“I suppose that makes sense,” I told them. “Dr Ginzberg used hypnosis to help me put together what happened during the accident—I'd sort of . . .” My voice trailed off as I was hit hard by what I was about to say. With an effort, I finished the thought: “I'd pushed it away, even the parts I could eventually remember. So yes, she was probably accustomed to working with helping people retrieve their repressed memories.”

I found myself smiling, a little sadly, at this last. A patient invariably feels that the intense relationship she forms with her psychiatrist is entirely unique and essentially personal; it is always a jolt to realise that it is also one of a score such relationships the psychiatrist holds simultaneously: a part of the job.

Donny lit a match, his handsome face coming brightly into view then fading into a mere outline in the glow of the cigarette. “Didn't they think one of her loonies went nuts in the office and killed her? I don't remember ever hearing who it was—the papers are never as good in following up a story as they are in telling you in the first place, are they?”

“It was never solved,” I said. Both of them went quiet at this reminder that we were speaking of a friend, not an anonymous victim. Then Flo stirred.

“What happened with the girl's case?”

“I think it was dropped,” Donny answered. “Yes, there was some hokum about the man having the doctor killed, but wouldn't he have knocked off the girl instead?”

“Wonder what happened to her?”

“She went back to work. Used to be one of the dancers at the Tiger, in fact.”

“The Blue Tiger, where we were Friday? Is she still there?”

“She wouldn't be, no—she'd be too old even for the chorus now.”

“Billy's no spring chicken,” Flo commented, in what sounded like an objection.

Billy? I thought, then: Ah. Belinda Birdsong, the saucy chanteuse.

Donny gave a snort, and said, “Billy was old when he was in short pants.”

Hmm. Another Billy, then. Unless this was another of the slang turns my American contemporaries used, where a girl was “old man” and a man “young thing.”

Flo giggled. “Don't be absurd, Donny. Billy never wore short pants; he was born in a skirt.”

“Wait a minute,” I broke in. “Are you saying that Belinda Birdsong is a man?”

My two companions flew into gales of laughter, making me realise that I'd sounded like someone too ancient, or too naïve, to have imagined such a thing as a man acting as a woman. “No, honestly,” I protested, “I've seen men impersonating women before, but a person can usually tell. Are you sure?”

This set them off again, into the sort of choking noises that can only come from a risqué joke. “Oh, yes,” Donny got out at last. “No mistake.”

“Do you care to tell me why?”