Old Dr Binns had been at 98 Seddon Drive most of his life. His surgery had been there in rooms with a separate entrance, and his qualifications on a brass plate fixed to the brick wall and scrupulously kept free of the surrounding ivy. On his retirement his daughter moved in with her family. The surgery became a games room and the brass plate was removed, the ivy unchecked. Post-practice, Dr Binns was in sequence star of the chess and Rotary clubs, punctual walker of a dachshund and cultivator of orchids, and, finally, in thrall to Alzheimer’s and the vacant observer of family life. Professional familiarity with disease is not an absolute protection from it. He’d been a loving father, and his daughter continued to look after him, but wished to do so in a smaller, modern home once her children had left.

Rawleigh and Gates was the agency chosen to achieve a sale. No. 98 Seddon Drive was an impressive two-storeyed brick and roughcast home, but it stood in a large garden, and Pearly thought it likely that a developer would buy the place and pull it down to build several new homes. It stood empty for some months, but Dr Binns was unable to comprehend his exile, and whenever possible would wander back from the new house in search of his life, or perhaps just obeying a last, dim homing instinct. He came in once when Pearly was showing a prospective buyer through. Delighted to gain entry when Pearly was upstairs, Dr Binns stood in the emptiness of the games room and shouted for the return of his surgery. ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ he hollered, and when Pearly and his client came down he was standing indignant, bald head like a white plate within the rim of grey hair, waiting for the attention he deserved. ‘I’m Dr Binns,’ he said, ‘but I’m unable to do anything for you until my surgery is in order. There’s some misunderstanding, I’m afraid.’

Pearly couldn’t persuade him to leave the room, was unsuccessful in explaining the altered circumstances. ‘Allow me the right to my own home, sir,’ the old man declared. Pearly rang the daughter, and she came to comfort her father: an instant and complete pacifier.

‘We’ll come back during surgery hours, Dad,’ she told him.

‘Indeed,’ said Dr Binns, quite mollified. ‘The cleaning should be complete by then. Everything restored.’

‘We’ll have a cuppa,’ she said.

‘Indeed. I’m quite thirsty,’ he said as he was led away. Pearly never again left the door unlocked when he came to show people around.

SIX

‘Are you busy, Pearly?’

‘Not too bad,’ said Pearly, who was in his office at Rawleigh and Gates.