‘When you’ve got time.’

‘I don’t have time,’ Jancey said. ‘Do we trust her?’

‘She’s a warm body and she’s offered,’ Riley said. ‘Do we have a choice?’

‘Hey!’ They were about to head around the bend in the corridor but Pippa’s voice made them turn. She’d stepped out the door to call after them.

She looked…

Amazing, Riley thought, and, stressed or not, he almost smiled. She had brilliant red curls that hadn’t seen a hairbrush since her big swim. She was slight-really slight-barely tall enough to reach his chin. Her pale skin had been made more pale by the night’s horror. Her green eyes had been made even larger.

From the neck up she was eye-catchingly lovely. But from the neck down…

Her hospital gown was flopping loosely around her. She was clutching it behind. She had nothing else on.

‘The deal is clothes,’ she said with asperity. ‘Bleeding to death takes precedence but next is my dignity. I need at least another gown so I can have one on backwards, one on forwards.’

Riley chuckled. It was the first time for twelve hours he’d felt like laughing and it felt great.

‘Can you fix it?’ he asked Jancey.

‘Mrs Rogers in Surgical left her pink fluffy dressing gown behind when she went home this morning,’ Jancey said, smiling herself. ‘I don’t think she’d mind…’

‘Does it have buttons?’ Pippa demanded.

‘Yes,’ Jancey said. ‘And a bow at the neck. The bow glitters.’

‘That’ll cheer us up,’ Pippa said. ‘And heaven knows Amy and I both need it.’

Assisting at a birth settled her as nothing else could.

Amy needed someone she knew, a partner, a mother, a friend, but there seemed to be no one. Her labour was progressing slowly, and left to herself she would have given in to terror.

What sort of hospital was this that provided no support?