‘Do they need any sort of licence to retail or is it like half the other whacky quacks in Starly, you just set up and call yourself what you like?’

‘Well, they don’t need a medical licence. It’s a grey area because when given by qualified practitioners some of their treatment is good – it works. Acupuncture does but that’s pretty mainstream now, and lots of the herbs they use are very effective, and also often pretty powerful, but that’s no different from the stuff naturopaths give – not so different at least in origin from some of the drugs we use, come to that.’

‘Digitalis from foxgloves.’

‘Yes. A lot of Western medicine originated in plants because that’s all they had – read up on the medieval monks and their infirmarians – though drugs have come a long way from their sources and are now chemically engineered. I wouldn’t myself send a patient to a Chinese herbalist but I don’t disapprove of them in general, they just ought to be more strictly regulated so that only fully trained people can set up – trained in Chinese medicine, but also about where their treatments intersect with ours.’

Cat finished her drink and looked at the empty glass, as Simon got up to take it.

‘Thanks – half a glass this time please. I suppose I’d better check on the invalid.’

‘I don’t sense any desperate anxiety on the part of the invalid’s physician.’

‘He’ll live.’ But she looked round as she went out of the door. ‘Actually, it’s quite nasty. He’ll be in a lot of pain tomorrow – but I won’t tell him that.’

Kieron was fast asleep, breathing quietly, head on a pillow which he had scrunched up as usual into a small, strange shape. Cat sometimes lay listening as he twisted and turned and pummelled it until it was exactly as he liked it, a job that could take several full minutes, but after he was settled he slept quite peacefully in the same position all night.

The effect of the painkillers she had given him would wear off during the early hours but for now Kieron was comfortable. As she straightened the bedcover, and looked down at him, she had a flashback to Chris, lying curled towards her, his face marked by weeks of pain, his skin the colour and texture of parchment, Chris, dying of a brain tumour beside her in a situation over which she had no medical control except of the palliative sort, and by those last days, even that was too little. Chris. She saw him at that moment in place of this husband, now, with only a hurt knee, painful, yes, but a dot on the pain scale, to the ten of Chris’s tumour. She leaned over and kissed Kieron’s cheek. He stirred slightly but didn’t wake.