Free Night Visit by Priscilla Masters

about this missing child.’
    ‘ Her name was Melanie,’ I said sharply. ‘She vanished very early one summer’s morning, ten years ago, and was never seen again. She was ten years old, Robin, just a little older than our daughter.’

 
    6
     
    Memories of Melanie Carnforth stayed with me over the next month. I could never quite erase her from my mind. At night I would close my eyes and see her, as a red and white toadstool with a laughing face, peeping from behind trees, a child wandering across the field on a sunny morning. My dreams were filled with visions of her walking towards the dark edge of the Carnforths’ field. And the more I tried to warn her the worse it was. I could not speak. My mouth was too dry, my tongue too firmly glued to the roof of my mouth.
    The dream always ended in exactly the same way. The child reached the fence. And there was Reuben’s mound of red-brown earth. She stopped and stroked it before climbing the rotting tree stump. For some reason I could always see a massive bracket fungus sticking out of the side. And yet I did not recall having noticed one there. Maybe it was the natural link between the toadstool colours of the child’s dress and another fungus. I must check next time I wandered to the edge of the field.
    The child climbed the tree stump, stood for a while and jumped... and before my eyes she vanished. But I could still hear her laughing when I woke in a cold sweat.
    I sat up. In my anxiety to protect Rosie I was transferring the threat to her.
    Once or twice I even padded into her room to check her. The second time she woke.
    ‘ Mum?’
    ‘ It’s OK.’ I felt a fool. ‘Really, Rosie, it’s OK.’
    There was another aspect to the dreams: the child’s face as she touched the mound where her grandfather lay. There was a bleakness about it that I was tempted to interpret as acceptance. When Vera had first told me about the police insinuations I had rejected them. Now I was not so confident. Like Vera I wished the case had been solved ten years ago and someone charged, found guilty and sentenced. Then there would be no clouds of suspicion. Reuben would have lain in the haven of the churchyard with a headstone that paid some tribute to a brave life and maybe, just maybe, Vera and her son could then have been reconciled. The whole thing was so incomplete scars were still forming ten years later.
    *
    It seemed that Anthony Pritchard had decided he should attend the surgery once a month. Always to see me, always to have his blood pressure checked. And each time I knew he was inching closer to me, trying to break down the doctor/patient barrier. He considered me his friend, his dear friend.
    ‘ Harriet,’ he said on his June visit. ‘I have to say I think you’re a wonderful doctor.’
    ‘ Just doing my job, Mr Pritchard.’
    ‘ Oh come on,’ he said, ‘do start calling me Anthony. We know each other well now.’
    I ’d had enough. ‘Mr Pritchard,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t do for doctors and patients to call each other by their Christian names. The relationship is a formal one.’ I wanted to wound him. ‘I get paid an annual retainer for looking after you. This isn’t really a friendship.’
    ‘ Are you telling me, Harriet , that you never treat your friends?’
    I thought of Ruth, undoubtedly my own patient. But the friendship had come first. She had transferred to my list after disagreeing with her previous doctor.
    ‘ I try not to treat my friends, Mr Pritchard,’ I said. ‘As I said, the doctor/patient relationship works better if it is kept on a formal footing.’
    ‘ You are my doctor. I like you being my doctor. It gives me a warm feeling.’ He gave something which I imagined was meant to be a conspiratorial smile. ‘It’s only that I think of you as my friend too.’
    ‘ Mr Pritchard.’ I tried again. ‘You don’t need to see a doctor on a monthly basis. We have a very good nurse who is perfectly capable of monitoring your blood pressure