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‘Yer come back!’ Maggie said with delight. ‘Look at Charlie! Yer saved ’im!’ She broke free and turned to point at Charlie, sitting up in bed, still pale and thin, but with a little more colour in his cheeks and definitely very wide awake. Mike, beside him, no longer looked frightened.
‘I think we both saved him,’ Hester answered. She did not want any of them to see her as a miracle worker. ‘I’ve come to see how you are,’ she went on. ‘And to ask you about yourselves. I’d like to know.’
She walked over to the bed and Mike shifted closer to Charlie to make room for her.
First she touched the foreheads of each of them, and then felt their pulses. She was satisfied that the new nurse who had replaced Mrs Gilmore was doing her job well, and she felt the knots of tension ease inside her.
‘You’re doing fine,’ she said with a smile. ‘How did you find this hospital? Do you live near here?’
‘I dunno where we are,’ Maggie admitted. She looked at Charlie, and he shook his head.
‘Greenwich,’ Hester told them. This was not a good start.
‘That’s the other side of the river,’ Charlie told her, shaking his head. ‘An’ down a bit,’ he added.
So they came from the north bank, and upriver a bit, not far from Wapping.
‘Limehouse?’ she asked. ‘Or the Isle of Dogs?’
‘The ’igh Street,’ Charlie told her.
Every neighbourhood had its High Street, so that was some help, but not a lot.
‘Do you remember coming here?’ she asked, looking at each of them in turn.
They all shook their heads.
‘Were you asleep?’
‘Must ’a been,’ Charlie agreed.
‘Did your ma and pa come with you?’
They shook their heads again.
‘Do you remember saying goodbye to them?’ She did not like the picture this was beginning to paint, but perhaps she should not have been surprised. ‘What’s the last thing you do remember, before being here?’
‘Is summink wrong?’ Maggie’s eyes clouded over. ‘Summink ’appened ter me?’
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bsp; ‘I don’t think so. But if you tell me what your mother’s name is, and where she lives, I’ll go and find out,’ Hester promised. What she certainly would find out was why these three children were here alone, and no one had come to see them. There were many possibilities, and the ones she dreaded the most were either kidnapping, or the deliberate sale of children that a poor family could no longer feed. Of course, they might have been abandoned – perhaps their mother had died – but it was unlikely they would then have come here.
Maggie looked puzzled. Maybe she knew her mother only as ‘Ma’? The idea of another name might be extraordinary to her.
‘What’s your last name?’ Hester asked Charlie. ‘Charlie what?’
‘Charlie Roberts,’ he replied.
‘Tell me something about the street where you live. What are the shops you remember? Can you see the river from the street? Can you tell me what are the nearest steps to a ferry . . .?’
It was later in the afternoon than Hester would like it to have been when she got home. Dinner would have to wait, or even be no more than a cold meat sandwich. As soon as Scuff was through the door she told him her plans. Ten minutes later she propped a note on the kitchen table for Monk, and she and Scuff were on the road down to the ferry.
Scuff was deeply nervous. He kept fidgeting once they were on the water, and staring both backwards towards the Greenwich steps, and forward to Wapping.
Hester understood. He had been filled with a mixture of anxiety, fear and excitement for a few days now. He wanted to be a doctor so much he was terrified that he would not be accepted, would not be able even to understand what people were talking about, once it came to the theoretical part rather than the practical. He wanted Crow’s help, and was afraid he would refuse it or, worse than that, Scuff would disappoint him. Perhaps worst of all was the dread that he would let Hester and Monk down, when they had trusted in him and believed he could succeed.
She thought of saying that they would back him whatever he chose to do, but she knew that would make no difference. Nothing would matter until he himself believed he could succeed.
