MORNING SERIAL

PERHAPS the injury would act as a token of belonging. Rachel may even have dived off the wardrobe to achieve some such sign of comradeship. ‘I don’t think it should be necessary.’

A sour whiff came from the child. Didn’t she ever wash herself?

And all the while, the memory of the momentous afternoon out there with Wolfi kept shining in, like sun through the weft of linen curtains, more urgently real than these petty calamities.

The child was nodding. She would like to go to sick bay.

‘Well, I don’t think it’s essential. You can go tomorrow if the bruise hasn’t gone down. Matron, give Rachel two aspirins and bathe the injury in cold water and witch hazel. Kindly: do it kindly,’ she added harshly in German. She resolutely did not say ‘please’. Her cold fury with the woman exceeded her sympathy for the child.

‘I always do what is kind and right,’ stated Fraulein, the epitome of injured rectitude. ‘If the young English lady would cease to climb the furniture, she would not now be hurting,’ she added, nodding at Rachel as she confided her subtle deduction.

‘I didn’t,’ whispered Rachel. ‘Are you saying you were pushed?’

‘No.’ Panic kindled the dark eyes raised to hers. The other girls’ presence seemed to gather around them so that Issie heard their breathing. She felt their damage and how they were passing it on to the newcomer. She recognised, in the after-echo of the pleasure she had received this afternoon, how exquisite pain could also be. She should offer, from her own superfluity of joy, some fellowship to this child; yet she hungered to slip back to her room and recall the taste of Wolfi.

‘Now, girls. Rachel is to rest on her bed and you are to be especially kind to her. Yes?’

‘Yes Miss Dahl,’ they droned.