I awoke in my own bed the next morning and felt better than I had for weeks. But the influenza epidemic was still raging, and I knew how desperately I was needed in France. I concentrated on getting well and recovering my strength, which seemed to have flown out the window. We began to walk, my parents or Simon taking it by turns to accompany me. At first it was only a few dozen feet across Reception before I succumbed to a weakness so profound I had to lean on someone’s arm to make what seemed to be an interminable return journey to my room. Determined to heal, three times a day I sallied forth, and soon I could stroll to the music stand and then nearly as far as the pier. Before very long, I could even walk out to the pier’s end and then back to the Grand Hotel, without weakness or shortness of breath. The next day Simon dismissed the carriage that was paid to follow us wherever we went, in the event I tired.

When first I had brought up returning to the war, the Colonel Sahib vigorously opposed it, and I saw the fright in my mother’s eyes at the very thought. And so I had said nothing more. They were right, it was too soon. Eager as I was to resume my duties and spell the overworked staff that so desperately needed experienced nursing sisters, I mustn’t become a burden for them instead. Holding on to my patience, I had concentrated on recovering and regaining my strength.

A few days after Simon dismissed the carriage, my mother and I walked to the west of the hotel for a closer look at the Seven Sisters, the great white chalk cliffs that ranged beyond Beachy Head Light, the wind whipping at our skirts as my mother and I stood looking at the line of headlands. The lighthouse itself was invisible, down along the waterline and tucked out of sight. Sometimes great chunks of the cliff faces fell into the sea, but today, in hazy sunlight, they shone so white it hurt the eyes to stare at them.

I said, “I shall have to go back, you know.”