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'Now, in order to work through some of the sadness and guilt,' she went on, 'and to give something back for all the kindness ordinary people showed to me and Peter—some of them volunteers—I volunteer two or three times a month at a distress centre at Gresham General Hospital. In some small way I can give back something of what I was given. Help came from unexpected sources. And it helps me now, too, that I can do it.'

'You man the telephones?' Clay asked. Very gradually he was getting to know Sophie, feeling more and more respect for her underlying sweetness and dignity, her integrity. Yet he was aware of the usual barriers in himself, knowing that he often short-circuited relationships by getting into the physical thing early...too early. Getting to know a woman really well took time, which generally came between him and his work...? Yes. It's usually in the evenings until quite late, and sometimes on the weekends, when people get depressed because they think that everybody else is out having a good time or in a cosy home with a family,' she said. 'You know, it's so different from operating-room work that I actually enjoy it, in spite of the stress of a different sort.'

'I can imagine that,' he said.

'They really need someone like me...like us, the other volunteers,' she mused.

'And now?' Clay ventured, after a few minutes of silence. 'What does the future hold for you?'

Sophie shrugged. 'I'm contented the way I am. We both enjoyed our daughter so much, Peter and I, and now she's all mine.'

'Will you ever marry again, do you think?' He was making polite conversation, helping her to talk about the past. It would be a cathartic experience, he told himself. Besides, he had a genuine curiosity about her.

'I don't know,' she said honestly. 'Not for a long time, anyway. Once was enough, as I said. It was such a strain...such a strain. When it was all over I felt utterly drained, as though I would never recover. Our daughter kept me going. I felt I couldn't bear it if he thought I didn't want to be with him. Now I'll never know.'

'I don't suppose he knew,' Clay said. 'You're a very warm person. I'm sure he felt that.'

'It would be very difficult to find a mature man who would want me and accept another man's child,' she said pensively, as though thinking aloud. 'A man I could really love and be attracted to in the right way for a marriage. Really mature men are few and far between, so I've found. I mean, the sort of men who can really stick things out. I do go out with men, you know...I'm not living like a nun, I accept invitations. But really I'm relieved to be free... So many sources of guilt, you see, Dr Sotheby.'

'We always feel guilt in circumstances like that, because we think we didn't do enough.' he said. 'I see it all the time in the families I deal with. We have to accept it, and get over it. Most of the time it isn't justified.'

'Intellectually, I know that, but emotionally I still have the feeling. You must think I'm a real psychological mess,' she said quietly.

'No, quite the opposite. Perhaps one day you'll find that you can put it behind you.'

'Yes, I expect so. I don't usually talk so much about myself,' she admitted, a touch of apology in her voice.

'So I've noticed over the past year,' Clay said.

'I don't want you to think I'm one of those narcissistic women who can't talk about anything or anyone but themselves.'

'I don't. So you care what I think, Sophie?'

'Well...yes. I find it easy to talk to you.' She turned to look at him, her face very close to his. 'Funny, isn't it? I always imagined that talking to you about anything personal would be very difficult, even though you're great with patients, so kind. I don't know why I thought that. Maybe because you intimidate me a bit.'

'Hell!' he said. 'The ogre again! Why do you say that?'

'Well, you spend most of your time working, from what I can see,' she said hesitantly. 'You have a reputation for being a workaholic, and men like that tend to be short on empathy and understanding when it comes to-personal relationships. I...I'm talking in a general way. Obviously, I don't know you very well. So, you see, I'm pleasantly surprised.'

'I'm gratified.'

'Sorry if that sounded patronizing.'

Clay controlled his response very carefully, fighting the urge to crush her in his arms. Not yet, he told himself. 'Call me Clay,' he said. 'Otherwise I feel as though you think of me as some sort of plastic automaton.'

With her laughter, their pensive mood lifted. 'All right...Clay.' She smiled. 'I should be grateful to that Grand Marnier—it's made me talk uninhibitedly. However, I think we've given ourselves enough time to sober up, don't you?'

'Sophie...' With his one free hand he turned her face towards him and kissed her. Under the shelter of the umbrella they had privacy from the few passers-by, people who were walking their dogs in the park.

She pulled back to look at him, her eyes searching his face. 'If I hadn't had so much to drink,' she said, 'I wouldn't be here talking to you like this. I'd be home and probably sleeping by now.'

'Do you regret talking to me?'

'No...not really.'

'Sophie.' Again he said her name softly, as he sensed that some of her antipathy to him had eased. He wanted to drop the umbrella and take her into his arms, crush her against him and kiss her passionately, to make her really notice him, to click back into the here-and-now. Instead, he leaned forward and placed his mouth gently on hers. This time she slid her hand round to the back of his neck, holding him to her. A wave of delight encompassed him at her touch.

After that they sat for a long time in silence, her head against his shoulder, a hand in his.

'It must be pretty late,' she said at last. 'We'd better go. I do feel more or less sober now. But do you? You have to drive.'

'Sober enough to perform surgery,' he said. 'And to drive.'

'Are you planning to spend the remainder of the night with Dawn Renton?' she asked unexpectedly. 'Since it's the weekend.'

'Jesus...no!' he said. 'Why do you ask that?'

'Just want to get a few things clear in my head,' she said, standing up abruptly.

'What do you think I am—some sort of stud, Ms Dunhill?'

'You have that reputation,' she said equitably.

'The tom-toms again?'

'Yes.'

'I can't deal with two women in one night,' he joked, 'even just eating. Anyway, thank you, Sophie, for a good evening.'

'Thank you, Clay. It's been fun, just as it was supposed to be, as well as illuminating. Come on,' she said.

Because it was still raining, he had to put his arm around her again so that they could share the umbrella. As they walked, he wanted to ask her if he could see her again outside work, but to his consternation he felt himself uncharacteristically tongue-tied. There was always next week at the scrub sinks, he told himself...if he still felt the same then.

'Do you have family in Gresham?' she asked.

'I have a few aunts and uncles, a few cousins, too,' he said, describing the relatives he seldom saw. 'We don't see much of each other...there doesn't seem to be time.'

'Sometimes we have to make time,' Sophie commented as they walked slowly back towards the car.

'I know,' he said ruefully. 'That's something I'm not very good at. My parents live in Bermuda. My father was a surgeon who decided to retire early, although he still goes to work once in a while in some needy countries, for free, through an organization.'

'So you can't see them very often?' she queried.

'Oh, I see them quite frequently. I go down there several times a year,' he said, her questions bringing into focus his awareness that he didn't see his family as much as he would like to, that he missed them. 'I have a brother who lives in Vancouver—he's a lawyer—and a sister, also a doctor, who lives in Australia. She married an Aussie.'

'I can't imagine not having family close by,' she said. 'I don't think I could have managed without mine.'

'It's nice to have them,' he agreed. 'I miss them. We get along well.'

Once in the car, he planned the best route to her house. Tonight there would be no request for her to spend the night with him. Such a request, which usually had affirmative results, had come automatically to him. Oddly, with Sophie, he found himself examining how he habitually behaved, questioning himself.

Now he felt appalled that he had been so insensitive. Of course he hadn't known then the details of her marriage. He was even more uncertain because she'd said that she hadn't loved her husband, riot in the 'right' way, which he took to mean that their relationship had lacked passion, a mature love. He longed to supply some of that missing passion in her life, which his intuition told him he could have with her. Yet was he really mature enough himself to offer her all that she'd lacked in her previous relationship? Maybe he couldn't presume.

Many women he wanted gave themselves readily to him. Now he asked himself whether those women were 'right' for him, something he didn't often dwell on.

Something of his habitual confidence had deserted him now. He thought of sharing the bed with Sophie, that he'd never shared with anyone other than the stray cat. It was a fantasy that perhaps had some significance—he wasn't sure. He wouldn't blame Sophie if she didn't want to have any personal dealings with him again, he told himself. But, perversely, he found himself hoping fervently that she would...

'Goodnight, Clay,' she said when they parted. 'It's been really great after all—the more so for being unexpected. Thank you for the ride.'

'It's been my pleasure,' he said, and found that he meant those trite words in a way he'd never meant them before. The fact that he didn't want the evening to end was, he considered, something he shouldn't voice. A sense of dissonance hampered his usual easy facility with words.

'You know,' she said, poised for flight, 'when Peter was ill I used to try to think of what my life had been like before. It was difficult to recall it then, a carefree sort of existence. Later, I realized how wonderful it was just to have an ordinary sort of life—you know, an ordinarily boring sort of life, the kind of life that people often complain about and take entirely for granted.
Well, I hope I'll never take it for granted in that way. So tonight was...very nice.'

Then she was gone from him, running up her garden path, a flurry of bluey-purple, topped with auburn hair that glowed very briefly in the light of the streetlamp before she was lost to him.

Oddly lonely, he drove slowly away.

On the
following Monday Clay saw Mike Dolby in his office late in the afternoon, after his day spent operating. The man had been discharged from hospital some time before, and now came in as an outpatient, accompanied by his girlfriend.

It had been a hectic day in the operating room, a full list of difficult cases, so that Clay had arrived in his office half an hour late, inadequately fed and frazzled. Although Sophie had worked with him, there had been little opportunity for them to exchange many words of a personal nature, so now he felt disgruntled because he'd felt the need to say more to her rather shy greeting than, 'Good morning, Sophie. How are you?'

Two people were seldom able to be alone there, and now that his operating day was over he felt a certain sense of frustration that he hadn't been able to tell her again how much he'd enjoyed their blind date, which had been all the more amazing in the light of the resistance he'd put up about going. A need to affirm it had nagged at him over the weekend when he'd found himself thinking about her, and when he'd also discovered that her telephone number wasn't in the directory.

'My apologies for being late,' he said to Mike Dolby as he ushered his patient into the office and they both sat down. 'It's been one of those days. Now, tell me how you've been. You certainly look much better. Are you managing the diet?'

'Yes. I feel much better, the way I haven't felt for a long time,' Mike said, smiling. His usually pasty face had some colour to it. 'Apart from getting tired easily, which I guess comes from having had a big operation, I'm really great, and the diet is going well.'

'Good. I want to examine you, look at the ileostomy, and then we can discuss when I'll get you in again to reconnect the gut to the rectum. We have to make sure that there isn't any inflammation left. There's no hurry. It could be weeks or months. I'm really pleased you're looking and feeling so well.'

When Mike had gone, Clay saw Al Harris, the man who'd had the breast tumour removed.

'Come in,' he said to Mr Harris, who entered with his wife. 'How have you been?'

'Pretty good,' A1 Harris said when the three of them were seated. 'It seems to be healing up all right. You told me in the hospital, Dr Sotheby, that I had cancer and that it hadn't spread. I've been worrying about that word "spread"...'

'Well,' Clay said, 'the cancer cells can spread to other parts of the body, often through the lymphatic system—that's the system of lymph glands that you have throughout your body, which are responsible, among other things, for spreading lymph fluid and draining toxins from cells. There are clusters of them in various places, such as under the arms, and it is here that cancer cells would spread to from the breast in the first instance.'

'Yes.'

'In your case, I took biopsies of several of the lymph glands there, and they were quite clear of any tumour cells,' Clay said.

'Is that going to be the case in the future?' Mrs Harris interjected.

'The chances are high that it will remain so, but...' he addressed himself again to Mr Harris '...as I explained in the hospital, you will have to watch for any changes yourself. That's very important, because you know your own body better than anyone else. And I also want to see you for checks every few months. The longer you go without any changes showing up, the greater the chance that there never will be a recurrence.'

It was later than usual when Clay got through his list of old and new outpatients. Then he put a call through to Rick Sommers to make sure that his post-operative patients were doing well.