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place. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a date. It had just been too difficult to maintain relationships while she cared for her mother. So there was no time for dating, little time for socialising at all. Work had become her only social outlet, yet she kept her distance from the rest of the staff. Helen didn’t quite understand why she did that, but anything else seemed like too much work. Letting people in, giving explanations, opening up. It was easier, if lonelier, to keep to herself.
    Only Mr Chapman’s son obviously didn’t know this about her, and he was still waiting expectantly beside her table. So Helen blushed, fumbled with the magazine to hide the article she was reading, then fumbled further to hide the cover of the magazine, then coughed and sniffed and finally looked up and met his eyes. They gazed steadily back at her, with what almost could have been described as affection. He didn’t even know her. Why was he looking at her like that?
    â€˜Sure,’ she offered as a rather delayed response to his requestto join her. Then she glanced at her watch and added, ‘I have to be back on ward soon.’
    David had remained undaunted. He appeared to have thick skin, which he was going to need to finally win her over. Much later, when Helen had felt comfortable enough to ask him, David had put his persistence down to a longstanding fetish for nurses, or, when he wasn’t teasing her, to something he’d seen in her eyes. She’d reminded him of the beleaguered children in the refugee camps overseas who looked to aid workers like him for hope. Helen had inadvertently tugged at his heart in a way he couldn’t resist.
    He sought her out every time he visited his father after that. The day Jim was being discharged he asked her for her phone number, and a few days later he rang, and a few weeks later she finally agreed to go out with him. A few months later he moved in.
    And then a few years later he died. That’s how the story would end from now on.
    The next time there was a knock on the door Helen froze momentarily before she remembered that it was probably Noreen. As she opened the front door she saw Jim’s car pull away from the kerb. Her mother-in-law looked shaken; her eyes were red and swollen under the make-up she’d hastily applied as camouflage. Must keep up appearances. They exchanged a stilted hug, but Noreen held on firmly to both of Helen’s wrists as they drew apart.
    â€˜Helen, I want you to know you’ll never have to worry about Noah,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘We are his family, he’ll never do without because of this, we won’t let that happen.’
    The fog had descended soon after. For the next couple of days it was a blur of people in and out of the house, casseroles, cakes, so much food she and Noah could never have eaten it all. She packed up some and took it over to Brookhaven. Helen hadn’t seen her mother since the day before the accident, when she’d called in on her way to work. Marion wouldn’t have known the difference anyway. The staff clucked over the food as though they’d never had anything so special as a chocolate-chip muffinin all their lives. Helen wished everyone would stop being so laboriously nice: it was exhausting. She would be happy when things were back to normal and people could go back to ignoring her.
    She walked into her mother’s room, dragging a chair over to the bed. She sat down and Marion’s eyes met hers expectantly. Helen knew that look: her mother had no idea who she was today.
    â€˜Mum,’ she began, ‘it’s me, Helen.’
    She saw the now familiar flicker cross her eyes, the confusion, uncertainty, doubt.
    â€˜Hello Helen,’ she said politely, her expression suggesting it was Helen who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic and she’d best humour her.
    â€˜I have to tell you about David,’ Helen