The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgwick

looked at the door; there was no lock on the inside. Instead, I wheeled a huge laundry basket over to the door and jammed it up against the handle.
    Quickly I stripped and tried the first dress on, and was glad I had; it had been made for someone larger than me and I looked silly. I would be spotted in a moment. Fumbling, I pulled it off and stuck my arms into the second dress. It was fine. I pulled it off again, and put my own back on. I stuffed the uniform into the canvas bag, along with the cleanest apron I could find, and a couple of caps.
    I couldn’t see an outdoor uniform, and decided I would have to just wear my coat and risk it.
    I pulled the laundry basket back into place, put my ear to the frosted window and slipped out again.
    Still I saw no one as I walked back to Father’s office.
    I tried the door, and to my relief it wasn’t locked. This was a hospital, not a prison, after all.
    I hurried inside.
    I stood there undecided, and then started to hunt.
    I knew Father was responsible for passing and processing the volunteer nurses selected to go to France. On my last visit to his office, when we’d tried and failed to have tea, I’d seen a big box file on his desk that contained, I hoped, my ticket to France.
    It was still there, labeled: JOINT WAR COMMITTEE, SERVICE ABROAD.
    Inside were several bundles of papers, each one concerning a nurse. I began to leaf through them. The first few only had the preliminary applications in them—documentation that the nurse had put her name on the register to serve abroad. That she’d been notified of selection, that she’d applied for her passport, and so on. These were of no use to me. I riffled through to the end of the box. They were all the same. I tried to stay calm as I searched the desk, and then, in Father’s Out tray, I saw another bundle, just like the ones I had been looking at. He must have been working on it on Friday night; it was a completed set of papers.
    I grabbed it and checked it through.
    The nurse selected was called Miriam Hibbert. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t want to, in a way. I was about to severely impede her means of going abroad.
    Everything I needed was there. Her completed contract of service. The brassard arm band with its red cross. An identity disc. An identity certificate. A red permit that allows travel abroad.
    And then the passport.
    My heart sank. I hadn’t seen a passport before then. Until the war started we didn’t need them. I didn’t know they had photographs. I looked at the small black-and-white image of Miriam Hibbert. She looked nothing like me. There was no getting around it. How could I pass myself off as her, with that tiny picture to prove it was all a lie?
    Not wanting to give up, I looked at the identity certificate.
    The Anglo-French Hospitals Identity Certificate was a small paper document. And it had no photograph.
    On it I read that it could stand in place of a passport where none was present. I didn’t know quite what that would mean in practice, but my heart soared. The certificate had the most basic information on it. Name, address, age, height. Again my luck held. Miriam was just an inch or two shorter than me, at five foot six, and she was twenty-three. I could pass for twenty-three. Then there was a brief, rather blunt description of her.
    Tall; round face; brown eyes. Medium build. Straight, dark brown hair to just above shoulder length.
    It fitted me, apart from the round face and medium build. Well, I could tell them I’d lost weight. And my hair I could cut easily enough.
    It was time to go, but just as I was sliding the papers on top of the uniform in my canvas bag, I saw a book I recognized on Father’s desk.
    On impulse I picked it up and slid it into the bag along with everything else.
    The blood was still chasing round my veins twice as fast as it should, even when I was halfway home. All the way I expected to hear running footsteps coming after me, or cries of “Stop! Thief!” but