Free Nightingales on Call by Donna Douglas Page A

her way there.
    But it seemed so different from when she’d come for her interview two months earlier. Then her mother had been with her, and her sister Bridget had met them from the station and brought them in a taxi, and Effie hadn’t had to worry about anything.
    ‘You lost, Miss?’
    A voice behind her made her start. She swung round. A boy stood behind her. He was about twelve years old, with untidy tufts of mud-brown hair sticking out from under his shabby cap.
    ‘I’m looking for the Florence Nightingale Hospital.’ She tried not to stare at the birthmark on the boy’s cheek. Her mother was always telling her off for gawping.
    ‘I know it. I’m going that way myself, as it happens. I could show you the way?’
    Effie hesitated. He was just a child, not the kind of stranger her mother and sisters had warned her about.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That would be very kind.’
    ‘Right you are, then.’ He picked up her heavy bag with ease and started briskly down the road. Effie bobbed along behind, doing her best to keep up with him.
    He talked as fast as he walked, chattering to her over his shoulder. His cockney accent was so strong Effie could barely understand him. She was too out of breath to keep up a conversation anyway.
    ‘This way, Miss.’ The boy dodged around a corner and ducked into a narrow alleyway. Grim, blackened walls running with damp rose on either side of them, leaving only a thin strip of dull daylight high above to show the way. ‘Now you don’t want to be coming this way by yourself. It’s not safe,’ he warned. ‘But you’re all right with me. I know my way around, see.’
    Something scuttled past in the gloom, inches from her foot. Effie let out a shriek and quickened her pace, her shoes skidding on the slimy cobbles.
    They emerged into a busy market, a narrow street lined with stalls and teeming with people. It was a welcome burst of noise and activity after the deadened silence of the alleyway. Effie had never seen anything so lively and colourful. On one side people picked up and argued over second-hand clothes spread out on canvas sheets across the pavement. On the other were stalls selling fruit and veg and all kinds of seafood. The sharp, salty smell mingled with the aroma of fried onions.
    It was all so overwhelming, Effie found it hard to keep her eyes fixed on the boy’s cap as it bobbed along ahead of her, cutting easily through the crowd which swiftly closed behind like waves in the wake of a ship, pushing her further and further back.
    ‘Oh, please wait!’ she called out, but her voice was lost in the din. The boy glanced back over his shoulder, searching for her. Effie waved to him and he nodded, but a moment later he was gone.
    Effie craned her neck, looking this way and that, but he had disappeared.
    She chewed her lip. How could she be so stupid? Her mother was always telling her off for being a dreamer, and now she had managed to get herself totally lost.
    She searched for the boy for a few minutes, but it was no use. She sat down on the doorstep of a shop and tried to think. The best thing to do was to stay put and wait for him to find her, she decided. Wandering around, they could miss each other for hours in a crowded place like this.
    Jess hadn’t meant to visit the bookstall again, but once she reached the market she couldn’t help herself.
    The stallholder’s son was there, dawdling against the wall, smoking as usual. He smiled and dropped his cigarette on to the cobbles when he saw her.
    ‘Hello again,’ he greeted her cheerily. ‘Read any good books lately?’
    ‘I might have.’
    He reached under the stall and brought out the copy of
Great Expectations
. ‘You know this is still here, waiting for you.’
    ‘No one’s bought it yet, then?’
    He shook his head. ‘I’m keeping it especially for you.’
    She tightened her lips to stop herself from smiling. ‘And I told you, I don’t take anything I ain’t paid for.’
    ‘Suit yourself.