Mrs Gold frowned. ‘He’s a strange one all right. Nice enough on the surface but he always strikes me as slightly sinister. But it seems a bit of a stretch to think he’d have weaselled his way into the hospital to write you a note.’
‘He gets everywhere,’ I said darkly. ‘The night Nelly got injured in the raid. He was just standing out there on the street. I thought I’d imagined it, but he told me later he’d been there. It’s like he thinks he needs to be looking out for me all the time. As if he …’ I trailed off, not wanting to say it.
‘As if he owns you?’ Mrs Gold said. ‘I’ve known chaps like that before. Give him a wide berth is my advice. Maybe he’ll join up? He’s the right age.’
‘He tried, but he failed the medical. He said he was going to try again, though.’
‘Well hopefully they’ll let him in this time. They probably need all the help they can get, those poor buggers, with so many casualties …’
Her words hung heavily in the air and she put her head back in exasperation. ‘Lord, I’m sorry, Elsie. I didn’t mean he’d be replacing your brother.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Honestly. I just want Jackson to leave me alone.’
Mrs Gold nodded in understanding and bent her head to examine the note more closely. The writing was small and not easy to read in the dim light. ‘He says he’s a patient.’
‘I know, but I thought perhaps if it was Jackson, he could have just fibbed that he was a patient.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as the duplicitous type,’ Mrs Gold said, thoughtfully. ‘I feel if this note had come from him, he’d have signed it in large letters across the page. Plus, someone who wasn’t a patient would have no reason to keep quiet. You wouldn’t get into trouble for having a sweetheart who was nothing to do with the hospital, presumably?’
She was right. I told her so and she grinned. ‘I think this note has come from someone else. Someone with genuine feelings for you. Do you know who it could be?’
I felt my cheeks burn because I was still wondering – hoping – if it could be Harry. I thought about him all the time and I’d felt a real connection to him. The only thing I didn’t know was whether he felt the same.
‘You do!’ Mrs Gold said in triumph. ‘Have you spoken to this man?’
I nodded. ‘A little.’
‘Then I have an idea. Why not ask him to tell you something you talked about that only you and he would know.’
‘That’s clever,’ I said. ‘You’re clever.’
‘I like puzzles.’
‘I can see that.’
‘So what are you going to write?’
‘Perhaps I’ll just say that I want to be sure who he is, and then ask about our conversation.’
‘What if someone else reads it? Would that be a problem?’
‘He stuck the pages together round the edges,’ I said. ‘I think he used tea to dampen the paper and make it stick. He stuck a little scrap of paper out of the top so I’d know it was for me.’ I felt absurdly proud of my crafty correspondent.
‘Now who’s the clever one?’ Mrs Gold nudged me. ‘Do you have a pencil?’
*
With my message to the mystery writer carefully etched on the page below his, in writing that was just as tiny and neat as that above, I sealed the pages together again. And when I went to the hospital the following day, I took the book with me. Close to the entrance I spotted Frank the porter. Perfect.
‘Frank, do me a favour would you?’ I called. He came over, looking more rested than he had for a few weeks.
‘What do you need, love?’
‘Could you drop the book off somewhere as you’re going round the hospital?’ I tried to act casual. ‘There are still lots of people who’ve not written in it.’
‘Course I can.’ He grinned at me. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘It’s not been to ward 8 at all yet,’ I said, thinking about how I could let everyone write in it, and also ensure it got back to the huts just in case my mystery writer was indeed Harry. ‘But it doesn’t matter too much where you start it off because there are new patients arriving all the time.’
