But Lissa had already moved on to the next thing she had to do, the appointment she was dreading, and didn’t reply. Well, so much for you, thought Cormac, leaving his phone and moving to the window, trying to open it to circulate the stale trapped air of the heavily populated building. But it kept sticking in the frame, and no matter how hard he tugged, the window wouldn’t open.

Chapter 30

Lissa made herself a huge cup of tea. Anything to postpone the inevitable. She knew lots of people had therapists. She didn’t see any stigma in it, but she’d never felt the need for one herself. But that was before. And now it was 6:30. It was time.

It took a few moments for the pixels to rearrange themselves, but the figure on the other side finally settled down into a woman of about fifty, well put together, with a humorous tinge around her mouth and a level gaze visible even through the camera lens and the poor reception. She also appeared to be eating something from a bowl.

“Alyssa Westcott?” she said briskly, and rather indistinctly.

“Uh-huh,” said Lissa, finding she was sitting with her arms around her knees on the floor in front of the laptop.

The woman put her spoon down and squinted. “Sorry,” she said. “All I can see is knee. Do you mind?”

Lissa changed position but suddenly wasn’t sure what to do. She moved the laptop onto the coffee table, then found herself awkwardly kneeling in front of it like she was in church, which she didn’t like. She tried sitting up and looking down into the screen, but in the little self-image all she could see was her face looming over from above, which wasn’t a great concept. She was also increasingly aware of the fact that the more time it took her to make a decision about how she ought to be and sit, the more that would probably mean to the psychiatrist on the other end of the line sitting waiting patiently, which made her start to blush and feel uncomfortable.

“Sorry!” she said, her voice sounding high and completely unlike herself, rather like some posh English woman asking if she was on the right train. “I’m not quite sure where to sit!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the woman calmly, which of course convinced Lissa that it did, very much, matter a lot, and she twisted around in a panic. She ended up back on the floor again, her legs tucked under her like a little girl. Then she remembered her tea and had to retrieve it.

Anita the psychiatrist was still smiling patiently at her, even with a quick glance at the upper right-hand quadrant of the screen, which Lissa interpreted, correctly, as a glance at the clock on her computer.

“Um, ha! Hello! Sorry about that!”

“Don’t spill your tea,” said Anita.