Another time: “I wonder how come you’re the one I trust? Of all people, you’re the one I should trust least.” This, in a bitter, resentful stage. I advance tentatively my own questions about blood-bonds and femaleness, but she doesn’t accept that.

“There’s no reason for me to like you,” she says. “I should hate you because you copped out and dumped it all on Daddy and Elliott and me. Why the hell should I care about you?” Defiant now, daring me to tell her; which of course I can’t, because there is no reason at all.

“As for femaleness, I think that’s crap. There are plenty of females I’ve got no bond with, there’s nothing there. So that doesn’t make any sense.” I have no answers to any of it. She waits for a moment, her eyes glaring into mine, her face stiff with angry hurt, or hurt anger, or one of those very painful emotions. And then her face starts to relax, the eyes begin to soften, and soon she laughs.

“But it doesn’t matter, does it? You know that, you just sit there waiting for me to figure it out. I suppose that’s why I like you so much — you know it but you wait for me.” I do not want her to think that.

“No Katie, you’re wrong. I don’t know anything at all. I can feel some of it, but I don’t know it. Sometimes you come to the same points I have and sometimes you don’t. It doesn’t mean we’re right or wrong, it’s just that sometimes we’re together and sometimes we’re not. It’s not so important.” I shrug.

It is that, that attitude of “it’s not so important,” the shrug, that she is least able to deal with.

“That’s the whole trouble with you,” she storms, “you don’t care about anything. You just sit there and smile and nod and think, ‘I’m okay,’ and you don’t give a shit about anything. Sure you’re okay, you don’t have anything to deal with. You try coming back into the real world and see what happens. If you don’t care, you’re just a vegetable, you’re just like your cabbages out there, sitting around waiting for the sun to shine or the rain to fall. I can’t believe it, you just knock me out, the way nothing matters to you.”