The sun was shining and the snow had turned to a dirty sludge as Emma made her way down the high street. She was feeling excited, slightly nervous; Si had no idea she was coming. She had a lot of making up to do with him. They had both been neglectful of their relationship and let things slip. Her plan was to turn up after practice and take him out for supper; she had booked a table at their local Italian and afterwards a late showing at the old picture house. She was unusually early; orchestra didn’t finish until five and it was only twenty to. She decided to wait for him in the pub across the road from where she would see the crypt doors.

She went in. It was like stepping into a time warp. A few grey heads turned to stare before slowly returning to their pale ales, old addled white men glued to their stools, lined up like babies in high chairs supping from their beakers. There was still a stigma in pubs like this, a woman coming in on her own; their stares made her self-conscious but it was too late to walk out. She would never have had the nerve to come into a place like this as a younger woman; she had always felt threatened by it. At least age brought with it a certain confidence in this respect, a safety. She thought of Connie’s confidence; her sense of self had somehow remained intact. Connie, who was never far from her mind, had become a kind of behavioural barometer for Emma’s own dealings with the everyday and Emma was surprised by how fiercely protective of her patient she had become – in meetings, in her professional dealings, with the press, in social situations, in private. Despite her obvious vulnerability, Connie had a strength to her and some of that strength had rubbed off on Emma.

She approached the bar and ordered herself a gin and tonic from the pretty eastern European girl behind the counter. The girl failed to understand her so, with misguided intentions, one of the stool-dwellers repeated the order in a loud, patronizing voice with a conspiratorial wink at Emma, inviting her to team up with him against the dumb foreigner, who probably spoke more languages than the pints he’d had so far today. She felt their rheumy eyes on her hips as she took her drink over to a small table by the window where she could see the crypt doors; men like this were largely harmless but their insidious lechery was always disquieting. She leant over to pick up a red top paper that was lying on the bench, flicking a page for want of something to do, and there she was, faced with Minxy Mandy from Manchester and her unnatural attributes.