I scanned the film that I could see inwardly. I could still see the young woman in the park. This time, she was alone. ‘Go to a happier time,’ I heard Simon say again, and I felt I was jolted forward and I was in a garden. I knew it so well, it was full of sunlight, an apple tree to the left. I was with a small girl with blonde wavy hair; not a girl, a toddler, she was just learning to walk. I got a strong sense that she was my child.

‘Bea, what’s happening?’ Simon asked.

‘I’m with Minty.’

‘Who’s Minty?’

‘My baby girl,’ I replied as I moved through the frames of the film. ‘But that can’t be right. I don’t have a baby girl.’ The film seemed to go into reverse, as if on rewind. I watched the woman, inside the house now, washing up. She looked up as another woman, an older women, brought her a letter, a telegram. The other woman looked concerned. It was bad news; the younger woman was distraught, staggered and reached out to steady herself, then there was a sense of moving on, as if someone had pressed fast-forward on a TV. The younger woman was in a hospital by a bed, the little girl was in it, moving on again, the bed was empty, the woman seated, bent over, sobbing. The older woman was with her, her arm over her shoulder.

‘I don’t like it here,’ I said. ‘You lose those you love.’

‘Can you find them again?’ asked Simon.

I vaguely remembered the mosaics from the previous session and tried to will myself to see them again. ‘Where’s Wally?’ I said.

‘OK,’ said Simon. ‘Can you tell me what that means?’

‘The mosaics, they’re all in there.’ I felt a wave of hope. ‘I have to match the man from the park with my mosaic, then I’ll know who he is now and won’t have lost him.’

‘OK,’ said Simon, ‘but just let go, don’t try to force anything, let your unconscious mind reveal to you what it wants to. Just let go …’

But all I could see was a light mist inside: no mosaics, no art gallery room. I let myself go back into the comfy state of drifting. I felt so tired and then Simon was counting me back up, ‘… three two one and wide awake, feeling refreshed.’

*

‘Do you think Grace had a child?’ asked Heather when I met her after my session in the café on the fifth floor in John Lewis.

‘It was definitely her baby,’ I said, ‘but I got the feeling that the baby died.’

Heather looked thoughtful. ‘Hmm. Could be that your subconscious is interpreting events again. It could be that the baby represented an innocence lost.’

‘Maybe, but she looked very real. She had a name too. Minty.’