‘Anyway, Fiona was as beautiful as even my mother could want. Even as a baby she was gorgeous and she turned from winning baby pageants to winning beauty contests almost without a break. And she was clever-brilliant really. She passed her exams with ease, she moved from one eligible man to another-whatever she wanted Fiona got. She was indulged to the point of stupidity by our mother, and when Mum died Fiona’s boyfriends took right over.’

He saw. Or maybe he saw. ‘And then?’

‘And then she was diagnosed with type-one diabetes.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I really. I only know that Fiona had just started medical school, she was flying high and suddenly she was faced with four insulin injections a day, constant monitoring and dietary restrictions.’

‘I do know what diabetes is,’ he told her. ‘Type one… It’s a damnable pest but if it’s well controlled it’s hardly life-threatening.’

‘Hers wasn’t well controlled. Not because it wasn’t possible to control it but because she wouldn’t. She hated it. She refused to monitor herself. She gave herself the same amount of insulin every day regardless of what her blood sugars were and sometimes she didn’t even do that. She refused to accept the dietary modifications. You need to understand. For once it was an area where she wasn’t perfect and she couldn’t bear it.’

He thought about that. He had diabetics in his practice who refused to take care of themselves and the results could be catastrophic. But…

‘She was a doctor. She knew. With medical training she’d know what the risks were.’

‘I think,’ Gemma told him, slowly as if the words were being dragged out of her, ‘I think my sister was a little bit crazy. She’d been indulged all her life. She was the golden girl and everyone treated her as if she was perfect. The thought of injections, the thought of not being able to eat everything she wanted and the thought of her body being less than perfect… Well, as I said, I think she was a little bit mad. It was as if she saw diabetes as a bar to her perfection and if she ignored it, it’d go away. Only as a doctor you’d know that that’s a disaster.’