CHAPTER ONE

      IT HAD been a hard morning’s work at the Royal’s accident and emergency department. During a lull in dealing with patients, duty registrar Anna Craven told her colleagues that she was taking a short lunch-break.

      ‘If I don’t get something to eat in the next three minutes I’ll pass out on the floor,’ she said, walking in the direction of the staff canteen.

      She grabbed a sandwich and a can of lemonade and went to sit by herself at a table in the far corner, away from the main seating area which always seemed to be crowded and noisy. She liked to spend the rare moments away from A and E in as tranquil an area as possible. Often, if the canteen was busier than usual, she’d take her sandwiches out to her car and sit there in solitude, the car radio tuned in to a classical station.

      Friends and colleagues often remarked on how serene Anna always looked. With her smooth blonde hair, her pale green eyes and her delicate bone structure, she appeared to all the world to be the very embodiment of calmness. How deceptive appearances could be! The outer calm took a lot of working on and quite frequently hid inner turmoil underneath.

      Anna had two sisters and both of them were just the opposite of her. They even looked different. Instead of straight blonde hair, Rebecca and Jennifer had naturally curly raven locks. And whereas Anna was diplomatic, her sisters were extremely outspoken to the point of rudeness, saying exactly what they thought without a care in the world that they might hurt anybody’s feelings.

      ‘I suppose you’re the way you are because you’re the middle child,’ Rebecca had said. ‘I’m the eldest and the bossy one. Jenny, being the youngest, is the spoiled brat…and you’re the poor child caught in the middle. Either that or you were potty-trained too early!’

      Rebecca and Jennifer were both married…happily married, Anna presumed, although sometimes she did wonder, the way they constantly grumbled about their spouses and their children, each sister trying to outdo the other with awful stories. One thing was for sure— they were desperately keen that Anna should get married and then she’d be ‘just like us’. It seemed to annoy them immensely that while they were stuck at home with young families, their footloose and fancy-free sister was, they imagined, living the life of Riley as a single ‘career girl’.

      ‘I bet you’d soon lose your composure if you’d got three kids under four playing merry hell all day,’ suggested Rebecca, unable to comprehend how anyone could stay as calm and unflappable as Anna.

      Anna’s outward composure confused others, particularly men. Deep inside her, she knew she was a passionate, fervent human being, capable of deep, heartfelt emotions. She also had a lively mind and a good sense of humour, appreciating wit more than slapstick. But she found it difficult, embarrassing even, to make a public display of her feelings.

      Even now, when she was feeling utterly wretched because of Liam, she couldn’t bring herself to confide in anyone. Telling her colleagues was just asking to get talked about by the gossip-mongers, and sharing her misery with her sisters would only have served to increase the pain instead of halving it. No, the loss of Liam was something she’d have to cope with on her own, hiding it under a guise of tight-lipped tranquillity. Liam, who had taken her love and tossed it aside without even realising what he’d done. Liam, whom she’d fallen in love with and whom she’d thought had fallen in love with her. But that was the problem with being cool and serene on the outside…it often sent out the wrong message. It made people believe that you were hard and indifferent to personal pain.

      ‘No commitments,’ he’d said from time to time during their six months together, his eyes smiling at her, always smiling. ‘We’re having a great time, aren’t we?’ And he’d laughed charmingly. He