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Ross put his head on one side and took a long look at her. “There is a difference, you know.” His voice was very deliberate, his eyes on her face. “No looks, wasn’t it—too plump and far too good.”
She went a very bright pink. “There’s no need…” she began.
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Gemma propped her bike against a convenient wall and went in through an open side door, into a narrow, dark passage and up a back staircase. There were two Day Sisters looking after the fifty-six patients; herself with twenty-eight old ladies in her care, and Sister Bell, who was housed with the remainder of them in the opposite wing.
Gemma went up the stairs two at a time, changed into uniform in five minutes flat, standing in a cupboard-like room on the landing, and then, very neat and tidy in her blue uniform and starched apron, an equally well-starched cap perched on her bun of brown hair, walked sedately across the landing into another cupboardlike apartment, which Authority allowed her to use as an office. Both the day and night nurses were there waiting for her to take the report, and she greeted them in her quiet voice, bidding them to sit down as she squeezed herself behind the table which served her as desk. The report hardly varied from day to day; Mrs Pegg and Miss Crisp fell out of their beds with monotonous regularity despite the nurses’ efforts to keep them safely in—they had both done so again during the night; there weren’t enough nurses for a start and old ladies could be very determined. Lovable too.
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