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– Annie Hall – and was less than impressed. I preferred Woody Allen when he did funny stuff – Sleeper had me almost wetting my Y-fronts – and this sort of sensitive, caring, witty stuff seemed a bit tame; I just wanted him to go suddenly into fast-forward and run around a lot. Max surprised me, though; I had expected her to love it – what is wrong with women? – yet, although initially she seemed to fall for the irritating sentimentality of it all, her mood did not last. She had been subdued when I picked her up and had only slowly become her usual self; during the course of the film, she began to fall back into melancholy. Afterwards, I tried to engage her in some chat about the film, arguing in a friendly fashion that Woody Allen had become not so much a master of cinema, more a self-obsessed nerd, but it did little good. We had a Wimpy burger (as good as ever) at our usual vendor – St George’s Street, Croydon – and it was then that I began to work out what was wrong with her.
    Max is a vet and, so I believe, a very good one, but she has yet to learn clinical detachment; if you look after the sick, then you will never be one hundred per cent successful, and you must learn this quickly. Some of them will die; on occasion, it will seem as if every patient you come across has only a fifty per cent chance of survival, as if you dispense death as often as you restore life. You have to accept this, because not to do so leads to a very unhappy life. You are likely to have to become a public-health consultant or, worse, work in occupational health; these are jobs that, like telephone sanitizers and dental hygienists, are completely unfulfilling and unnecessary. It’s the same with vets, too; unless they accept that it’s a job and not a whole life, they end working for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
    In this case, she had that day been forced to put down a dog – a beautiful Alsatian. It had been badly injured two weeks before in a road accident, and although Max had initially hoped to save it, this happy outcome was not to be. She had been giving me daily updates on its progress and up until forty-eight hours before she had still been hopeful; that she had failed had hit her hard. Two weeks is a long time to be with a sick person, and if you’re not careful, you bond and that way lies disaster; a bond with an animal can be just as strong as a bond with a human.
    â€˜Poor Mr Stewart, he was so upset.’
    â€˜These things happen,’ I pointed out.
    â€˜But Major was his whole life. He doesn’t have anyone else.’ Which summed Max up; she wasn’t just trying to treat the animal, she was trying to cure the owner as well.
    â€˜Can’t he buy another?’
    I suppose, in retrospect, this did sound rather heartless and certainly Max’s fleeting frown suggested that she had taken it rather badly, although all she said was, ‘I don’t think he can afford to do that. He’s on benefits.’
    â€˜Ah . . .’
    There was silence for much of the rest of the journey; in fact until we arrived back at her house. I had to park the car about twenty yards down the road, just around the bend to the left of her house, and we continued in silence as we walked to her gate, then up the garden path. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, indicated a dark shape dimly visible against the front door.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she said in a voice that was partly curious, partly concerned. ‘It looks like . . .’
    But she didn’t have to finish, because the headlights of a car turning the corner swept across us and across the front of her house and we could see precisely what it was.
    It was Twinkle, her rabbit, nailed to the front door.
    I stayed the night with Max, trying to comfort her, finding her inconsolable and myself a total spare part because of it. She had begun sobbing as soon as she laid eyes on the