THE HALL WAS dark and cool after the brilliant sunshine outside. Doors on either side opened into rooms that didn’t appear to lead anywhere, and a branching staircase rose in front of me. It was only when I heard a murmur of voices coming from somewhere to my right that I noticed a green baize door at the back. It was operated by a self-closing hinge and when I eased it open six inches, I could make out words.

“I still don’t understand why I had to park beside your filthy old jalopy,” said the man’s voice. “Don’t you think it’s a little over the top to steal her keys and block her exit?” He spoke in a light, bantering tone as if teasing this woman-child came naturally to him.

Jess, by contrast, sounded irritated, as if his patronizing approach got on her nerves. “She might have had a spare set in the car.”

“In which case she’d have left while you were phoning me from the farm,” he pointed out reasonably.

“Then it’s a pity I can’t see into the future,” she snapped. “If I could, I wouldn’t have bothered you at all. I was afraid she’d invoke the dangerous dogs’ act if I didn’t make a pretence of caring.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know…she has keys to the house so I assume she’s a tenant. I thought it was the dogs that frightened her, which is why I drove them home.” She gave a brief account of what had happened.

“Did you consider that she might be to allergic to fur?”

“Of course, but I asked her if it was anything to do with the dogs, and she said no.”

“OK.” He must have been sitting down because I heard the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor as he prepared to stand up. “I’ll go and talk to her.”

“No!” said Jess sharply. “She needs to come in of her own accord.”

Peter Coleman sounded amused. “What’s the point of my being here if you’ve already decided on the treatment?”

“I’ve already told you. I didn’t want to be sued.”

“Well, I can’t sit around all afternoon,” he said with a yawn. “I’m on the golf course in half an hour.”

“There are other sorts of treatment besides pills, you know. You wouldn’t think twice about cancelling your golf if one of your old ladies wanted a chat. It might tarnish your halo.”

Surprisingly, Peter laughed. “My God! Do you ever give up? It’s a shame no one’s invented a cure for grudge-bearing…I’d have put you on a drip and pumped you full of it twelve years ago. Just for the record-again-you hadn’t slept in five days and your heart was going like a hammer.” He paused as if waiting for a response. “You know the sedatives worked, Jess. They gave you some respite, which was what your body needed.”

“They turned me into a zombie.”

“For all of a week, while your grandmother shouldered the burden. Don’t you think I’d have given you a paper bag myself if that was all you needed?”

Jess didn’t answer.

“So what’s your prescription for the woman out there?”

“Slowlee, slowlee, catchee monkee.”

“What about my golf? I do have a life outside medicine, you know.”

But Jess wasn’t interested, and a silence fell between them. I suppose I should have announced myself but it was a situation that was doomed to embarrassment whatever I did. Half of me hoped they’d up stumps and leave if I delayed long enough; the other half recognized that the longer the delay the more difficult the explanations. What was I going to say, anyway? That I was leaving? That I wasn’t leaving? And what name was I going to use in front of the doctor? If he applied for Marianne Curran’s medical records, they would show me as sixty-three.

I think it was standing in Lily’s hall during that long hiatus that persuaded me to stay. It was impossible to ignore the tattiness-in one place three feet of wallpaper near the ceiling had come away from the Blu-Tack blobs that had been holding it in place-but in an odd sort of way it appealed to me. Apart from my stint in Iraq I’d spent the last two years in a minimalist flat in a high-rise block in Singapore, where space was limited, cream was the predominant colour and none of the furniture reached above my knees. It was hideously impractical-red wine was a nightmare-and hideously uncomfortable-I couldn’t move without barking my shins-but everyone who saw it had commented on the designer’s flair.

This was the opposite. Spacious, lofty and red-wine-friendly. The faded wallpaper in blues and greens, of Japanese pagodas, feathery willow fronds and exotic pheasant-style birds, was a good fifty years old, while the furniture, big and lumbering, was utilitarian Victorian. There was a battered chest of drawers under one branch of the stairs, a leather grandfather chair, sprouting horsehair from its seat, under the other, and an ugly oak table in the middle carrying a plastic pot plant. Perhaps the threadbare Axminster rug underneath it added a sense of recognition, because it reminded me of the one we’d had in Zimbabwe. My grandfather had imported it with great ceremony and then refused to allow anyone to walk on it.

The doctor’s voice broke the silence. “Does it never occur to you that you might be wrong?”

“About what?”

“At the moment, that woman out there. You’re assuming she can pull herself together enough to come inside…but supposing she can’t?” He paused to let her answer, but went on when she didn’t. “Perhaps her fears are real, perhaps she’s frightened of something tangible? How much do you know about her?”

“Nothing, except that she talks with a South African accent and knows the paper bag trick.”

“Ah!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It explains why you think she’s going to come in. Paper bags are to you what leeches were to sixteenth-century quacks…the cure to everything.”

“They’re a damn sight less harmful than Valium.”

Peter gave a snort of derision. “It wasn’t paper bags that cured you, Jess, it was getting to grips with running the farm. You conquered a steep learning curve through sheer bloody guts and an above-average intelligence. Show me the paper bag that taught you how to shove your hand up a cow’s backside to help deliver a calf.” He paused.

“What would you know about it?” I heard a door crash open angrily. “I’m going out to see if she’s still in her car.”

“Good idea.” There was another long silence.

I looked towards the front door, expecting Jess to come in that way, but I heard her voice in the kitchen again. “She’s not there. She must be in the house.”

“So what happens now?”

For the first time she sounded unsure of herself. “Perhaps we should make a noise so she knows where we are. If we go to meet her she might take fright.”

“All right,” he teased. “What do you want me to do? Sing? Tap dance? Bang some saucepans together?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

His tone softened as if he was smiling at her. “If she’s made it to the front door, I think you can safely welcome her in. I’ll put the kettle on while you’re doing it. Let’s pray she’s brought some tea bags with her. If Madeleine left any of Lily’s behind they’ll have grown mould by now. Go on, do your stuff. You never know, she might surprise you.”

It was only afterwards, when I found a mirror in the bathroom, that I realized how dreadful I looked. My T-shirt and long flimsy skirt did me no favours at all, clinging as they did to every angular bone and showing how skinny I was. My eyes had dark rings round them, my hair looked as if it had been doused in Brylcreem and my face was covered in blotches. I’d have taken myself for a depressed mental case, so it wasn’t surprising that Jess and Peter both showed concern when they saw me.

I must have looked angry, too, because Jess’s first instinct was to apologize when she came through the baize door and found me beside the table in the hall. “I’m sorry,” she said after a small hesitation. “I just wanted to let you know that we’re in the kitchen.”