On her way back to Nonnatus, Patsy catches sight of a familiar outline.

'Deels,' she says, and her brakes screech as she pulls up alongside her.

'Pats!' Delia replies in turn. It's a code of a kind, these matching names for each other: it's a way of saying darling, I've missed you and I love you and I'm so pleased to see you whether they're alone or whether they're in a crowded room full of oblivious eavesdroppers. Delia makes her point more emphatic by reaching out to Patsy, and briefly touching her arm. It's not the kiss Patsy knows Delia wants to give her, but it's a connection, it's contact. It conveys what a kiss would.

'You're early.'

'I can leave again until it's time for our appointment, Nurse Mount, if you'd rather.' Delia affects to turn away from Patsy, but their eyes never break contact.

'Well, perhaps you should,' Patsy teases, trying to look stern, and then they both laugh.

'Are you done for the day?'

'I just need to file the notes from my afternoon rounds, and change out of my uniform, and then I'm all yours.'

'Just the way I like you.'

Patsy gets off her bike, and they walk, side by side, the short distance to Nonnatus.

Having turned down Patsy's suggestion that she might like to sit with a magazine in the parlour, Delia lurks in the passage way, watching while Patsy puts patient notes in order.

'This isn't a spectator sport,' Patsy says.

'It should be,' Delia grins. 'Am I putting you off?'

'No,' Patsy says, but has to double check that she's filed Mr Burton's notes in the right place. She has, but by luck rather than judgement. For the last few files, she concentrates hard to block out the feel of Delia's gaze on her skin. It's not easy.

'I'm done,' she says, finally. 'Do you want to wait here while I just run upstairs and change?'

'Not really, no. Can't I come up with you?'

Delia's been in Patsy's bedroom before, of course, but only when Trixie or Barbara or both of them have been around. There's always been three or four of them there; it's never been just the two of them. Patsy's not sure that Delia coming upstairs is a wise idea, but they barely get any time together as it is, and it would be a shame to leave her in the parlour at the mercy of Nurse Crane and the Nursing Journal.

'Come on, then.'

Delia takes up a station at the window, and, chatting inconsequentially about her day, peers out to the square below, where children are noisily pouring out of the school next door. Patsy unbuttons her uniform, and pulls open drawers and wardrobes to find something to change into. She places a shirt and a pair of slacks on her bed, then steps out of her dress.

As she's putting it in the laundry basket, she becomes aware that Delia's chattering has dried up. Instead, she hears a sigh.

'Hmm?' Patsy turns round.

Delia's no longer looking out of the window. She's looking at Patsy now, with a certain kind of intent that Patsy has come to know well, and which never fails to set her blood thundering.

'Oh.' Patsy says. Her pause, her blush, is enough for Delia to be across the room to her. 'Deels.' If it's a warning, a protest, it's a little half-hearted. And if stepping back from Delia is meant to escape from her that too is ineffectual, for with her back bumping against the dresser, Patsy realizes she's trapped herself instead.

'Pats,' Delia murmurs. The desire in her voice almost makes Patsy crumble.

'We can't. Not here.'

Delia traces a finger down Patsy's face, stops at her lips. 'You say that but – '

Patsy grips on to the dresser behind her to ground herself, to remind herself where she is. And also to stop her hands from betraying what little sense she has left: to stop them from reaching out to Delia, from taking hold of her and pulling her even closer.

'I say it because it's true. Not here. It's too risky.'

Delia's finger, now joined by her thumb, continues its trail down from Patsy's lips, down her throat, across her collar bone, stopping at Patsy's bra strap. Delia slides it to one side, and gently kisses Patsy's bare shoulder.

If Patsy has succeeded in preventing her hands from turning traitor and betraying her, the same can't be said for her skin which shivers under Delia's caress, or her body, which leans into her touch.

Delia has this effect on her. Delia knows she has this effect on her.

'We could be quick,' Delia murmurs in her ear.

Patsy's eyes close.

Delia's hand is hovering tantalisingly close to Patsy's breast, so close that Patsy can feel its warmth, just has to lean forward a fraction to feel Delia's touch…

Patsy's tempted. It would be so easy to give in, to give herself over to Delia. But she knows she can't. Not here. Because even if Trixie and Barbara are out, there are still God knows how many nuns in the house, poised, ready to pounce, just as clothes are in disarray and bodies and hands and mouths are in places where they can't be innocently explained away. Patsy imagines Sister Evangelina barging in just at the crucial moment, demanding that she come downstairs to sort out her misfiled paperwork, or Sister Winifred stumbling in, to disapprove and denounce them as sinners, or Sister Monica Joan catching them while on a quest for cake and quoting something surprisingly apposite from Sappho or Woolf before proceeding merrily on her way.

'Deels,' Patsy somehow manages to say. 'We can't.'

Delia sighs. With great reluctance, she slides the strap of Patsy's bra back into place. 'Well just hurry up and put some clothes on then. If we can't, then at least give a girl a break. This – this –' she gestures to Patsy, '- this, Patience Mount, is something akin to torture.'

'I did ask if you wanted to wait downstairs.'

Delia harrumphs, and goes to sit on Trixie's bed.

To spare them both, Patsy turns away from her while she finishes getting dressed. When she turns back round, doing up the last few shirt buttons, she finds Delia staring intently at the wall.

Patsy watches her for a moment. 'Delia, what are you doing?' she says, finally.

Delia sighs, as if in frustration, but doesn't turn her head. 'I'm trying to distract myself from the fact you're not wearing any clothes by looking at Trixie's pictures.'

'Is it working?' Patsy says, coming over and kissing the back of her neck.

'Stop it Pats, you're not being fair,' Delia says, but her left arm reaches behind her, holding Patsy in place. Delia turns her head to one side, and kisses Patsy.

'Oh,' she says, disappointed, as her eyes flutter open again. 'You're dressed.'

'Sorry.'

'Does she really like this chap?' Delia frowns as she points at the awkwardly cut out heads of miscellaneous men that Trixie's pasted to the wall.

'Not your type?'

'I think we've established that. Why don't you have any pictures on your side of the wall?' Delia wants to know, but Patsy doesn't answer because she has a more pressing question of her own.

'Do you really want to see this film this evening?'

'Don't you?'

'Well, I do, but –' Patsy moves her mouth closer to Delia's ear, drops her voice even lower. 'Perhaps we could go back to yours instead?' Patsy's tracing patterns on Delia's shoulder. 'Finish what you've started?'

The nurses' home is far from ideal but it's better than Nonnatus: Delia doesn't share a room with anyone, and her door has a lock on it, and there are no nuns to be discovered by, and if they have to be quiet, very quiet, it's not like they're not practiced in that.

'Finish what you started, you mean.'

'You started it.'

'You did.' Delia grins at Patsy. Squabbling over this could go on for a while, and there's better things they could be doing. 'Shall we, then?'

'Let's.'