“And so I want you to slowly rise up, fill your diaphragm with air once again. Expel it slowly through your nose. Have you taken your breath? Good. You are now ready to leave the house. Well done. Today will be a wonderful day.”

Frankburg motioned to the sound engineer.

“That it?” said the engineer.

“That’s it for the words. You can put the music on now.”

“When do you want the music to start?”

“Start at the point where I talk about the fizzing ball of energy circling the pelvis.”

“Right.”

“Are you giggling?”

“No. Fizzing balls, got it.”

“Good. Send a copy to the office when you’ve done it.”

Following the Boston fiasco he’d decided to record his own tapes. He’d been pestered by an irritating woman who claimed to be Samuel Thorn’s agent, insisting he use Samuel again and maintain some continuity, but his mind was made up. After spending so long trying to imitate the Welsh accent, he didn’t think there was much to it and was convinced that Clara Redlake could learn to love the Solihull vowel sounds just as passionately.

He had plans to send his new tape, Conquer Panic, to Clara before anyone else. Say he was experimenting with a new voice and ask her, professionally, if it was any better. If that didn’t work then sod it. It was hardly worth the grief, no matter how flame-headed she was.

Dr. Frankburg walked swiftly from the recording studio to the car park. He had a late session with a client and his popping Ps had made him pretty pushed.

754

Benny was tired of being Unfunny John’s friend. He binned the stupid disguise and went home. He was secretly glad he hadn’t found Emma too. She had a habit of looking at his physique. Not appreciatively, anatomically.

“Tanned skin,” she’d said to him once, “tough work on the slab.”

753

In Worcester, New York, Clara Redlake listened to the news. It mentioned the bomb found under the car of a pharmaceutical CEO and she groaned inwardly.

Like Frankburg, she had an extensive and varied list of clients, one of whom, Edward Wiltshire, or Edward the Fireman if you will, displayed barely suppressed hostility toward the medical profession as a whole and had regularly expressed his commitment to JUSTICE and POSITIVE ACTION.

Like Frankburg, she too produced self-help tapes. But they were purely experimental and weren’t available commercially:

1.  Managing Anger in Urban Life

2.  Beating Paranoia

3.  Becoming Attractive

4.  Asserting Your Rights

5.  Petty Crime Part One—Running Out of Diners

6.  Petty Crime Part Two—Hoax Calling

7.  Appearing Heroic

8.  Eliciting Sympathy and Money

They were designed as distractions. Every time a subject felt on the brink of disruptive or significant antisocial behavior, they could run through one or more of the tapes and have walk-through experiences of normal life, in all its shades and varieties. Those tapes that were gently transgressive also encouraged a degree of moral reflection. Tape five, for example, instructed the subject to return to the diner and repay the proprietor twice over to compensate for both the food and his loss of faith in human nature.