‘Sex?’

‘My dear Clara, you are obsessed with sex. Haven’t I and several others just had to clean up the results of your obsession with sex?’

God, what a fool I am to have walked into this silly conversation. Now I am blushing and i can feel idiotic tears filling up my eyes. ‘What a …’

He pulls a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to me. ‘… Rotten thing to say. Yes, I apologise. Blow your nose. Have another glass of wine.’

He touches my hand briefly.

‘Forgive me.’

The tears begin to trickle down my cheeks.

‘Doctor …’

Abruptly he picks up both our glasses and goes to the bar. I sniffle for a moment and blow my nose as ordered.

This is not like me: I must still be quite unwell, ‘post-operative’ as he said the other day. If I sit here snivelling and drinking glasses of red wine, I will miss Morse. Bear that in mind, my dear Clara.

He must have eyes in the back of his head because he doesn’t return with the two glasses until I have composed myself. I give him his handkerchief.

‘Thank you.’

He puts it back in his pocket.

He swallows and licks the froth from his lips and swallows again before either of us says a word.

‘How are you going to celebrate your birthday?’ I ask.

‘My brother lives in Oughterard. I’m taking off for a few days, leaving my patients to their own devices, and I’m going down to stay with him. He is married, just in case you want to know. Lovely wife, four children. I think I will do some fishing. Mayfly time, you know.’

‘That will be nice.’

‘Yes. Four days of peace. No telephone, no anxious patients, no midnight panics, no hospital visiting, no meeting patients in pubs. They probably won’t remember that it’s my birthday so I won’t even have to say thank you for a lot of presents. I can sit in a boat and when I’m not catching fish I can ponder on what I’m going to do with the next fifty years of my life.’

‘Do you have a problem about that? You seem to me to be one of the few people I know who has a sense of purpose.’

‘Do you find that boring? Tedious?’

‘No. I admire it. It makes me feel a bit envious, like some silly adolescent, still looking for the right road. Unable to read the signposts.’

He sighs.

I wonder what he is thinking about – shining trout leaping in the sunlight as he reels them into his boat on Lough Corrib? Or should they be salmon? I don’t know. I am quite ignorant when it comes to things like that.

Perhaps though he sighs because he is annoyed by the thought of me wandering round the world unable to read signposts. And all the other people like me.

Fifteen years older than I am and fifteen years, or thereabouts, younger than my mother. Piggy in the middle.