He swivelled on his chair and touched his temples with his forefingers. ‘Yes, I think the gin might have led us to, um, admit things that we might not necessarily …’

‘Yes. It was the gin,’ she agreed, quickly. ‘The gin.’

Or was it? Wait. Had he hypnotized her?

David stopped swivelling. ‘You haven’t mentioned what we discussed to anyone else?’

‘God, no! Of course not. And I’d rather you didn’t either.’

‘No, I don’t think I’d share it with other colleagues. They might think it was a bit …’ David didn’t finish, but looked up at her. Tara braced herself to see the judgement in his eyes, even disappointment that she wasn’t all she was cracked up to be, but instead there was a flicker of vulnerability. Uncertainty as to what she might say next.

An edgy, chess-playing silence filled the room, as they each waited for the other to carry on.

A revelation belatedly hit her. David wasn’t talking about her drunken confession. He was nervous about what he’d said.

‘David?’ She leaned forward. ‘Do you mean that stuff you told me about you talking to dogs?’

He flinched and, too late, Tara realized she’d just revealed her own hand.

David was obviously less hungover: he spotted her mistake and swiftly adjusted tack. ‘As opposed to you and your burnout?’

‘I never said I was burned out …’ she started automatically, then gave up. Her brain wasn’t up to fencing this morning. ‘You told me you communicated with the dogs in sessions, and got them to snitch on their owners. You were winding me up, right?’

Several moments passed.

Then David said, quietly, ‘No.’

Tara sat back in her seat, flummoxed: if David was mentally ill, then she needed to treat these revelations carefully. ‘I read those links you sent to me about pets in therapy. I understand why people feel a sense of being held to account by a third party, even if it’s a silent, er, non-human one. So are you saying you interpret the client’s reactions and those of the animal together and reach a conclusion based on …’ Tara struggled; this wasn’t the best morning for careful analysis of anything. ‘Based on their body language?’

‘There’s an element of that, yes.’

‘But are you saying you go further than that? You communicate with the dogs themselves?’

He watched her eyes, searching for signs of judgement, then nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘David? Is this …?’ Tara abandoned her attempts to be unflappably professional. ‘Who put you up to this? One of the holistic healers? Is this because of what I said about the crabs under the pillow?’

David frowned. ‘Remind me what you said about the crabs under the pillow?’

She raised her hands. ‘I’ll be honest – I don’t know what to say. No one’s ever told me they could talk to animals before. Well, not someone on our side of the table.’