When she was able to go back to her desk, Mr Dreyfus was coming out of the doctor’s consulting room.
‘All done?’ The last traces of the panic attack caused her voice to tremble.
He turned. His cheeks were wet. ‘All done,’ he said.
She hated it when they cried, especially the men. And most of Dr Moncrieff’s patients were men. She felt impotent in the face of their pain, unable to alleviate it. She never had an adequate response, even though she practised phrases in private; ‘I hope you have good support around you at this difficult time,’ or, ‘there’s great benefit in looking after your general well-being with a good diet and plenty of sleep.’ Neither were appropriate really, just things to say because she couldn’t say nothing, and she certainly couldn’t take them in her arms and let them weep while she quietly had a panic attack as, together, they faced their mortality.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she managed.
His features were mask-like – set into a look of terror. ‘No. Thank you.’ He walked out the door, his arms tight to his sides.
When he’d gone she sat at her desk going through the mail. She frowned when she came across a letter addressed to Pauline de Winter. There was a Post-it note stuck to the front and a message in Dr Moncrieff’s neat writing: You promised this would stop. She could almost hear the implied, ‘Please see me.’
Two more patients arrived, one extremely early for his appointment. Neither acknowledged the other, each submerged under the weight of their diagnosis, the hope that their faith in the doctor hadn’t been misplaced, the fear of ‘what next’.
Clare tapped away on the computer, followed up on the results of tests ordered, offered teas and coffees, looked compassionate. There was, she had learned, a fine line between professional compassion in which a patient may be reassured by a ‘there, there’ or comforted by a cup of tea, and the compassion that invited an unburdening. Clare was not interested in listening to details of symptoms and tumours, surgery and drugs. Not at all. So she’d learned to apply just the right amount of sympathy to her features and the timbre of her voice. These days, a patient had to be really desperate to try to talk to her.
At one o’clock, Dr Moncrieff emerged from his office and announced he was going for lunch and straight on to the private hospital where he performed his life-saving, or maybe life-prolonging, surgery. Clare nodded seriously, and said, ‘Yes, doctor’, as if this was in any way unusual when, in fact, he always operated on Monday afternoons.
‘And the letter for Pauline – I thought you said you’d stop receiving mail for her here – didn’t you say she’d got herself a post-office box? I don’t like the idea of being the poste restante for someone like that even if she is your cousin.’
Clare bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from responding. After a deep breath she said, ‘Sorry, doctor. I’m not sure why it came here. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘Well, speak to her would you – make sure it doesn’t.’
‘Of course.’
He gathered his coat and umbrella and left.
Clare slumped onto one of the sofas and let out a sigh. She’d worked for Dr Moncrieff for over five years and he was still so stiff and formal. What would it take to crack him? She thought back to the first time she’d seen him, at her interview.
She’d arrived in plenty of time and sat waiting nervously, eyeing the other candidate who was waiting – a woman in her fifties, Clare reckoned, with varicose veins and wispy permed hair. Not the right sort to front a private doctor’s rooms. Clare had checked her own nail varnish, tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, and taken some deep breaths.
The doctor had asked a colleague’s receptionist to help with the interviews, an officious-looking woman with thin lips. Clare knew immediately it was her she had to impress, but that she must address all her comments to the doctor or his ego would be bruised. The interview had gone well and on the train on the way home she’d celebrated with a cup of tea and an iced bun. She hadn’t been at all surprised when three days later, a formal offer of appointment arrived but only then did she do the maths; working out whether, even with the generous salary offered, it was worth accepting a job in London given the hefty train fares. She’d always known really she would have taken the job even if the numbers didn’t stack up; she wanted to work in London, whatever the cost. Surely, she’d thought to herself, she had a better chance of finding love in a bigger city?
She shrugged and raised her eyebrows, a short sharp breath escaping her nostrils; how naïve she’d been. London was so anonymous. People walked past day after day without glancing at each other; either they were on their phones or their gaze slid over their fellow men – and women – without registering them.
She shook her head and settled back into the sofa. With the doctor gone for the
