“Most such letters are caught by the mailman, who sends them to the agency. The Japan letter came here, and I gave it to him the following day, to take there. Perhaps as you say, they will know.”

I thanked her and went back to the waiting taxi and asked the driver if we might explore the area to the south of the Panhandle for an estate agency, but it turned out that he knew the place, and drove directly to the door. Again, I had him wait in case this, too, proved a brief visit.

The office was staffed by a solitary woman, who should have been three or four. Two 'phone lines rang the moment she put down the receivers, three people waited to speak with her, and clearly she was not going to give me much of her attention.

I waited with limited patience, and when I reached the head of the queue, I took from my purse a five-dollar bill and laid it, and a piece of paper bearing the Ginzberg address, on the desk in front of her. She looked at it, looked at me, and rang off the telephone she was speaking on, laying it and its brother onto the desk so they would not interrupt.

“Thank you,” I said, giving her a smile. “I can see you're busy, but I need to find a woman who used to own one of the houses your agency manages. Her mail gets forwarded here, so I assume you know where she is.”

“What's her name?”

“Dr Ginzberg. I think her first name—”

“Sure, the mental doctor. She doesn't own the house, and I don't know where she is. We just stick anything that comes for her in an envelope and send it along with the monthly cheques to the hospital. Not that she gets much anymore.”

“Do you have a name there?” I asked, ignoring the impatient shifting of the man behind me.

“Not particularly. Just the business office.”

“Thank you,” I said again, and left her to her popularity.

At the hospital, I suggested to my driver that he might want to leave me, as I could easily find another taxi at the busy door, but he shrugged and said he'd go and get some lunch, and wait for me down the street. I paid him off, in case he decided to leave, put my head down, and forced myself to enter the dwelling-place of fear and pain.

One step inside the door, and the smell seized me by the throat, making my legs go weak and my head begin to whirl. If coming to San Francisco had filled me with dread, this building was the very centre of that horror, and the smell of cleaning fluid and illness made the memory of those weeks rise up in the back of my mouth. Physical pain and raw abandonment and an excoriating sense of guilt slammed into me, fresh as the week I first woke here. I would have turned on my shaky legs and bolted for the door had a nurse not noticed my distress, and come to take my elbow.