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strictly medical.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say, turning from the light, which is like a fly buzzing in my face. “But I really don’t think it can have been me who phoned all those times. I usually have very good health.”
    “I know you do,” he says, putting a hand on my forehead so I can’t move away and pointing the flashlight at one of my eyes. “Which is why it’s a little frustrating to be called out by you when I have genuinely ill people to see.”
    I don’t know what to think, I can’t concentrate with this light flicking, flicking over my skin, but he tells me I must open my eyes. “I don’t understand it,” I say. “I’m not like my friend Elizabeth. She can barely leave the house. Her sight’s poor and she’s unsteady on her feet. Whereas I—”
    “Whereas you are in great shape for your age. I know.”
    He puts the flashlight away and I frown at him. For a minute I can’t think what he’s here for. “But I meant to tell you, Doctor,” I say. “My friend Elizabeth. She’s missing.”
    “Oh, Mum. Don’t start that again,” Helen jumps in. “Sorry, it’s a bit of an obsession of hers at the moment. I’ve told her I’ll find out what’s happened.”
    “It’s not an obsession. I don’t know how long she’s been gone—”
    “I’m sure your friend will be in touch. You must relax and let her family take care of her. Okay? Relaxing is the key. Right. I must get to my other patients.” He picks up his bag and turns to Helen. “I see she’s had a blood test this week, too.” There is a brief look at me. “You might want to arrange for a faculties assessment. At some point.”
    He is already inserting the little plugs, the wire shells, back into his ears, while he talks on to Helen, and I wonder briefly what it is he listens to. I cup my hands over my own ears, straining to hear the sealike music of my circulation, the singing of my blood. But hands don’t work as well as shells; they don’t create the right echo, or whatever it is. Helen comes back after letting the doctor out and sits on the arm of my chair.
    “You didn’t have to cover your ears, Mum,” she says. “He wasn’t shouting. But now will you promise not to phone the surgery again? And to stop all this nonsense about Elizabeth?”
    I don’t answer.
    “Mum?” She grabs my arm and I cry out. “What’s the matter?” she says, pulling back my sleeve. There are bruises, staining my skin, spreading round the elbow, fanning out like wings. “My God. Why didn’t you tell the doctor about this? I’ll call him and ask him to come back.”
    “No, don’t,” I say. “I can’t stand that fly in my face. I don’t want him here again.”
    “I’m sorry.” Helen slides down into a crouching position in front of me. She holds my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell the doctor to look at you properly. How did you get these bruises, Mum?”
    “It was an umbrella,” I say, but really I can’t remember.
    She sits, stroking my hand for a few minutes, and I close my fingers over hers, feeling the skin around her nails where it’s pink and raw from scrubbing soil away. This is the closest we’ve been in a long time.
    “I sat and held my mother’s hand when she was dying,” I say, though I had meant to keep the thought to myself.
    “You’re not dying.”
    “I know. But it reminded me, that’s all. She died never knowing. I don’t want to die like that.”
    Helen sits up a little. “Never knowing what, Mum?”
    “About Sukey.” I clutch at her fingertips. “So that’s why I want to find Elizabeth.”
    Helen sighs and drops my hand. “I’d better go soon. Can I get you anything?’
    I tell her there’s nothing I need, and then change my mind. “I’d like a new sweater.”
    One of the last times Elizabeth went shopping, before her sight got too bad, before she stopped going out of the house, she bought me a silk glasses case. I notice it whenever I open my handbag.