I nod and think about last night again, how different and exciting it felt. ‘Yeah, it might.’ One cell that becomes two that becomes a thousand that becomes a million; it could be happening inside me right now. But I don’t dare to believe anymore, and consciously shut down these thoughts – nothing hurts more than false hope.

I move my thoughts away from my own problems and stare out at the raging, gray sea, but feel a flicker of the anxiety I felt after Leah Iverson’s session on Friday return. I wonder what she is doing at this moment, whether she is doing better. I think about the envelope she handed me, and its strange contents. I stood watching as she ran across the street after the session, still clutching the little package she’d handed me. Her shape became distorted in the fierce downpour, like a spectre, then it disappeared, merging with the trees and bushes in the park. I opened my hand, then the envelope in it. Inside was a set of old-fashioned keys, like the ones to my grandmother’s farmhouse in Valdres. There was also a local area map, with handwritten instructions scribbled on it. A location was marked with an ‘x’ in the middle of what seemed to be a vast forest. ‘Bekkebu’, Leah had written above it – the name of her cabin, I recalled. Near a lake called Heivannet, she’d made a second marking – a ‘p’ for ‘park here’. At the top of the map, she’d written ‘Please please please come.’

It’s not the first time a client has asked me to meet outside the therapy room – it can be very difficult for people to grasp the boundaries between therapist and client, when therapy is necessarily built on emotional intimacy. I’ve had clients who constantly ask me personal questions, and who have spent significant amounts of time attempting to convince me that we would make great friends in real life. Leah, too, has on a few occasions expressed curiosity about who I am in my personal life. Still, it is definitely out of character for Leah Iverson to behave like this, imploring me to meet with her at a remote cabin – she seemed almost possessed and not at all like herself. I make a mental note to get in touch with her GP tomorrow morning, and to email Leah to suggest she come in for an extra session this week.

‘Why don’t you stay until tomorrow?’ asks Camilla, bringing me back to the blustery beach and my little niece and nephew laughing into the wind, their white-blonde heads thrown back, their hands extended as though they are trying to embrace the whole world.