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said, thankful that this was so, and that he could look her in the eye.
    'But tell me,' she said, and this time it was her gaze fixing his, 'if I'd been willing, would you still have prescribed cytotoxic treatment?'
    'No, I wouldn't have,' he said, emphatically. 'That's not the way we work. Treatment where no treatment is necessary does more harm than good. Don't forget your follow-up appointment, though, will you, in six weeks' time?' She assured him that she wouldn't, thanked him again and went back to the day room—to Mrs Curry, and the Scrabble board, and her cup of cooling coffee.
    Mrs Drew was eating a Mars bar, sitting by her bed in a pink dressing-gown with her long black hair tumbling down her neck. She was very pretty, thrilled to be pregnant and dedicated to chocolate. Laying a hand on her as-yet flat abdomen, she got to her feet, looking faintly alarmed at the sight of the great man himself. 'Is everything all right?' she asked, dropping back on the chair again.
    'Couldn't be better, Mrs Drew,' Simon assured her quickly. 'You've no discomfort, have you, no dragging, or colicky pain?'
    She shook her head with emphasis. 'Can't feel a thing. The worst was the anaesthetic.'
    'Well, in another four or five weeks—' he watched Anna helping Cynthia Drew on to the bed '—you'll be feeling your baby shifting around.' He began to examine her, palpating her lower abdomen with the flat of his hand. His expression was one of total absorption.
    He was always, Anna had noticed, a little remote at such times—all but on a different plane. And she knew the reason why, of course, for, especially in a gynae ward, the patients were extra-defenceless; embarrassment for most was less than skin-deep, and he respected this—he even deferred to it. Jokes on the gynae ward were taboo, and quite right too.
    'No can do,' he said back in the office, when Anna suggested coffee. 'I have to attend a meeting with my peers at eleven, called by one of the financial managers, to discuss the distribution of funds. I want Gynae to have its fair slice of the cake.'
    'Of course,' Anna said, taking Cynthia Drew's notes from his hand and catching his smile before he turned and went out of the door, disappointing Rosina yet again as she came out of the kitchen with coffee and biscuits and a slice of Genoa cake.
    'He always stayed in Sister Hilton's day. Perhaps you don't tell him soon enough,' she said by way of accusation, dumping the tray on the desk.
    Jean came in to share it with Anna, reporting that they were running short of drawsheets—there were only four left—and did Anna know that Mrs Day had been smoking in the loo again, and Mrs Jacobs was complaining that her breakfast egg wasn't one of the special free-range ones which her husband had brought in for her.
    Anna sorted out the drawsheet problem, had a tactful word with Mrs Day about her smoking and promised Mrs Jacobs that she'd mark her eggs with a cross so that she'd know she'd got the right ones.
    After this she welcomed the new patient who was taking Mrs Tooley's bed, supervised the ward lunches, went up and had her own, had a word with Janice Hall— who was still set on leaving—and at the start of visiting talked to Fay Cotton's husband—a hectoring, florid-faced man—who demanded to know when he and his wife could try for another child.
    'I'm keen to have a son, and as soon as possible,' he said in the kind of tone normally used for ordering a sofa or a sack of boiler fuel.
    Inwardly outraged, but hiding it, Anna asked him to sit down. 'Mrs Cotton is making a good recovery,' she told him quietly, 'but a tubal pregnancy is a serious condition, especially when—as in her case—there has been a considerable loss of blood. Mr Easter hasn't given any indication yet as to when she'll be discharged, and even when she's home it will be some time before she's really strong.'
    'This isn't what we planned.' He looked annoyed.
    'I don't suppose it is,' Anna said with restraint, wanting