moment, sitting across the table from Charlie in the brightly lit cafe where they’d shared so many happier times. They had been sitting there all evening, and Antonio the proprietor was wiping tables, ready