The Various Haunts of Men (Simon Serrailler #1)

by Susan Hill

Medicine was changing, or being changed, by the grey men who managed but did not understand it.

These are the times you remember until you die, these ordinary, unplanned, astonishing, joyful things, these spur-of-themoment, unexpected things.

You remember every word, every gesture, the colour of the tablecloths in the restaurant and the smell of the liquid soap in the cloakroom, so that for the rest of your life, when you smell it again, you are there and you are the person you were, on that day, at that time, thinking what you thought, feeling as you did. These are the times.