After hugging her yesterday I wasn’t quite sure how to greet her: a handshake would have been too formal, but I got the impression that she wasn’t normally a touchy-feely person. I held my hand out to the dog instead, letting it sniff me before daring to scratch it under the chin.

‘Hello, little chap,’ I said, guessing it was a male by the silver tag bearing the name Starsky hanging from his collar.

‘Well, someone seems much brighter today,’ said Betsy, regarding me with her head to one side. The little dog wriggled in her arms to be put down and she complied. I bent down, assuming that Starsky wanted to come and see me, but he scampered away inside.

‘So you can …’ I faltered, realizing that the question on the tip of my tongue was a bit personal, Betsy had a prickly side to her personality that I’d rather not invoke. ‘Nothing.’

‘Go on, spit it out,’ said Betsy, grabbing the handle of one of my cases and lugging it over the threshold.

‘Well, can you see my face properly?’ I asked. ‘Sorry, my dad used to say I was nosy. My mum encouraged it as natural curiosity.’

Betsy gave a bark of laughter. ‘They’re both right. And being interested in others is a far better trait than only being interested in yourself.’

That observation made me think of Harvey, who I now realized had only ever had his own interests at heart. I gave an involuntary shudder.

‘I’d say I’m a people person,’ I said, pushing the image of him with his hands crushing my face out of my head. ‘And animals too.’

‘Ted wasn’t fond of pets, so we’ve only ever been allowed one at a time. The first was a rescue rabbit when my daughter was eight, then a succession of guinea pigs, a cat or two and finally a dog who Ted fell in love with at first sight.’

‘Quite a menagerie.’

‘Indeed, but always called Starsky, which our friends found amusing.’

‘Why Starsky?’

‘Because the first Starsky came with his own hutch.’

We both laughed. Perhaps I’d been a bit harsh when I’d labelled her as prickly.

‘And to answer your question, no I can’t. Macular degeneration means that my peripheral vision is okay, but the centre is just a blur. So reading is a bind, particularly small print, and I can’t rely on my sight to recognize people; I use my other senses instead, like smell and hearing and, in the case of handsome doctors, touch if I’m feeling brazen.’ She pressed her lips into a secretive smile and I remembered her emerging from the consulting room on Tuesday on the arm of a good-looking man.

‘And sometimes, like now, I get a sixth sense about a person. Yesterday you gave off a feeling of despair; today I’m getting happy vibes.’