The STD clinic was a fluorescent-lit, medium-sheen space with easy-to-clean green plastic seating lining the walls, and greyish-green dappled lino on the floor. It was a generic space, interchangeable with hospital waiting areas, vehicle registration centres, passport application offices, and airport departure lounges. Years ago, Leonard had joked to Sylvie that the ubiquity of green in buildings of all types had resulted from a post-war overproduction of green dye, and, until stockpiles were depleted, both public and private enterprise had a patriotic duty to use the colour wherever and whenever they could. From then on, should they happen to see green walls or floors or furniture, the two of them would exchange a glance and burst out laughing.

No laughter today, and no Sylvie either. Leonard was alone in a place that diagnosed and treated ‘communicable diseases’. Communicable diseases indeed. Everyone knew that this clinic did not deal with measles, mumps or the latest strain of flu.

He had arrived at nine o’clock, hoping to be in and out before anyone else turned up, but with seven people already seated in the waiting area, he had badly misjudged. He hesitated in the doorway, but guilt and responsibility, together with the now unbearable torment of not knowing his HIV status, propelled him forward. He approached the elder of two receptionists, and a minute later was directed to a seat with a sheaf of questions to complete.

This was his third visit to the clinic. On the other occasions, it was to treat something he’d picked up — a dose of gonorrhoea the first time, and a nasty seeping lesion the second. As he settled himself in a seat, he recalled his mother’s belief that good luck ran in threes; he desperately hoped that bad luck followed a different maths.

When first he’d attended here, he assumed that the detailed questionnaire would eliminate the need for an embarrassing face-to-face interview. He was painfully disabused of this when the questionnaire was used to shape a shockingly intrusive interrogation. Apparently, the state required reporting of certain diseases, including nearly all the STDs, and mandatory reporting itself required a detailed narrative around each occurrence of any of the mandated conditions. On both previous occasions he had experienced the interview as torture. He expected worse today.