Back at his hotel, Martin used the bathroom in his room, brushed his teeth and then straightened his tie. After he stood at the window for some moments and watched people going to and fro below. He wasn't actually thinking of anything. It was almost like watching ocean waves, he realized. They came and went, each one different from the last, but the net affect was the same. That's what the people below scurrying back and forth reminded him of. He suspected that one could perform a numerical simulation of their skittering about. "Ghastly thought," he muttered then retrieved his conference materials and descended to the main ballroom.

He found a seat near the back of the darkened room just as the next speaker was getting started. He tried to quiet his swirl of ideas and pay attention.

"Afternoon," the woman on the dias said to the room where perhaps fifty people sat, most of them men. "I am Dr. Carol Carrow with the Southern Health Initiative, Bristol, and my presentation is titled 'Management of Hypertension in the Elderly Primagravida.' "

Martin saw her smile but for the life of him he could not see what she was happy about. Dealing with pregnant women in their late thirties and early forties had no great interest for him, but he gritted his teeth and tried to follow along. In Portwenn it seemed that nearly all his patients had their children well before thirty and then lost interest in the process, except for those he considered over achievers.

"We studied a population in our County and local environs…"

Martin was sitting next to an overweight doctor who wheezed merely sitting. God, Martin thought, I hope he doesn't have an MI right next to me. The man's fat arms stuck out like large sausages, pressing themselves onto Martin's arm.

"Sorry, mate," the man mumbled then shifted to the side.

Martin nodded back then tried to listen to the woman on the stage.

"One contributing factor to our patients' well-being was whether they had a life partner who could provide support," Carrow went on, "that is if they had a stable job/family life."

He sighed softly. That's what contraception is for he mused, yet there were times that countermeasures failed; a broken of misused condom, lack of sufficient barrier cream on a diaphragm, or poor placement… he stopped that line of thought. Might he and Louisa have had children? It wasn't anything they actually discussed but he felt sure she'd have wanted one or two. He sighed.

"Problem?" wheezed the man at his side.

Martin shifted himself away from the man. "No."

"Now, on this chart I've shown the major indices of patient life states, along with a cross-plot of BP late in pregnancy. I'll mention none of the women in this study were morbidly obese, used drugs or alcohol to excess, or had diabetes. We screened those into our high-risk study, which my colleague Dr. Wilton will be speaking about next."

Chart followed chart, presenter after presenter went on, and Martin managed to lose himself in the details of the conference while his tea with Kate Ashurst receded somewhat from his mind. But impressed on the screen image, from time to time, was the way she nodded, flicked a stray hair off her face, or leaned forward while speaking to him and of course the lines between the faces of Louisa and Kate blurred into one.

His stomach grumbled for he'd not had much lunch and two cups of tea was less than filling. From time to time, he glanced down at his watch wondering at what point he might escape from this room of hum-drum. The man next to him started to snore around half-five and that's when Martin made his escape.

000

"Damn it," Kate muttered.

"Problem?" the closest vendor asked.

Kate had ventured back to the square for naturally she'd been drawn to the shops and Christmas chalets. She'd promised Scribbs she'd get her something and if she couldn't find a suitable piece of bric-a-brac here then she wasn't trying.

She had poked round in her handbag and underneath her thick wallet and chequebook she saw the blue and white toy dolphin which Martin had bought and she had unwittingly ended up with.

"No," she smiled. To make up for her outburst she spent a few minutes examining the stained glass sun-catchers and panels the man was selling. "These are nice," she said holding up a round one, about four inches across, with the face of a bearded man on it.

"Sul." The man said, pointing to it.

"Pardon?"

"The Celts called him Sul or Sulis, they think. The Romans put their spin on it and put their goddess Minerva in his place. Sulis Minerva – a goddess of both healing and curses, oddly enough."

"Healing and curses?"

The man nodded his dark head. "But I think this guy here, and the scientist Johnnies found his image on the temple over the Baths, is the Celtic god of the spring. See how his hair and beard streams away from his face? That's the water flowing out of the spring. Aquae Sulis the Romans called the whole place."

Kate nodded for she'd read part of the guidebook on the train. "I see. How much?"

The man smiled. "He'll brighten up a window somewhere. Six and five."

Kate looked the object over.

"How about five?" the man prompted not wanting to lose a sale.

"Fine," Kate answered then made the purchase.

The man carefully wrapped the glass in crumpled paper. "Been to the Baths?"

"Not yet."

"You can see the original carving in there at the museum."

"I'll have to go then."

"One of my favorite spots is to go in there and stand right by the Main Pool and just imagine what it musta been like way back when."

Kate smiled for she'd done the same thing at Stonehenge the day before. "A lot of history."

The man smiled and handed her the wrapped sun catcher. "And we're just passing through."

Just then her mobile rang and she answered without looking at the screen. "Hello?"

"Kate?" a man's voice asked. "I… wanted to see how you were."

Kate sighed. "Michael."

"Listen I want to apologize."

"Oh."

"Yeah I was a real tosser." He did sound sincere, but…

"Right," she sighed. "I think I noticed that."

"I was thinking I ought to come over and see you – properly."

"Michael if you forgot we had planned a weekend in Bath."

"Oh," he said. "You went anyway. You've gone away."

Kate closed her eyes in irritation. "Yep. I came by MYSELF Michael. You stood me up."

There was a strained silence. "I'm sorry, love. Said that once."

Kate held the mobile away from her mouth for a second then put it back so she could speak to him. "I'll have you know I met a lovely man here, a doctor, and though he's not quite perfect, he's a bloody sight better than you! Now… listen carefully… bugger off Michael! I don't want to see you ever again."

She disconnected the call, put her mobile away and squared her shoulders, feeling free. "Now," she said to herself. "What to do next?"