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his hands. 'I felt I was crashing right through her ribs.'
    'You probably were,' Anna said shortly, turning to the window. She was disturbed, even upset, but determined not to show it. A nurse wasn't supposed to show anything but calm, not when she was on duty. She had witnessed cardiac arrest before—once during her training years and once only last year, out in a London street.
    On both occasions she had wished and willed the patient to survive, but this time the reverse was the case; this time she hoped that Alice's gallant heart would refuse to start beating again; would refuse to pump any more life-blood round her exhausted little body; would decide to remain comatose and give its owner peace.
    Still facing the window, Anna looked down into the street. From four floors up the scene below was all but panoramic. In the far distance was the sea-front, teeming with holidaymakers. The sea lay flat and lifeless in the heat, whilst faintly above the rumble of traffic on the main coast road came the strains of the end-of-pier band.
    She reached up and closed the window, shutting the real world outside. From inside, from next door, the resuscitation team could be heard in little shifting flurries. There was the slip of their feet on the floor, their muttered voices, the click of equipment, the imperative cry, 'Stand clear' as a shock was directed into Alice's heart from the defibrillating machine. The cry came again, followed by silence.
    Simon moved behind Anna's back, and turning round to face him she saw how fatigued he looked. His skin was taut, as though stretched on his bones, whilst the little scar to the right of his chin showed up pearl white— like a paring of fingernail. 'Why don't you sit down? You must have been on your feet all day.' Just in time she stopped herself from laying a hand on his arm.
    'I have,' he replied, but he didn't sit down and neither did she. For some curious reason it seemed wrong to take their ease.
    A movement at the open doorway showed the pale blond head of Doctor Sven, the anaesthetist, and behind him the rest of the team. They were sorry, they said, they could do nothing more; they had tried, to no avail. After a few words with Anna, who went into the sideward, they drew their trolley back up the corridor— rather more slowly than they had come.
    Anna was aware of Simon watching as she replaced one of the pillows under Alice's head, then covered her face. 'Please don't say the obvious,' she all but snapped at him, and added more quietly, 'Thank you for staying, but Jean and I can manage now.'
    Obeying her to the letter, he said goodnight and left but it was after six before Anna felt that she could reasonably go off duty. By then Alice's body had been taken down to the hospital chapel at the request of her niece, whom Anna had contacted by phone. Miss Bradbury was Alice's next of kin and only surviving relative. Even so, she made it abundantly clear that she couldn't come that night.
    'You haven't given me much warning, have you, Sister? I live three miles out, as you know. I'll look in tomorrow first thing. Meantime, perhaps you could take off her rings and keep them safe. One hears such awful things about corpses being stripped...'
    'Mrs Fotheringay's personal effects will be taken great care of, Miss Bradbury,' Anna said, forming a mental picture of the hard-faced niece who, according to Jean, had only visited once during Alice's time in the ward.
    Whatever must it be like to have no one who cares tuppence about you, she was thinking as she left the colonnade for the scorching heat of the yard. Of course, if you were old your friends might have died, and if you hadn't had any children you could end up like Alice— with no one but a money-grubbing niece, only concerned with stripping off your rings! God, what a thought! And she shivered and felt cold, then told herself to brace up.
    She stood for a minute or two, undecided whether to go straight to her car or stop off at the hospital