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"that's it. I made up my mind that if you ever went near Sally again I'd call it quits. I want a divorce."
    His eyes narrowed. "If this was about Sally, you'd have given me an ultimatum two weeks ago. I made no secret of where I was going."
    "I know," she said wearily, staring at the painting again. "Even your betrayals demand an audience now."
     
    He was gone when she came downstairs the next morning. There was a note on the kitchen table:
     
    Send the divorce papers c/o Keith Smollett. You can find yourself another solicitor. I'll be going for a fifty-fifty split so don't get too attached to the house. I'll clear the studio as soon as I've found somewhere else. If you don't want to see me, then don't change the locks. I'll leave my key behind when I've retrieved my stuff.
    Sarah read it through twice then dropped it in the rubbish bin.
     
    Jane Marriott, the receptionist at the Fontwell surgery, looked up as Sarah pushed open the door of the empty waiting-room. Sarah covered Fontwell on Monday afternoons and Friday mornings and, because she was more sympathetic than her male colleagues, her sessions were usually busy ones. "There's a couple of messages for you, dear," said Jane. "I've left them on your desk."
    "Thanks." She paused by the desk. "Who's first?"
    "Mr. Drew at eight forty-five and then it's hectic until eleven thirty. After that, two home visits, I'm afraid, but I've told them not to expect you before midday."
    "Okay."
    Jane, a retired teacher in her sixties, eyed Sarah with motherly concern. "No breakfast again, I suppose?"
    Sarah smiled. "I haven't eaten breakfast since I left school."
    "Hm, well, you look washed out. You work too hard, dear. Doctoring's like any other job. You should learn to pace yourself better."
    Sarah put her elbows on the desk and propped her chin on her hands. "Tell me something, Jane. If heaven exists, where exactly is it?" She looked for all the world like one of the eight-year-olds Jane had once taught, puzzled, a little hesitant, but confident that Mrs. Marriott would know the answer.
    "Goodness! No one's asked me a question like that since I stopped teaching." She plugged in the kettle and spooned coffee into two cups. "I always told the children it was in the hearts you left behind. The more people there were who loved you, the more hearts would hold your memory. It was a devious way of encouraging them to be nice to each other." She chuckled. "But I thought you were a non-believer, Sarah. Why the sudden interest in the afterlife?"
    "I went to Mrs. Gillespie's funeral yesterday. It was depressing. I keep wondering what the point of it all is."
    "Oh dear. Eternal truths at eight thirty in the morning." She put a cup of steaming black coffee in front of Sarah. "The point to Mathilda Gillespie's life might not emerge for another five generations. She's part of a line. Who's to say how important that line might be in years to come?"
    "That's even more depressing," said Sarah gloomily. "That means you have to have children to give meaning to your life."
    "Nonsense. I haven't any children but I don't feel it makes me any less valuable. Our lives are what we make them." She didn't look at Sarah as she spoke, and Sarah had the feeling that the words were just words, without meaning. "Sadly," Jane went on, "Mathilda made very little of hers. She never got over her husband running out on her and it made her bitter. I think she thought people were laughing at her behind her back. Which, of course, a lot of us were," she admitted honestly.
    "I thought she was a widow." How little she really knew about the woman.
    Jane shook her head. "Assuming he's still alive, then James is her widower. As far as I know they never bothered with a divorce."
    "What happened to him?"
    "He went to Hong Kong to work in a bank."
    "How do you know?"
    "Paul and I took a holiday in the Far East about ten years after he and Mathilda separated, and we bumped into him by accident in a hotel in Hong Kong. We'd known