The roads were a slushy mess, the thin layer of snow already melted by salt and regular traffic, but in a school playground a queue of running boys in grey uniforms slid down an icy run. Max braked too sharply at a traffic light and the car slid forward before stopping, harmlessly, against the kerb. The jolt made him think of Judy and her concern for him. She was wrong, he thought. It was not her fault, but he could think of nothing that would make things right. The lights changed and he drove on slowly.

The Health Centre was packed. Four buggies had been parked in the porch outside, and he had to push his way past them to get into the waiting room. Inside the room was hot and noisy with the damp acoustics of swimming baths. The place was full, it seemed, with feverish children and bronchitic grandmothers. The receptionist was flushed and fraught. She hardly acknowledged Max as he walked past because she was trying to answer the telephone and find a missing file at the same time. The ill-tempered chaos suited his mood and he called irritably for the first patient.

Stella Laidlaw phoned late in the afternoon when he was examining his last patient, a toddler with an ear infection. The receptionist spoke to him first.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “I explained that you were busy, but the lady insisted. She wouldn’t give her name. She said it was personal.”

Max felt a sudden exhilaration. His promise to Alice was immediately forgotten.

“Give me two minutes,” he said, “then put her through.”

He wrote a hurried prescription for the child, then, as calmly as he could, saw him and the mother into the waiting room. He picked up the telephone again.

“Yes,” he said. “Max Laidlaw.”

Stella’s voice surprised and disappointed him, and for a moment he could not place it. He had been expecting someone quite different.

“Max,” she said. “I’m sorry, Max. I need your help again.”

“No,” he said angrily. “ I told you before. That was the last time.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m desperate.”

“You should see your doctor.”

“I can’t. You know that. He’s a friend of James.”

There was a silence, then she continued spitefully: “I could tell James all about you, Max. I could phone Judy. I know she’d be interested. You wouldn’t like that.” She had the affected accent of minor royalty and always sounded to him like a lonely public-school girl, but it was impossible now to be sorry for her. “I know what happened, Max,” she went on, “at the Tower. You wouldn’t want me to tell Judy that.”

“That’s blackmail,” he said, but even as he protested he knew he would do as she wanted, because he always took the easy way out. He was weaker than she was.