Angus held his fag between his teeth, pushed his steel-framed glasses back up his nose and smiled a confused, expectant little smile, waiting for her to introduce herself.

Maureen grinned and handed him the mug of coffee. "Shirley asked me to give you this."

He took the mug and put it down on the coffee table, turning back to her and shaking her hand.

The tall rubber plant had been flourishing when she had been here before but its leaves were speckled with ominous crisp brown patches. "Your lovely plant's not well," she said.

"Oh, I know, I can't think what's wrong with it. I've tried pruning it back and everything. I thought it might be the cigarette smoke but I wash it once a month. I suppose they just die sometimes." He stroked one of the healthy leaves with his forefinger and suddenly looked up her. "Helen!" he said.

She laughed. "You couldn't place me there for a minute, could you?"

"No, no, I couldn't, but I remember you now!" He put out his fag in the ashtray and held her hand in both of his, shaking it warmly. "Helen, how are you?"

"Not bad." She smiled.

"You look fantastic. Hey, look, sit down, sit down." He bustled her backward into one of the armchairs. "I'm embarrassed, I wouldn't have forgotten any other time but just now… Did you hear about Mr. Brady from across the hall?"

"He was murdered."

"He was."

She could see baby tears nestling on the rims of his eyes. He sat down and lit another fag, inhaling deeply. "It's been a nightmare," he said softly.

"Were you close?"

He nodded. "We've known each other for years and years. It's unthinkable. Even for his clients… The last thing the long-term patients need is to have to go over their case histories to a locum… We're trying to cover them ourselves but we're not exactly at our operational best… None of us can take it in." He smiled unhappily. "We had to cancel the grief-counseling group Dougie used to take. We didn't want to tell them what had happened but we had to."

He saw that her hands were empty and pushed his packet of cigarettes across the table. She took one out and looked up as she was lighting it. Angus was watching her. "You see," he smiled, "I do remember you."

"Actually, that's why I'm here. Because of Douglas."

He looked at her, not quite understanding.

"My name isn't Helen. That was an assumed name I used for coming here. My real name is Maureen O'Donnell. Does that mean anything to you?"

"God's sakes, I read the papers. But there was a photograph."

"Yeah, it's a girl I work with. They took a picture of the wrong person."

He gave a wry smile. "It's not like the papers to get things wrong, is it?"

"I didn't know they were that incompetent."

"They've been harassing the staff and the clients" he said indignantly. "The bloody clients."

"They're wild, aren't they?"

"So, you're Maureen. I wanted to see you about this affair you were having with Douglas. It was highly unethical of him, it was very wrong. I wanted you to know that."

"Well, it was kind of mutual, really."

"Did you meet here?"

She told him the story about waiting at the bus stop and Douglas picking her up, leaving out the vigorous sex and skewing the story so that Douglas seemed guilt free.

Angus shook his head. "No, you were vulnerable. We had a duty to care for you and Douglas breached that." He squeezed her hand. "It was wrong."

She could smell the smoke on his breath. He let go of her hand and leaned back. "They found him in your house, then?" he said. "How are you coping?"

"I'm invincible since I saw you."

He blushed a little and tapped his fag. "No one's invincible to the shock of something like this," he said sadly. "Are you still seeing Louisa Wishart at the Albert?"

"Yeah."

"She treating you well? Can you talk to her?"

Maureen nodded. "Fine, fine. Listen, Angus, can I ask you something?"

"Fire away."

"The police seem to think that Douglas was my therapist. Do you know why they might think that?"

"Aye," he said. "They asked whether you were my patient but I didn't recognize the picture from the paper so I said you weren't. The files aren't always complete and they're kept on computer now so we can't even go by the handwriting on the notes the way we used to. I hope you told them it was me."

"No, I didn't, but I will."

"Good. That'll make a difference to the way Douglas is remembered."

"Angus, do you have any idea who could have done this?"

"Do you know something," he said, sighing heavily as his eyes brimmed over, "I haven't got the first fucking idea who'd do this." She'd never heard him swear properly before. He looked at her and paused.

"Do you know who did it?" His voice was higher than usual: it sounded like an accusation.

"I've no idea either," she said quietly.

They finished their cigarettes quickly and in silence. Maureen wished she hadn't come here.

"I'll have to get on," said Angus. "I have a patient coming in ten minutes and I haven't been over her notes yet."

He stood up, moved to the door and opened it for her. "Any time you want to come and see us again phone Shirley, okay?"

She wanted to shout at him or cry or something but she couldn't think of anything to say. As she slipped past him into the corridor she muttered to him, "I didn't do it, Angus."

"I know," he said unconvincingly "I didn't mean that."

He stepped back into his office and shut the door, leaving her alone in the corridor.

The bus stop to the town was directly across the dual carriageway facing the main hospital gates and the long, high wall. Concrete blocks of flats loomed at the top of a grass embankment behind it. It was the bus stop Douglas had picked her up from on the first night they had slept together. A sweet old lady in full makeup was waiting in the shelter. She caught Maureen's eye when she came in and smiled pleasantly. "Oh, this rain," she said.

"Aye," said Maureen, hoping it wasn't going to lead to a full-blown conversation. " 'S miserable."

The dual carriageway was deserted in front of them. A figure appeared across the road at the gates of the hospital, a fat, bespectacled woman with short, dirty, flat hair. Her blue plastic jacket flapped open, showing a glittery gold halter-neck top worn without a bra. She needed one. Her large breasts washed fluidly around her middle. She was trying to get across the road but was stuck at "look left, look right."

Maureen stepped out of the shelter and called to her. "Suicide, come on!"

Suicide Tanya stared across at her.

"Come over the road now," shouted Maureen.

Tanya walked halfway across and began to look left and right again.

"It's clear, Tanya, you can come over."

Tanya came to life, belted across the road and stopped on the grass verge behind the bus stop. She turned, looked at Maureen through her rain-speckled glasses and pointed a tobacco-stained finger an inch away from her nose. "I know you," she shouted. "Helen!"

Suicide Tanya was an ageless, grizzled woman with, as her nickname suggested, a habit of attempting suicide. She was known as Suicide Tanya all over the city: all the emergency services knew her, or of her. She was forever being dragged out of the Clyde at low tide, having her stomach pumped clean of bizarre substances and being made to get off the railway tracks at main-line stations. They met in the yellow waiting room at the Rainbow. Maureen was in a state on her second visit to the clinic. She had been having panic attacks all morning, had misread her watch and turned up an hour early. Tanya came in and sat next to her, shouting her life story. She was unhappy and kept doing bad things, so they gave her pills that made her simple and fat, but she preferred it that way because they can't arrest you for being fat, Tanya. It was one of her many strange habits of speech: she repeated things other people had said to her without having the wit to plagiarize properly and change the wording or the intonation. She had to come to the Rainbow once a week to see Douglas and get her medication from the psychiatric nurse – she couldn't be trusted with more than a week's supply at a time.