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gorgeous and so well-behaved. He had a small dish of pink ice-cream. 'His first ever! Imagine!' Dr Hunter said. 'Imagine eating ice-cream for the very first time, Reggie.' The baby's eyes almost popped out of his head with surprise when he tasted the pink ice-cream.
    'Aw, bless,' Reggie said.
    Reggie and Dr Hunter ate a whole plate of cakes between them. 'I think I have a fat person inside me trying to get out,' Reggie said and Dr Hunter laughed and then nearly choked on a miniature coffee eclair, which would probably have been OK because Reggie had asked Dr Hunter to teach her the Heimlich manoeuvre for exactly this kind of occurrence.
    'I'm very happy,' Dr Hunter said when she'd recovered and Reggie said, 'Me too.' And the nice thing was that they really were because it was surprising how often people said they were happy when they weren't. Like Mum with the Man-Who-Came-Before-Gary.
    That was on the first day ofAdvent and Dr Hunter said that was a nice day to have a birthday on even though she wasn't religious. They bought the Advent calendar in Peebles. Peebles was full of all the kinds of shops that old people liked. Reggie liked them too, she supposed it was something to do with her old soul.
    The Advent calendar had chocolates behind every door and Dr Hunter said, 'Let's put it up in the kitchen and you can open a door every day and have the chocolate.' Which is what Reggie did, what she was doing now, holding the melting Santa-shaped chocolate in her cheek to extend its life while she dipped the baby's Bunnikins dishes in the sink, squirting Ecover washing-up liquid into the hot water. Dr Hunter didn't use any products that weren't ecological washing powder, floor soap, everything. 'You don't want harmful chemicals around a baby,' she said to Reggie. The baby was precious, he was as valuable as the most valuable object. 'Well, I had to go to a lot of trouble to get him,' Dr Hunter laughed. 'It wasn't easy.'
    Dr Hunter had to be careful because she had asthma (Physician heal thyself, she said) which she got 'from my mother'. She was always getting colds as well, which she said was because a doctor's surgery was 'the unhealthiest place on earth to work -full of sick people'. Sometimes, if Reggie was standing close to Dr Hunter, she could hear a wheezing in her chest. The breath of life, Dr Hunter said to Reggie. The baby didn't seem to have inherited any of Dr Hunter's problems with her lungs. ('Dickens had asthma,' Ms MacDonald said. 'I know,' Reggie said. 'I've read round the subject.')
    There was no obvious evidence of Mr Hunter's sticky patch. The Hunters had a lovely house, two cars, a fridge full of expensive food and the baby wanted for nothing.
    Some mornings when Reggie arrived Mr Hunter behaved like a runner in a relay race, handing the baby over to Reggie so quickly that the baby's little mouth and eyes went completely round with astonishment at the speed of the changeover. Then Reggie and Sadie listened to the mesmerizing sound of the huge Range Rover roaring away from the house in a crunch and spit of gravel as if Mr Hunter was a getaway driver. 'He's like a bear in the morning sometimes,' Dr Hunter laughed. Living with a bear didn't seem to bother her. Water off a duck's back.
    Mr Hunter and Sadie didn't have much ofa relationship. The most Mr Hunter said to her was, 'Out of the way, Sadie,' or 'Get off the couch, Sadie.' She was 'part of the package', he said to Reggie. 'You don't get Jo without Sadie.'
    'Love me, love my dog,' Dr Hunter said. 'A woman's best friend.' Timmy, Snowy, Jumble, Lassie, Greyfriars Bobby. Everyone's best friend. Except for poor Laika, the spacedog, who was no one's friend.
    On other mornings, Mr Hunter stayed at home and made endless phone calls. Sometimes he went outside so that he could smoke while talking. He wasn't supposed to smoke, in or out of the house, but the phone calls seemed to drive him to it. 'Don't tell,' he winked at Reggie as if Dr Hunter wouldn't smell the