She didn’t know. Her uncle knew…

Strange how hard it was to get her voice to work. She had to…

‘Uncle…Uncle, how long was Maud unconscious before I arrived?’

Albert was still staring down with horror at his unconscious wife. He didn’t hear her.

Fern stood with difficulty and somewhere beneath her a piece of white satin caught and ripped. Her knees seemed to have turned to water. She crossed to where her uncle stood and gave him a swift hug, then stood back with him at arm’s length. She gripped his hands hard. ‘Uncle, we have Maud breathing again. It’ll take a while, though, before she regains consciousness…’

Depending on how long Maud’s brain had been starved of oxygen…

Fern didn’t say that. There was no use scaring her uncle even more than he already was.

‘How long was she unconscious before I came?’ she asked her uncle again, and Albert hauled himself together with a mammoth effort.

‘Only…only seconds,’ he stammered. ‘She was sick and then she slumped to the floor and I thought, what am I going to do, she’s dying, and then I heard your car…’

‘Then she might have only been ten minutes not breathing,’ Fern whispered across to Quinn. ‘Maybe even less. And I was breathing for her most of that time. You were so fast…’

‘Frank Reid’s place is just past here,’ Quinn told her. ‘I was almost outside the front door when your uncle phoned.’

‘Thank God for that.’

The oxygen mask was firmly in place now and Maudie was changing colour. The awful blue-white was fading to pink.

Then Maud’s body moved almost imperceptibly once and then again. Finally, the woman’s hand moved slowly up to touch the mask and her eyes tried to open.

‘It’s OK, Auntie.’ Fern sank quickly to her knees again, ignoring the ripping sound of satin, and gathered her aunt’s hands to her. ‘You’ve had a heart turn but you’re OK. Dr Gallagher has an oxygen mask on your face. Don’t try to fight it. Just rest and let us do the work.’