Then suddenly the street was full of brown-uniformed schoolgirls tunnelling through the narrow alley, no longer prim and pompous but with all the ambiguity of adolescence. At one moment they were posing, loose-tied and tarty, then they were children again, throwing a schoolbag from one to another, jumping to catch it and showing regulation-brown knickers. Then they were racing to the newsagent before it closed, hoping to buy … What? Ramsay wondered. Cigarettes? Romantic magazines? Gum? They pushed into the shop and the street was empty again, except for Stella Laidlaw hurrying away. In the narrowest part of the alley, framed on each side by high walls, another schoolgirl stood. She was younger than the rest. Her arms were straight beside her, one of them weighed down by a violin case, the other, as if for balance, by a briefcase full of books.

“Mummy!” she called, and if she had not spoken Stella would have walked right up to her without realising who it was. “What are you doing here?”

Stella stopped and smiled at her daughter, as if waking slowly from a dream.

“Why,” she said, “ I thought it would be nice to come and meet you so we can walk home together.”

She slipped her arm through Carolyn’s arm without offering to carry the bag or the violin, her attention fixed on the shops in the main street. The girl hung back, staring down the alley after her friends. She saw Ramsay, who was still standing outside the chemist shop. Their eyes met, but the child gave no sign that she had seen him and did not mention him to her mother.

In the shop the chemist was back in his dispensary. The doorbell brought him out into the shop to the counter.

“Yes,” he said. “ Can I help you?”

“Who was the woman who was here just now?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the chemist said. “ I can’t tell you that, you know.”

Ramsay showed his identification card. “What did she want?” he asked.

“She was bringing a prescription,” the chemist said rather defensively. “There was nothing unusual about it. Tranquilisers. She seemed rather neurotic, didn’t she. It was written by Dr. Laidlaw.”

“His surgery’s on the other side of town,” Ramsay said. “ Why did she bring it here to have it made up?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was more convenient.”

“Is it legal for a doctor to prescribe for his own relative?”

“But she wasn’t a relative,” the chemist said impatiently. “At least I had no indication that she was. The prescription was in the name of Raven. Mary Raven.”