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the first year after she had stalked out he had been convinced that Elaine would come to her senses and return home. But she hadn’t. And now all he got were letters and threats, each one dealing yet another mortal blow to any chance of reconciliation.
    He eyed the answerphone warily. One message flashing. Ever hopeful, he pressed play.
    His mother’s voice filled the kitchen.
    ‘Danny. Danny, dear. How are you?’ she cooed. ‘Why don’t you ring? What are you doing with yourself? I hope you’re eating properly and managing…’ a pause, ‘
everything
.Don’t forget, if you’re lonely or need someone to take care of you, I can always come to stay.’
    He almost shuddered.
    Forty years old and his mother was offering to move in. It wasn’t the image he had of himself. Hardly the gay bachelor.
    In spite of his low mood he smiled. Now that
would
set the patients talking.
    He pressed the delete button on the answering machine then sank down on a kitchen chair, swamped by the loneliness which threatened to engulf him. His future stretched ahead like an empty motorway on a dreary day. Bleak and empty, lonely; watching Holly grow up from afar and his mother fussing over him as though he was a three-year-old.
    He leafed through the
Staffordshire Newsletter
, found the Lonely Hearts column and grimaced at an advert for an ‘Eccleston man’. How was he to meet anyone else? Everyone he knew round here was one of his patients. And to make any sort of advance was not only taboo but would have him hauled up in front of the General Medical Council. A vision of Vanda Struel’s grubby white thong appeared in front of his eyes, as though warning him that there would be no chance for him locally. Speed dating? He didn’t think he could go through with that. Maybe the web. There were plenty of websites for men like him, men who were desperate for a bit of female company.
    But now he had evoked the vision of Vanda his mind wandered laterally. What was her game? What was she up to with her silent little tot with the ever-licking tongue?
    He sighed.
    Mrs Hubbard had left out one of her specialities – Ploughman’s. Stilton cheese, chopped with apple. He didn’twant it. He rang the Indian takeaway, the
Darv Chini
. This was one of the perks of being a local doctor. They’d deliver for free. After all, they’d said, he’d delivered their youngest.
    Hah hah hah. The laughter had rung right the way around the restaurant, which was actually more like a small parlour.
    He faced another evening at home – alone with a curry.
    Maybe he should get a dog or a cat. Elaine had hated the thought, forbidding him even to think about it. He seemed to hear her shrill voice still echoing around the kitchen. ‘You’re not, Daniel Gregory, so you can just forget about it. I’m not having some mucky animal mess this place up. Anyway, they smell.’
    He sighed and blamed his mother. Always fussing over him while Elaine had watched, a sneer curling her mouth into scorn for the mothered boy.
    Thank goodness Holly was coming for the weekend.

Chapter Three
Friday, 14 th April
    They wanted hormones.
    It was the magic word, the panacea for all that was wrong with their lives. Lack of hormones.
    He looked at the girl in front of him. It was April, for goodness’ sake. The weather had not warmed up yet. Even so, she was wearing a skimpy T-shirt with no sleeves. In fact hardly anything over the shoulders except what he knew from the Sunday papers were called ‘Spaghetti straps’. No bra. And Chelsea Emmanuel was, to put it mildly, well endowed in spite of her fourteen years – just.
    She crossed her legs. She had smothered them badly with fake tan. He could see brown-orange streaks around her knees and ankles, dirty goose bumps and a distinct tidemark on the front of her arms near her wrists.
    ‘I need the pill,’ she said defiantly.
    Daniel sighed.
    In 1983 a lady called Victoria Gillick (mother of ten children) challenged a High Court ruling