Tara sighed and slipped her hand into her bag for her emergency Chelsea bun. She didn’t need a lecture about self-care. The last thing she wanted to listen to over this precious time out was someone with a degree in Feelings telling her the exact things she spent all day telling other people. Meditate. Sleep. No social media after teatime. Eat kefir for your gut brain. Declutter.

As Kasia got going with her self-care spiel, Tara’s thoughts drifted towards the spare rooms at home. Seeing Diane had reminded her that she’d barely started sorting Ruth’s personal effects. If she was honest, Tara was squeamish about what she might find in her mother’s drawers. Now Ruth was gone, Tara could admit an awkward truth of adulthood: that she didn’t really know the non-Mum human her mother had been, despite living no further than twenty miles away from her childhood home for her entire life. She’d been a good parent; a tiger mom before they were invented, ambitious yet endlessly supportive, always first in line on parents’ evenings. But Tara had thought for some time that their cordial mother–daughter relationship depended a lot on not actually transitioning to an adult–adult one, with all that would have entailed.

What would have happened if I’d taken that job in Glasgow? Tara mused, as Kasia droned on about boundaries. It had been a turning point: the chance to join two friends-of-friends in setting up a community counselling practice/charity. Three years later, it had won an EU award for its mental-health projects. I mean, she thought, what did Mum even know about Glasgow to be so against me going? Why didn’t I just … go?

She knew why not. She was trapped by her own paranoia of ‘turning out like your dad’: i.e. a runner-away. A tunnel-visioned abandoner. Combined, of course, with her saviour complex about protecting her mother and a rejected child’s fear of failure and need for familiarity. Tara had got all that information free with her counselling qualifications; other therapists dismantling her psyche had not been a fun listen.

‘… serious consequences for the quality of support we offer, and on our own lives outside work. I want to outline a few effective techniques to protect ourselves from burn-out …’ Kasia wasn’t a hypnotherapist, as far as Tara knew, but she certainly had the sort of soothing tones that could put you into a very relaxed state.

Tara subtly scanned the room to see if she was the only one zoning out. A few heads were nodding – some in agreement, some because it was hard not to succumb to the gentle ebb and flow. David was wearing the rapt ‘engaged’ face of a Channel 4 news anchor, mid-interview. It was impossible to tell if he was listening or not.