Free The Nurse's War by Merryn Allingham

slow in making her own impression, Daisy thought, but perhaps now wasn’t the time to mention it.
    ‘She said you appeared agitated and hadn’t wanted to wait. It takes some time to come from the fifth floor, you know. I was on my way.’ His tone was only slightly reproving.
    ‘It wasn’t that. I would have waited, but … I couldn’t go through with it.’ The words came out in a rush, ill suited and too dramatic.
    ‘Is calling on an old friend such an ordeal?’
    He made it sound so easy and she wished it were. She reached up to push the damp curls from her face and her hand pulled at first one strand of hair and then another. ‘It didn’t feel right, that’s all. I was there under false pretences.’
    He didn’t respond to this confession and his gaze remained steady. Then he took hold of her hand and,before she could protest, led her through the maze of family groups, towards the empty space she had spied earlier. ‘This is where you were making for, I think. We can talk here.’
    Other people had been quick to spot the same refuge and it had now shrunk to even smaller proportions. They settled themselves as best they could, squashed against the furthermost corner of the tiling before it lost itself along the tunnel. She was uncomfortable, hemmed in on all sides, and swamped by his physical presence. She’d forgotten how cool and fresh his skin smelt. It was distracting at a time when she needed her wits about her.
    ‘So why the pretence?’
    ‘I had to see you and she—Miss Strachan—was insistent that I must have an appointment. But today is my only free day. I’m on duty for the rest of the week.’
    ‘It sounds as though it might be something of national importance after all.’
    ‘It’s a personal matter,’ she murmured. So personal that now she’d arrived at the moment the impossibility of conveying Gerald’s demand hit her with an unforeseen force. She felt her breath stutter and words go missing.
    ‘Tell me,’ he urged. His hand rested lightly on her forearm, a gesture of friendship, of solidarity. ‘You’ve braved meeting me again, so it must be serious.’
    Daisy looked down at her hands and noticed they were clenching and unclenching. He must have noticed, too, and realised how hard this was for her.
    ‘It was about your work,’ she managed to say at last. At least that was true, but far too vague. It was the best she could do though.
    ‘My work?’
    ‘How is it going?’ She’d ducked the question she should be asking.
    ‘Fine.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘It’s going fine.’ An uneasy silence opened between them and in her mind it filled the entire station, blotting out the chatter, the laughter, the raised voices.
    ‘Did I tell you I’d jumped horses?’ He was trying to fill the yawning gap and she was grateful. ‘Not exactly jumped,’ he continued, ‘more of a sideways manoeuvre.’
    ‘You said something about new colleagues, I think. I don’t remember the details.’
    ‘That’s hardly surprising. Anyway, I’m working for Special Operations now. What’s left of the SIS after last year’s split is still with the Foreign Office, but I got lucky.’
    ‘Why lucky?’
    ‘The SOE is far less demure—it can even be a tad exciting. The Foreign Office seems positively staid by comparison.’
    She’d always felt that Grayson was cut out for adventure, and it looked as though he’d finally found it. His masquerade as a district officer in Jasirapur had never quite rung true.
    ‘What do you do there?’
    ‘Guerilla stuff—getting operations going in occupied countries. Or at least, we try to.’
    She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying but her mind refused to obey. Somehow she was having to hold one kind of conversation, while at the same time working to escape the one that really mattered. And, all the time, she was conscious of his warmth infiltrating the length of her body.
    In a daze she heard herself say, ‘But I thought your work was with