Devan let out a pained sigh. ‘Honestly, Connie, I can’t deal with this right now. I feel as if I’m going to explode.’

She looked up into his face. He was blinking rapidly, his mouth twisting, his fists now thrust deep into his trouser pockets. She was hesitating, not knowing what to do, when a man approached them, holding out his hand to Devan, a big grin on his face. He was in his mid-thirties, she thought, blond and broad and blandly tidy in beige chinos. She heard Devan groan quietly.

‘All I need,’ he muttered.

‘The legendary Dr Mac!’ the man said, pumping Devan’s hand up and down. ‘Such a pleasure to see you again.’

Connie had no idea who he was.

‘Will Beauregard,’ he said, turning to her with his hand held out and the same cheerful grin, as he waited for Devan to respond.

Devan, Connie could see, was settling his features in a gargantuan effort to be nice. ‘William,’ he said, producing from the depths of his soul his very best smile – the one that had stunned people into submission so often in the past but now looked frayed at the edges. ‘A pleasure indeed.’

So this is one of the new GPs, she thought. The two doctors had taken over the practice since Devan’s retirement. His back problem had been cited as the reason for him going, but really it was because he couldn’t cope any more with the pressure of a single-GP practice in this day and age. He’d had two permanent locums who worked part-time alongside him and a loyal support team, but it was still too much. For years Connie had witnessed the strain he’d been under – her husband put his work before anything else. She’d thought at the time that he’d welcome being free of such a massive responsibility when he was still young enough, at sixty-one, to do all the things he’d never had time for. But so far it hadn’t worked out that way.