Her children did a fair impression of her awkward progress as they followed her, and she swung one of the sticks at them good-naturedly before making her way across the clearing and out of sight.

Hugh smiled wearily and, thankful there were no more patients, turned back to tidy up the surgery. The day had dragged by and he’d been unable to catch up on his sleep because of the heat. Now the pain in his chest had returned and he ached for his bed.

There was a hesitant knock on the door. ‘Sorry, Hugh, am I too late?’

He looked around to find Sal Davenport on the doorstep, dressed in her usual bright skirt and pretty blouse, her hair spilling from beneath her straw hat and over her shoulders. His smile of welcome faded as he saw the nasty gash on Sal’s cheekbone and the angry swelling around her eye. ‘Come in, Sal,’ he said resignedly. ‘You know the drill.’

Sal and Bert had taken over the Dog and Drover when her parents retired to a bungalow on the east coast twenty years back. She was a slender, bustling little woman in her early forties, who dyed her tangled black curls with red streaks, wore jangling jewellery and was rarely seen without a smile – even when she bore the evidence of Bert’s latest bashing.

Hugh liked her immensely, for she never seemed to run out of energy even though she did all the work at the pub while Bert got drunk with his customers on the other side of the bar. But for all her straight talking and defiance, Sal had been one of Hugh’s regulars over the years and he wondered, for the umpteenth time, why such a feisty woman had even contemplated marrying such a nasty piece of work as Bert Davenport – let alone stayed with him.

‘I fell over and hit my head on the bar,’ she said to forestall his questions.

‘You seem to do a lot of falling down and bumping into things, Sal,’ he murmured as he gently cleaned the cut and checked to make sure her cheekbone hadn’t been fractured again. ‘Perhaps you should get your eyes tested?’

‘Nothing wrong with my sight, Hugh,’ she replied drily. ‘I was just born clumsy.’

Hugh didn’t bother to argue, for he knew she would never admit that Bert bashed her. He checked her vision as best he could through the swollen eyelid and put iodine on the bruises. ‘I’m going to have to stitch this cut, Sal, otherwise you’ll end up with a scar.’

She winced as he injected anaesthetic into the cut to numb it. ‘Makes no difference,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been a beauty queen, and at my age no one will notice.’

He pulled the stool closer and carefully began to stitch the wound. ‘You’re still an attractive woman, Sal,’ he murmured. ‘And young enough to start again.’