Jules is seeing the doctor. Headaches. Right-eye, right-temple monsters that sting in the light, rattle with movement, bang if she stoops to pick up a sock. Or those that thunk like a baseball bat to the back of the skull. Her doctor, whom she has never seen, is off with stress. So she gets the locum, a man name of Dr O’Connell. He has a lanky sixth-former-ness about him: a volunteer for any useful expedition. He looks at her over the top of half-rim glasses that seem considerably too old for him.

Out of nowhere, she says. What can it mean?

The locum doesn’t know. He is sure it’s not a tumour. But how can he be sure? She isn’t sure of anything.

When did they start? he asks.

When my husband— She doesn’t know how to continue. What are the right words? She shuffles several combinations through her mind, wondering which one to pick. When he started being weird, she says, wondering immediately why that one.

In what way weird? asks the doctor, who is surely too young to be a doctor. Is it not ridiculous that she should find herself going, for advice, to someone who looks so much like he’s doing his A levels? Shouldn’t their roles be reversed?

Not himself, she says.

The locum shifts forward in his chair.

Could you be more specific?

For example, she says, and she’s not sure why she’s going to use this example, but she hasn’t stopped thinking about it for three days, for example, he thinks that he’s responsible for the death of my ex-boyfriend’s fiancée.

And is he responsible?

No! He just thinks— She pauses. Is she really going to tell him this? It sounds ridiculous. But she has started now. He thinks because he tempted me to leave Simon for him, he set up a pattern of loss that made the death of Simon’s fiancée inevitable. There. It sounds even more ridiculous now she’s said it out loud.

We often feel guilty when a friend dies, says the locum, but she cuts his platitude off at the waist. No! she says. She wasn’t a friend. He didn’t even know her. I mean, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? And he keeps going on about words. That words have power. It’s like. The way he explains it, it’s like when you say to a toddler on a wall, be careful not to fall, and all they hear is the word fall, and they start thinking about it, and the next thing you know they do fall, because you put the thought in their head.

Well, that’s possible, says the locum.