Irene stopped him. ‘I am sure that Dr St Clair will see Ulysses,’ she said. ‘He’s seeing Bertie at present.’

The doctor nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘And how is Bertie doing?’

‘There are Oedipal issues to be resolved,’ said Irene. ‘We’re working on that.’

The doctor bit his lip. ‘Sometimes, of course, it’s best to let these things get sorted out by themselves. Most boys turn out all right if you leave them …’

He faltered. Irene was glaring at him. ‘That’s hardly what one expected of a medical person,’ she said icily. ‘I thought that benign neglect was no longer encouraged.’

The doctor made an effort to defend himself. ‘That’s in relation to somatic illness,’ he said mildly. ‘Of course one shouldn’t ignore worrying symptoms. But there’s always a common-sense limitation to intervention. Iatrogenic illness …’

‘I am not concerned with iatrogenic illness,’ Irene said, accentuating the iatrogenic; she, at least, was aware of what that meant, and she would not be condescended to by a mere GP. ‘My concern is with the psychological issues. Somehow I feel that a laissez-faire attitude in the face of developing psychopathology is hardly appropriate.’

‘But do your boys really have symptoms of psychopathology?’ asked the doctor. ‘Bertie seems to me a very easy little boy – a bit intense, hot-housed, perhaps, but …’

He did not finish. Irene had fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘Hot-housed, you say? May I ask exactly what you mean by that?’

The doctor clenched his fist in a gesture of nervousness. He thought quickly. ‘Oh, I merely thought that perhaps you had your central heating a bit high. He looked a little bit pallid, that’s all. Children shouldn’t be too hot.’

Irene continued to glare at him. ‘I see.’

The doctor sighed. ‘Well, let’s see how he does over the next few days.’ He looked at his notes. ‘I see from the hospital records that Ulysses is not the same blood group as Bertie, who’s O, I notice, as is Stuart. And you are A. Whereas little Ulysses here is …’ He stopped. His voice had become quieter – barely a whisper.

Irene sat quite still. Her glare had been replaced by a look of anxiety; the look of a creature caught in the headlights of an approaching car.

‘Whereas Ulysses,’ the doctor continued, ‘is AB.’

For a few moments there was complete silence in the surgery. Even Ulysses, who had been niggling, stopped doing so. He, like Irene, was watching the doctor.

‘Strange,’ said the doctor. He was enjoying himself. He disliked patients who knew more medicine than he did – or purported to – and this woman was a bad example of that. She was impossible – really she was – and his heart went out to those two little boys of hers.

Irene cleared her throat. ‘Well, these things happen, don’t they?’

The doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Do they?’