In the quiet, my mind turned to Agnodice. Fact or fiction, she had affected me, though I wasn’t sure how or why. Mentally, I searched Doctor Lorenzo’s face again for its resemblance to my mystical woman. Although I could rationalise the similarities – fair hair, aquiline features would be common enough – I couldn’t argue with the instinctive certainty that they were one and the same. But I didn’t understand what it could mean. I acknowledged that perhaps something was tunnelling my vision. There was plenty of inner angst to tunnel it – Bonnie’s death, Julian’s departure, a career suspended in mid-air. If I probed deeper, I could find more – a checkered relationship with my mother, a fear of becoming barren as time went by and, when I admitted it, an envy of my sister’s happiness. Yet none
