Two of the people in the waiting area, much the same age as Andrew, were wearing identical wedding rings; Leonard wondered what possibly could have brought them here. The man was dressed in a suit, the girl in a stylish skirt and jacket; their arms were linked and they were talking together in hushed voices. At one point the wife removed a thread from her husband’s collar. It was such an easy, intimate gesture that Leonard thought it impossible that this could be a couple in which one member had brought an STD to the marital bed after illicit sex elsewhere. They looked so close and loving — like him and Sylvie, he supposed. But then, like him and Sylvie, appearances might be deceptive.

This was not the case with the others in the room. There was a long-limbed gaunt man, probably a good deal younger than Leonard, but with a face carved by deep wrinkles, he could have been mistaken for seventy. He had coated his face in thick, clay-coloured make-up, which, rather than concealing the great cracks, set them in greater relief. He was dressed in jeans and a frilly jacket, and on his feet were red stilettos. His hair, bleached the colour of straw, was piled in a nest on the top of his head. He was intent on his nails, removing them carefully one by one, and putting them into a matchbox.

A few seats away was a boy who looked no more than fifteen. He was a dark, sweet beauty, like one of Caravaggio’s boys; his eyes were closed, and he was nodding along to a Walkman. There was a woman whom Leonard assumed was a prostitute, perhaps the beautiful boy was too, and a buffed and moustachioed man who, judging by his relaxed and animated conversation with the receptionists, was well known here. Leonard touched his own moustache, and wondered if he should shave it off. The last patient — were they all patients? This was not a normal medical clinic, after all — was a man in his forties. Well-groomed, athletic, dressed in smart, casual clothes, and, yes, with a moustache, he was, at this very moment, smiling at Leonard. Surely the man wasn’t coming on to him? Here, in an STD clinic? That would be taking opportunism to a sick level. Leonard did not smile back, he had nothing to smile about. He hid behind his newspaper and swore to himself that if the test were negative, he would never enter this place again. Ever.