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us. He frowned. ‘What brings you here?’
    Doctor Soucek’s lips pinched together as if he had nothing to say to Milosh.
    ‘If you do not have anything to offer us, Doctor Soucek, I think you had better leave,’ Milosh said, his lip curling the same way Frip’s did when he saw a menacing dog.
    Doctor Soucek glanced from me to Aunt Josephine. There was a tremble in his hands and I felt sorry for him. He had been good to our family over the years. I was not angry at him for misdiagnosing Mother, only sad. She had thought so highly of him. She had been a breech birth and, as a younger man, he had saved her and her mother. But this time round, he had been negligent.
    Doctor Soucek turned to me as though he wanted to say something else, but another hostile glance from Milosh made him think better of it. He picked up his coat and hat. ‘I will be going,’ he said.
    I accompanied him to the hall and helped him with his coat. ‘Goodbye, Doctor Soucek,’ I said, opening the door. He looked over his shoulder to check we were alone then grabbed my arm. ‘You dressed her for the funeral, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘You saw the scars?’
    The pity I felt for him turned to revulsion again. I remembered the stitched scar that had twisted across Mother’s belly like a braided roll. I tried to push Doctor Soucek away but he gripped me more firmly. I thought he must have gone mad.
    ‘Did you see the scar under it? The fine white one?’
    ‘I’ll call my stepfather,’ I warned him, looking back into the house.
    Doctor Soucek loosened his grip and I stumbled. He rushed down the front stairs and raised his arm to hail a cab. One arrived and he was about to step into it when he turned around. ‘Appendicitis!’ he snorted. ‘Find out what really happened, will you? I removed your mother’s appendix myself when she was eighteen years old.’
    It took minutes before Aunt Josephine could bring herself to speak after I reported what Doctor Soucek had said. The news knocked the wind out of her as it had from me. She leaned on the table where Mother’s coffin had rested and shook her head.
    ‘We must be careful not to jump to conclusions,’ she said. ‘Doctor Soucek is old and even your mother said he was sometimes forgetful. Perhaps he is confused. Perhaps it was Emilie’s appendix that he removed. I don’t recall your mother ever mentioning it and that would have been not long before I met her.’
    I sat back, overtaken by another wave of nausea. I wondered, with all that had happened in the last few days, if I would ever feel the vitality of my age again. But what if Doctor Soucek was right? What did that mean? Doctor Hoffmann’s face floated up before me. He had been professional in his manner and did not appear to be someone who would misdiagnose an illness and then try to cover it up.
    I told Aunt Josephine what I was thinking.
    ‘No, I don’t understand what it means either,’ she said. ‘We must speak to paní Milotova. After all, she was there.’
    We were surprised to find paní Milotova wearing her mourning dress when we arrived at her apartment. Only immediate members of the family were expected to dress in black after the deceased’s funeral.
    ‘Marta was my dear friend,’ she explained. ‘I can’t forget her.’
    We sat down at paní Milotova’s dining table and watched while she served tea from a samovar. She had left Russia before the Revolution and I had always been fascinated by her collection of lacquered boxes, Faberge eggs and bear figurines.
    When the tea was served, Aunt Josephine related Doctor Soucek’s words to paní Milotova, whose face turned as green as the jade handles on the teaspoons. The pitch of her voice, an octave higher than normal, conveyed her shock.
    ‘I arrived at the house at eleven o’clock to give Klara her lesson,’ she said. ‘Marta had collapsed and Marie was leaving to fetch Doctor Soucek. Milosh stopped her and scribbled down the address of Doctor Hoffmann. When