Page 66 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Yes, ages ago, why?’

‘She has a check-up coming.’

‘I thought she’d been discharged from the service. She doesn’t even live here.’

‘Yeah, it’s a request referral,’ Amsan shrugs, glancing at her iPad. ‘Dated two years ago.’

Janey goes a little pink. ‘Um, I know her dad. I’ll tell him.’

Something strikes her.

‘She’s not moving here?’

‘No, no, her address is miles away . . . ’ Amsan squints at the iPad. ‘Oh, lord, I think this should have been sent over.’

Suddenly there is a squeaking noise. Owen has materialised and is squeaking over to their table on his wheely chair. He obviously thinks it looks cool, but overshoots and heads straight back.

‘Hi, Owen,’ says Janey.

‘What’s this about a patient mix-up?’

‘It’s nothing, just someone who should have been transferred to another region . . . ’

‘Uh-huh,’ says Owen, stroking what is beginning to look like a deliberate beard, which is useful, but appears definitely oily. ‘And how was this done?’

Amsan hides her iPad. ‘You can’t see that, Owen.’

‘I can, actually,’ says Owen. ‘My clearance is, like, ultra-everything?’

‘But this isn’t your patient.’

‘It isn’t anyone’s patient if they shouldn’t be here.’

There’s not a lot of arguing with that.

‘TC-MED,’ says Amsan, referring to the regional IT service.

‘Uh-huh,’ says Owen. ‘And there’s a paper trail?’

Amsan stabs, uselessly, at the iPad, which has frozen up again.

‘Because you see,’ goes on Owen, relentlessly, ‘if this had been properly backed upon faxit would be in the file.’

He strokes his beard in a satisfied way, and kicks his chair back to his own table, where he is playing Dungeons and Dragons with the phlebotomists.

Amsan and Janey look at each other.

‘Don’t say it,’ says Janey.

‘He’s ri—

‘DON’T SAY IT. What are you doing this weekend?’

‘Oh, Yasmin has a date with a Sorku guy so I’m taking her to learn how to ride. I think Sorku guys might be the way forward, yeah? No new technology, old traditional ways? You should try them.’

Sorku was the benign local cult that lived in a settlement at the foot of Ben Alton, politely fending off the hordes of keen young people who arrived every year wanting to make podcasts about them.

‘Well, one,’ says Janey, ‘I think they see women over forty as witches. Even more than normal men do, I mean. And two, they have more than one wife.’

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