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who were with me.’
    ‘I shall try to find out for you,’ said Sam. ‘ You will stay here.’
    And he strode away, ducking his head under a low beam as he left the tiny room. A bang reverberated through the whole building when he slammed the main door.
    ‘Well!’ gasped Minella, lying back with relief.
    ‘Ah, he is a difficult man,’ said Dr Porva, gesticulating with his hands. But there was a canny twinkle in his eyes which meant the reproof was not to be taken too seriously. There was obviously a strong bond between the two men. ‘Today I will see my patients and not ask them to lie down. If anyone needs to lie down they must come again tomorrow. Today they will all come here, but only because they know I have a beautiful young girl in my surgery who was rescued from the sea. Curiosity ... is that what you call it? But I shall tell them you are sleeping. You will sleep now, won’t you, Spar—ho.’
    She smiled for the first time. ‘Sparrow,’ she corrected.
    ‘You are a brave girl,’ he said, and leaned over to pat her arm.
    He went away, and came back a short time later with something rather like porridge in a dish, and helped her to eat it. Surprisingly she managed it, and even found it tasted good.
    She tried not to think about the storm that had come up with hardly any warning, the violent gale that had driven them off course, but it kept coming back to her. A vague, unpleasant ache brought a frown to her forehead as fragments of conversation she had heard refused to make sense, and she found it hard to distinguish between dreams and reality. Dr Porva had talked about more survivors, but that must be because he thought she had come from a shipwreck. He didn’t know she had been washed overboard and was the only one missing from a crew of six. Everyone else would be all right. But what had they done when they found out what had happened? Had they tried to turn back, facing into the terrible wind to search for her, and were they searching still? Or had they abandoned hope of finding her and carried on? Her brother would be frantic with grief.
    She started trying to tell the doctor what had happened, but it was too complicated just then, and she only managed the one elusive fact that meant so much to her.
    ‘Dr Porva, I’ve remembered my name. It’s Minella Farmer.’
    ‘That is very pretty,’ he said. He busied himself with bottles in a cabinet on the wall, shook two tablets into his hand, then fetched a glass of water from the other room. ‘Now, I am going to give you something to make you sleep, and when you wake up you will feel rested. Then you can tell me all about yourself.’
    She swallowed the tablets and lay down again when he touched her shoulder authoritatively.
    ‘Why doesn’t the man called Sam want me at his house?’ she asked. ‘Tell me about him.’
    Henrique Porva shrugged. ‘Sam Stafford is a very good friend, but he has some ... hang-upwards.’
    ‘Hang-ups,’ giggled Minella, loving his attempt at colloquial English.
    ‘Yes. I do not think he likes women.’
    ‘Oh.’ There was so much she wanted to ask this kind Azorean doctor, but she was very drowsy. ‘Why doesn’t he like them?’
    If he answered she didn’t hear him. Her limbs felt deliciously relaxed and she closed her eyes. She would have to ask him again later.
    When she awoke again there was a woman speaking excitedly in Portuguese to Dr Porva. Minella, fascinated, wished she could understand them. After a while the woman came into the room, a bright smile lighting her face when she saw that Minella was, awake. She wore a coloured, peasant-type skirt with a black blouse, and a cotton scarf covered her black hair. It was difficult to guess her age, but her figure was ample, to say the least, and a tracery of lines creased the skin at the corners of her eyes.
    ‘ O senhora , we are come to take you somewhere more comfortable,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
    ‘I feel fine now,’ said Minella, and sat up