Free Hearts of Gold by Catrin Collier Page A

passing your house tonight. Do you want me to call in …’
    ‘No!’
    That single word said everything. Bethan finished doing what she had to in silence. As soon as Maisie was ready for the ward, she called one of the maids and told her to summon a porter. By the time Maisie was safely bedded down in a side ward away from the “respectable” married patients, it was three-thirty in the afternoon and Bethan was free to take her lunch break.
    She went to the ward kitchen, hoping to find fresh pies and pasties cadged from the Hopkin Morgan van that delivered to the main kitchen.
    She was disappointed. There was a quarter-full tray of stale iced buns and a pot of stewed tea. Nothing more. She couldn’t do much about the buns but she drained the tea down the sink, tipped the leaves in the waste bucket and started again.
    ‘Laura did well then?’
    ‘She did?’ Bethan looked up from the gas that she was trying to light, and saw Glan Richards the ward porter, who also happened to be her next door neighbour.
    ‘She got a distinction. Of course she couldn’t make it top of the year like you …’
    Bethan switched off the gas that was refusing to light, tore a piece off a bun and threw it at him. It hit his nose, fell into the kettle and blossomed over the surface of the water.
    ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ she complained, emptying and rinsing out the kettle.
    ‘What I made you do? You just wait until tonight.’ He tried to grab her by the waist but, too quick for him, she ducked and moved away. ‘You are going to the hospital ball aren’t you?’ he asked anxiously.
    ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want to see you there,’ she said tartly, sticking her tongue out at him.
    Glan smiled a winning smile that he practised in front of the mirror every night. ‘Why fight me, Beth?’ He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘You know you can’t resist me.’
    She tried the gas again. This time it caught and she dropped the taper she was holding into the sink, but not before it singed the tips of her fingers.
    ‘Resist you! Times like this I could quite cheerfully brain you,’
    she exclaimed feelingly, brushing his hand off her.
    Glan’s smile never wavered. He took her outburst in good humour. He was used to being put down by the Powells, especially Bethan whom he’d known since their mutual school days in Maesycoed Infants. Above medium height with well-developed muscles, brown curly hair and pleasant open features; he was fairly good-looking and proudly aware of the fact.
    He lived at home with his mother and his father, a bullying collier who tried to dominate every single aspect of his timid wife and children’s lives, which was why Glan was the only one left at home. But even Mr Richards’ senior had failed to prevent Glan from growing a moustache and fancying himself as a second John Gilbert; a fantasy founded in a surfeit of Hollywood films viewed from the bug run in the White Palace.
    ‘Come on, Beth,’ Glan crooned in what he imagined to be a seductive manner. ‘Walk home from the ball with me tonight and I’ll show you the moon as you’ve never seen it before.’
    ‘I’d rather give the ball a miss.’
    ‘You can’t miss the ball. Rumour has it you’re going to be the guest of honour.’
    ‘Laura!’ Bethan reached past Glan and hugged her friend. ‘Congratulations.’
    ‘Of course I couldn’t do as well as you …’
    ‘No one could,’ Glan echoed.
    ‘Is that tea you’re having because if it is, I’ll have a cup?’ Laura pushed Glan aside and sat on one of the hard wooden chairs that were ranged opposite the sink. ‘Qualified nurses can demand to be put on early tea,’ she winked at Glan.
    ‘I’m on late lunch,’ Bethan griped.
    ‘Poor you. Have you seen the new doctor?’
    ‘I have,’ Bethan concurred, her mouth full of stale bun.
    ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’
    ‘If you like the smarmy kind.’
    ‘Smarmy!’ Laura exclaimed indignantly. ‘Smarmy! Bethan, you’re the