two

sunday morning at a quarter past five and a gale blowing. cat deerbon lifted the phone on the second ring.

'dr deerbon here.'

'oh dear ...' an elderly woman's voice faltered. 'i'm sorry, i don't like disturbing you in the middle of the night, doctor, i am sorry ...'

'it's what i'm here for. who is it?'

'iris chater, doctor. it's harry - i heard him. i came down and he was making such a funny noise with his breathing. and he looks ... you know ... he isn't right, doctor.'

'i'll come.'

the call was not unexpected. harry chater was eighty. he had had two severe strokes, was diabetic with a poor heart, and recently cat had diagnosed a slow-growing carcinoma in the bowel. he should probably have been in hospital but he and his wife had insisted that he would be better at home. which, she thought, letting herself quietly out of the house, he almost certainly was. he was also happier in the bed they had arranged for him downstairs in the front room with his two budgerigars for company.

she reversed the car out into the lane. the trees around the paddock were tossing wildly, caught for a moment in her headlamps, but the horses were safely stabled, her family sound asleep.

not many people kept budgerigars now, apart from the competitive bird-fanciers. caged birds were out of fashion, like poodles. she tried to remember, swerving slightly to avoid a fallen branch, when she had last seen anyone with a poodle, clipped to look like the woolly pompons sam and hannah had made in their playgroup days. what other handmade things had they brought so proudly home? she began to make a mental list. it was eight miles from the village of atch sedby into lafferton, it was pitch dark and raining and there was no one else on the road; for years, to exercise her brain and keep herself awake on these night calls, cat had forced herself to recite poems aloud - the ones she had learned by heart at school ... 'the owl and the pussy-cat', 'this is the weather the cuckoo likes', 'i had a silver penny and an apricot tree', and, from the exam years, choruses from henry v and soliloquies from hamlet, the set plays. listening to the car radio seemed to make her more sleepy, but poetry, or chemical formulae, or mental arithmetic kept her going. or lists. woolly pompons, she thought, and pasta pictures, and binoculars made out of the insides of toilet rolls; mother's day cards with yellow-tissue daffodils, crooked coil pots, papier m