A Nightingale Christmas Carol Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Donna Douglas

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  All that Dora Riley wants is her husband home safe for Christmas…

  The Nightingale Hospital, London, 1944

  With her husband Nick away fighting, Dora struggles to keep the home fires burning and is put in charge of a ward full of German prisoners of war. Can she find it in her heart to care for her enemies?

  Fellow nurse Kitty thinks she might be falling for a German soldier, whilst Dora’s old friend Helen returns from Europe with a dark secret.

  Can the women overcome their prejudices and past troubles to do their duty in wartime?

  About the Author

  Donna Douglas lives in York with her husband and two cats. They have a grown-up daughter. When she is not busy writing, she is generally reading, watching Netflix or drinking cocktails. Sometimes all at the same time.

  Also by Donna Douglas

  The Nightingale Series

  The Nightingale Girls

  The Nightingale Sisters

  The Nightingale Nurses

  Nightingales on Call

  A Nightingale Christmas Wish

  Nightingales at War

  Nightingales Under the Mistletoe

  The Nurses of Steeple Street Series

  The Nurses of Steeple Street

  To Rebecca and Wayne, wishing you happiness in your married life.

  Chapter One

  December 1943

  ‘Only you would come out in the middle of an air raid to look after a ruddy cat, Dora Riley!’

  Dora didn’t look back at her husband. She could hear the gruff exasperation in Nick’s voice, so she could well imagine the look on his face. She kept her eyes fixed instead on the bomb-scarred ground in front of her; a freezing fog was descending, and it took all her concentration to pick her way over the treacherous cobbles, pitted with craters. The streets looked nothing like she remembered them. Most of the houses were gone, destroyed in the Blitz.

  ‘It wasn’t a very big one, and the all-clear sounded half an hour ago,’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Besides, I didn’t ask you to come. You could have stayed at home.’

  ‘And let you walk the streets by yourself?’ Nick sounded outraged. ‘It’ll be dark soon. It ain’t safe.’

  Dora smiled to herself. Bless him. Nick had been away fighting for nearly four years, and she could count on one hand how many times he’d been allowed home on leave. How did he think she’d managed without him in all that time? Like all the other wives and mothers left alone to cope in the East End, she’d learned to live with the fear, and the blackouts, and the nights spent hiding away in damp air raid shelters, wondering if they would have a home to return to in the morning.

  And being a nurse, she’d also come face-to-face with some truly horrifying sights, images of injured soldiers and bomb victims that still haunted her nightmares.

  But now Nick was home, and he wanted to protect her, and she knew she had to put aside her independence and let him be the husband he wanted to be.

  She was so happy to have him home. Even now, nearly two weeks later, she couldn’t stop smiling at the memory of opening the front door to find him standing on the doorstep in his uniform, his kitbag slung over his shoulder. He’d been sent back from Italy on a troop ship to Scotland, and it had taken him two days to make his way back to Bethnal Green.

  Now it was the day before Christmas Eve, and it was going to be the happiest Christmas Dora had had in a long time.

  The twins seemed to pick up on her lighter mood, too. It had been so long since the children had seen their father, and they had been painfully wary of Nick at first. But now they couldn’t leave him alone. They’d begged to come out with their parents this afternoon, Walter riding high on Nick’s shoulders, while Winnie roamed ahead, bold beyond her six years, her keen gaze darting around, searching for lost treasure.

  ‘Be careful,’ Dora called out to her. ‘Remember what I told you. Don’t pick anything up.’

  Winnie paid her no mind, criss-crossing the pavement, still looking here and there.

  ‘She’s turning into a proper little tomboy, ain’t she?’ Nick said fondly.

  ‘That’s our Alfie’s doing,’ Dora replied. ‘He’s always bringing home bits of shrapnel to show her, and pointing out the different aeroplanes. I swear they’d both be out in the air raids if I let them . . .’ She stopped short, a nameless fear choking the words in her throat.

  Nick seemed to understand. He lengthened his stride to catch up with her, then reached for her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm, pulling her close to him. Neither of them spoke. They weren’t much for flowery words, either of them. But their silences spoke volumes.

  Dora tightened her fingers around his arm, feeling his solid strength through the thickness of his coat. She might have learned to cope alone over the past four years, but now he was here, at her side, she wondered how she had ever managed without him – and how she would manage when he was taken away from her again.

  Because he would have to go away again, sooner or later. Until this wretched war was over, he would never be hers.

  As if he knew the direction her thoughts were straying, Nick began to grumble about the weather again. Dora knew he was trying to distract her.

  ‘Remind me again why we’ve come out in the freezing cold on this fool’s errand?’ he muttered under his breath, his coat collar turned up so Dora could hardly see his profile buried inside it.

  ‘I promised Mrs Price.’ The old lady had been in such a state since she was admitted to the isolation ward. She was very poorly with influenza, but she was more worried about her precious cat than herself. In the end, Dora had had to swear she would go and feed the creature just to get her to stay in bed.

  ‘Couldn’t you just tell her it ran away? She’d never know.’

  ‘How could you suggest such a thing?’ Dora stared at him. ‘I couldn’t live
with myself, knowing the poor thing was alone and starving.’

  Nick shook his head. ‘Typical,’ he muttered. ‘That’s your trouble. You spend too much time thinking about everyone else.’

  ‘So what if I do? Shame you don’t try it sometime, Nick Riley,’ she replied primly.

  ‘Look after number one, that’s my motto.’ He did his best to sound brusque, but Dora could see the faint smile lifting the corner of his mouth. Nick preferred to hide his kind heart under a hard shell. Very few people had ever been allowed close enough to see what he was really like.

  ‘Mrs Price was our neighbour once,’ she reminded him. ‘Of course I’ll do a good turn for her if I can. She did enough for us.’

  ‘Not me. She never had a good word for me or my family. Nor did the rest of them.’

  Dora sent him a quick look. It was true, the Rileys had always been outcasts in Griffin Street, thanks to Nick’s violent father and his drunken mother. Growing up, he had always been surly and troublesome, ready to start a fight at the drop of a hat. It was only Dora who had been allowed to see the hurt, angry boy inside.

  He was doing his best not to show it, but Dora could tell he was struggling with the idea of returning to Griffin Street. The place held no happy memories for him.

  ‘Are you sure you want to come?’ she said. ‘I really don’t mind going by myself—’

  ‘I told you, I ain’t having you walking round these streets on your own.’ Nick’s expression was grimly determined. ‘Anyway, we’re here now. Let’s just get it over with, shall we?’

  She could feel his tension as they turned the corner into Griffin Street. She had returned to the area several times since that fateful night during the Blitz, but Nick hadn’t seen the devastation for himself. Now he stopped dead, and Dora heard his sharply indrawn breath.

  The street they’d grown up in was barely recognisable. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, just after the bomb hit it. The mountains of debris, the brick rubble, shattered wood and glass and broken roof tiles, had all been cleared away over the past two years. But somehow it was all the more heartbreaking for that. Now there was nothing but a yawning gap where their houses had once stood, with jagged points of broken wall still standing at odd angles. Thin wisps of fog threaded between the skeletons of the houses, giving the street an eerie, haunted look.

  Here and there were touching reminders of the people who had once lived in the street – a fluttering pennant of flowery parlour wallpaper, the remains of the pigeon loft where Mr Prosser kept his birds, the broken wooden stump of what had once been a washing line. And there, over by the broken-down back wall, was the outline of the coal cellar where Nick’s younger brother Danny had sat and waited for his brother to come home until the night the bomb came down . . .

  Dora was always careful to avert her gaze from the spot, but Nick’s eyes were fixed on it, almost as if he was testing himself to see how much pain he could bear.

  ‘Where are we, Daddy?’ Walter’s piping voice broke the tense silence.

  Nick cleared his throat. ‘This is where we used to live,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Me and your mum grew up here.’

  ‘Where?’ Walter wanted to know. ‘Where did you live?’

  ‘Just there.’ Nick pointed towards the gap. ‘Your mum lived at number twenty-eight, and I was next door.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘They’ve been bombed, silly,’ Winnie answered for them as she scrambled up the crumbling edge of a wall. ‘The Germans knocked them all down in the Blitz. They came over in their planes, hundreds and hundreds of them, bang, crash, bang—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Dora snapped, more harshly than she’d meant to. ‘And get down off that wall before you tear your coat. You won’t get another one if you ruin it.’

  Winnie shot her a sullen look, then climbed down and darted off.

  ‘And stay where I can see you,’ Dora called after her. But Winnie had already disappeared into the gathering gloom.

  ‘You can’t blame her,’ Nick said softly. ‘They’ve grown up with the war. It’s all they’ve ever known.’

  ‘Don’t I know it?’ Dora muttered. It broke her heart to think that her children couldn’t remember a world when air raid sirens didn’t wail in the sky, or the simple pleasures of waking up on Christmas morning to a stocking filled with presents. They were six years old, and their innocence was already gone.

  ‘Come on,’ Nick tugged at her arm. ‘Let’s go and see about this cat before it gets dark.’

  Mrs Price’s house stood in isolation at the end of Griffin Street, the only house still intact, apart from a large dent in the roof and half the outside privy missing.

  Nick squinted up at the house. ‘Look at all those tiles missing,’ he said. ‘And that chimney’s going to come down, too. It must be bloody freezing in there. Damp too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘I expect that’s why she’s in hospital with flu.’

  He shook his head. ‘How does the old girl live here all by herself? I’m surprised it’s not been condemned.’

  ‘I think they tried.’ Dora remembered what Mrs Price had said to her, her wrinkled face lit up with determination.

  ‘My house is still standing, and so am I. The Germans didn’t get me out of it, and neither will the corporation.’

  ‘I think she’s planning to be here when the war’s over, so she can put out the flags,’ Dora said.

  ‘She always was a tough old boot!’ Nick was grudgingly admiring. ‘Just like all the other women in Griffin Street, eh?’

  He grinned at her, and Dora did her best to smile back. The truth was, she didn’t feel very tough any more, but she didn’t want to show it in front of Nick. He had enough to worry about.

  ‘I think I might take a look at that roof first thing tomorrow, see if I can stop some of the rain coming in,’ Nick said, squinting up at the crumbling chimney.

  ‘Oh yes? What happened to looking after number one?’ Dora asked.

  Nick’s mouth twisted. ‘You must be a bad influence on me,’ he muttered. ‘Now come on. Let’s find that ruddy cat and get out of here before the fog comes down and we can’t find our way home!’

  They searched for ages, wandering around the wrecked houses, calling out the cat’s name.

  ‘Timmy? Timmy? Come out, mate. I’ve brought you some nice fish heads.’ Dora’s voice echoed around the empty street. ‘He must be inside the house,’ she said. ‘Poor little thing, I expect he’s terrified.’

  ‘More likely out hunting!’ Nick grimaced. ‘There must be enough rats around here to keep him going for months.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Dora shuddered. ‘Find Winnie, would you? I don’t want her getting bitten.’

  Nick peered into the gloom. ‘It’s all right, I can see her. She’s just over there, where the Prossers’ privy used to be—’

  But Dora wasn’t listening. She was staring at Mrs Price’s back door, swinging open on its rusting hinges.

  ‘What is it?’ Nick asked behind her.

  ‘It looks as if someone’s been in here.’

  Nick stepped forward, taking charge. He lifted Walter from his shoulders and dumped him on the ground. ‘You stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll go in and have a look.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Stay here!’ he ordered.

  Dora frowned at his back as he opened the door and stepped inside. He might be used to giving orders, but she wasn’t used to following them. Clutching Walter’s hand, she stepped after Nick into the gloom.

  Chapter Two

  It was just as she’d feared. The tiny kitchen had been turned over, tables and chairs upended, the dresser that had once housed all Mrs Price’s fancy china thrown on its side.

  Dora froze, staring at the mess around her. ‘What the—’

  ‘Someone must have realised the place was empty.’ Nick’s face was grim. ‘You stay here, I’ll take a look in the other room.’

  He disappeared up the darkened passageway. ‘What�
��s happened, Mum?’ Walter asked, looking round.

  ‘I—’ Dora opened her mouth to answer him, but words failed her.

  Nick appeared again in the doorway. ‘I’ve looked in the parlour,’ he said. ‘It’s the same in there. And I found this . . .’ He held up a wooden jewellery box, the lid gaping open to expose its faded silk lining. ‘They’ve taken everything that wasn’t nailed down, I reckon.’

  Dora’s knees weakened and she stepped backwards, feeling the cold stone of the sink at her back.

  ‘How could they?’ she whispered. ‘How could someone do this to a poor old lady?’

  ‘You’d be surprised how low some people will stoop,’ Nick muttered.

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Dora looked around. This was the East End, people stuck together here, they helped each other out in times of trouble. They didn’t turn on each other like dogs fighting over scraps.

  ‘It’s the war,’ Nick answered her unspoken question. ‘It does strange things to people.’

  The bloody war. Anger welled up inside her. She was sick of hearing about it, sick of living through it, sick of the way it twisted people and tore the heart out of communities like Griffin Street.

  ‘How am I going to tell her?’ she said, looking around at the broken remains of Mrs Price’s home. ‘She’s already lost so much. Her husband, both her sons . . .’

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ Nick said. ‘Not until she’s strong enough to take it. Now, let’s find that cat and a box to put him in, and we’ll take him home.’

  Dora stared at him blankly. It took her a moment to remember why they’d come.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Mrs Price said not to move him. She said he wouldn’t like it—’

  ‘To hell with the cat!’ Nick cut her off. ‘I ain’t having you coming back to this place every day, d’you hear me? Not with thieves roaming around the place.’

  Dora straightened her shoulders. ‘They won’t be back, if they’ve taken everything,’ she said. ‘Besides, they don’t scare me.’

  ‘I don’t care, I still don’t want you round here on your own—’

  Just at that moment the door swung open behind her and Winnie appeared, looking pleased with herself.