Patience Mount had so many regrets. A mountain of unsaid words and missed opportunities. A plethora of doubts yielded to and longings unvoiced. Of battles unfought. As she'd gotten older it was the last that grieved her most painfully. And so she'd taken a new approach to life - everything was to be challenged and won and held onto for dear life. And there was nothing in her adult life that she could say that she hadn't striven for to her utmost, nothing that she could say she hadn't worked her hardest to achieve. No lost chances she could reproach herself for.

Standing here, at the rehearsal for her wedding, she should be elated. Proud that everything she'd worked so hard to achieve was coming to fruition. But all Patsy could feel was an empty yearning. Her certainty, her assuredness, her plan for the future, had vanished last night. A fleeting glance of a figure on the tube station platform, and now her life felt as ephemeral as the breath she'd blown out into the chilly air this morning on the way to the church.

It was agony, standing here next to Lucy. Listening to the Reverend drone on about what they should expect and what would happen during each stage of tomorrow's ceremony. Exquisite torture to look into Lucy's excited green eyes and ponder what anguish to inflict. Patsy was going to hurt one of them grievously. Her silence would ensure her own torment. The truth would mean tragedy for Lucy. It was unthinkable.


She'd been exhausted, but glad to be heading home for the last time. Her colleagues had arranged an early shift, had somehow thrown together a boozy afternoon tea farewell. Undoubtedly Trixie had been involved in the organisation. She wasn't sure who'd been looking after the patients, because it felt like every member of the hospital came with a hug or a kiss on the cheek, with warm congratulations and inappropriately familiar suggestions for ways to spend their honeymoon time in the Bahamas.

Patsy had finally escaped around half five, hurried to the station and collapsed gratefully into a recently vacated window seat. The air inside the carriage was thick with the smell of damp wool and muddy boots. Patsy had sighed, angled her body away from her travelling companions and stared into the flickering dark outside. Thinking not for the first time that it might be nice to let go of her idealistic desire to support the environment and decrease their carbon footprint - to actually get a car and not have to wallow in the malodorous fug of London's long day.

The hot breath of several hundred commuters had condensed upon the windows, making it virtually impossible to see anything. As they pulled up to the next tube stop Patsy rubbed her gloved hand across the window - cleared a smudged patch just large enough to catch a glimpse of the station name. Poplar. Noted that there were nine stops until home when her gaze was arrested by a compact figure standing on the platform. Although Patsy knew it was medically impossible, she felt as if her heart had instantly grown three sizes larger and lodged itself painfully into her throat. Her breath actually stuttered as she stared in shock at the dark haired woman standing barely ten feet and a world away. She was vaguely cognisant of the doors to the carriage closing, of juddering into motion. As the train pulled away Patsy strained to looked back. Felt her heartbeat sputter erratically as blue eyes met hers for a fraction of a second.

Blood roared in Patsy's ears as she sat, bewildered. Heart pounding, the noise in her head almost drowned out the announcement that the train was arriving at the next station. She blundered to her feet, tripping over shoes and knees, heedlessly knocking commuters with her bag as she stumbled out of the doors. Ran clumsily to the stairwell that would take her to the other side of the platform. That would take her back.

She just missed a train going the opposite direction, so by the time she arrived back at Poplar nearly 20 minutes had passed. Gasping for breath, cursing her inability to give up those stupid cigarettes, she practically ran the length of the platform. Eyes darting over every face, ignoring the looks of distaste and alarm. Of indifference. She walked the platform three times, heart sinking further with each step. Doubt creeping in like an unwelcome old acquaintance. There was no trace of the woman.

She sat on a bench for a long moment. Arguing with herself about what she thought she had seen. Or who, more to the point.

It had been over a decade since she'd last seen that face. It was possible that the woman she'd seen on the platform bore only a resemblance to that long remembered countenance. They would have both grown so much in the intervening years. Patsy knew she'd changed considerably since her time at school - not the least her hair, which was now a vibrant red courtesy of the dye bottle. She always felt that nobody took bonde doctors seriously. Not the female ones, in any case.

But those eyes were hauntingly familiar. As was the accompanying lurch in her stomach that transformed into nausea as she sat on the the platform. Doubting herself.

The nausea lingered through the train ride home, provided an excuse when Lucy questioned her pallor. Her reticence. Her withdrawal.

Patsy had refused to dwell on the past. Refused to entertain useless fantasies and what ifs. Refused to indulge in painful reminiscence and recollection. So it felt somewhat illicit now, retreating into the study. Opening Facebook, and with no little trepidation typing in a name she thought had lost its power over her.

Delia Busby.


The last time Patsy had seen Delia, she felt as though her soul were being cleaved in two. Delia had been bundled into the back of her mother's sensible sedan car, her tear-stained face pressed to the window. Her expression an agonised portrait of pain and apology. Longing and self-recrimination. Love and helplessness.

Patsy had felt like she would implode - a furious turmoil of rage and agony tearing the air from her lungs and it was only that breathlessness that prevented an unseemly and damning display of sobs, of wails. Of outraged screams. That lack of oxygen that made it impossible to run fruitlessly after the retreating car. To beg Mrs Busby to reconsider.

As Delia had not.

Her winded gasps and reddened eyes garnered a disapproving look from the Headmistress. Patsy had straightened her shoulders. Back ramrod straight and her gait uncomfortably stiff. But she'd made it back to her room before she dissolved into a helpless mess. She'd given herself one evening of maudlin self-indulgence. One night of cuddling Delia's discarded jumper, of breathing in the smell that was uniquely Delia. That somehow managed to be the scent of sunshine and sparkling eyes and warm, soft skin.

In the morning Patsy had stripped the bed linen. Placed her pyjamas and robe into the laundry, with her uniform. Thrown the jumper into the garbage.


According to Facebook, Delia Busby now worked in London. At a clinic quite nearby, as a matter of fact. Patsy wasn't sure whether to be relieved or terrified at this revelation. It meant that she likely hadn't been hallucinating earlier on the train, that her sanity was at least in tact. But it was stirring an uncomfortable array of emotions, buried so long and so deep that it was like a thick, sludgy cesspool of stagnated feeling. Feelings long suppressed and repressed and ignored and compartmentalised and now they were clamouring for attention and it was all just too much.

There was Delia's latest profile picture. It was all disarming smiles and piercing blue eyes and the promise of…

There couldn't be a promise of anything. That way lay madness. And heartache.

Patsy closed the tab. Powered off the computer.


It had been the promise of something unknown - of something forbidden - in Delia's eyes, that had drawn Patsy to her all those years ago at boarding school. The Welsh girl had a smile that wouldn't melt butter, that won her favours from classmates and concessions from teachers and special treatment from the Head of House. It was paired with the cheekiest, bluest, most sparkling eyes that Patsy had ever seen. And it was that dichotomy of sincere smile and mischievous eyes that broke through Patsy's reserve. Distracted her from despondent rumination and allowed her to feel the warmth of human company. To seek it out.

The loss of her mother and sister had been still raw, the pain still gaping and fresh and fierce when she'd started at boarding school. Although it had been almost a year since the accident, she'd never really dealt with it. Her father, a veritable stereotype of the stiff upper lip British moneyed class, had kept her at arm's length. Patsy had lacked for nothing, except his affection. She hadn't been surprised when he'd taken an Embassy post in South-East Asia. She knew that he was removing himself from any reminders of his wife, of their family. She was hurt - so hurt - that he'd dropped her at her new school with barely a goodbye. But she understood. And she knew he expected her to simply get on with it.

And so she had, focusing on her studies and playing hockey and being friendly but aloof. And she'd succeed splendidly until one evening, carrying a stack of biomedical textbooks from the library, she'd literally run into Delia. They'd collided in the hallway, books had flown everywhere, and somehow Patsy had wound up on her arse staring up in disbelief at the prettiest girl she'd ever seen in her life.