Small Wars by Sadie Jones

exactly.

    Meg’s fever hadn’t gone down after Hal left. It didn’t go down all day, and the following day it was worse, and Lottie was not her normal jolly self but coughing as well. Clara stayed quietly at home until lunchtime, trying to read to them, with the wireless on sometimes.
    She decided it was just a normal cough and cold, sacrificing instinct to her need for calm. She didn’t notice how extreme the situation had become until at three o’clock in the afternoon she realised they were all lying in darkness because whenever she opened the flowered curtains both girls cried with pain.

    Dr Godwin was in barrack dress, and quite unofficial-looking. He had black hair, a ruddy face, and was about thirty-five. Clara showed him upstairs to the girls. He sat on the bed and said, ‘What have we here, then?’ and Clara was emotional with relief.
    He looked at the twins – into their mouths and ears, pulled up their nighties to examine their stomachs and the skin on their arms and pronounced that, in all likelihood, they had measles. Clara didn’t know of any contact with anybody with measles, but they had been in Limassol amongst crowds and on the beach.
    ‘You just need to sit it out,’ said Dr Godwin.
    He asked Clara if she had had measles and she said she had.
    ‘The rash should show itself within a day or two. There’s every chance they’ll just feel a bit poorly for a few days, and by next week you’ll have forgotten all about it.’
    Clara knew of a boy who’d gone deaf from measles, and another who had been epileptic ever since having it. She thought you could develop polio straight afterwards, but she wasn’t sure of the connection and was too frightened to ask about it.
    ‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked, with the soldierly directness that comforted and intimidated her.
    ‘No,’ said Clara. Then, ‘Except…you said “every chance” we’ll have forgotten it – but…?’
    ‘Measles is a common enough childhood illness, surely you know that?’
    Clara was embarrassed and said that she did. She was incredulous at her own meekness, and despised it. Apparently she was more concerned with showing the doctor she wasn’t panicking than asking perfectly normal questions.
    ‘You can call me out again if the fever reaches a hundred and four. Tepid baths. Water if they’ll take it. Boil it first, of course.’ He couldn’t wait to be out of the house.
    Once he was gone Clara felt outrage and irritation, and had dozens of questions for him, but it was too late. She hated him. He probably felt looking after children was beneath him and wanted to be splinting people’s legs on battlefields.
    She went upstairs, picked up the thermometer from the side table and shook it down. She put the thin glass stick under their arms, one after the other, holding each arm close to the body to keep it there, tucked into the tiny hot gap. Their temperature was 103. The room was very stuffy. She tried to make them drink water, wishing they weren’t so compliant and sleepy.
    Clara felt the overwhelming need for company, and went downstairs and out of the back door. She hadn’t seen Deirdre go out that morning. Often they dropped by each other’s houses, calling, ‘You there?’ before leaning over the low fence that divided them. Clara stepped into Deirdre’s garden, and looked into the house through the window, which was a sash, and divided into four panes. The kitchen was dim, and darker as it went towards the front of the empty house and the kitchen door. Clara knocked anyway, then, hearing one of the girls coughing convulsively, like a baby seal, and crying out, she went back to her own house.
    Adile had just arrived. Clara jumped when she saw her. Adile checked the scarf wrapped so closely around her head and said something Clara didn’t understand, pointing upstairs at the girls.
    ‘No,’ said Clara. ‘No, I don’t understand you!’
    Adile made rocking motions for ‘baby’, and then said