No! Jesus, Flora, you think we were a storybook couple? You think we were a perfect match, and everything went wrong after you were born? What kind of nonsense has your mother been spinning you? You were an accident!

As a child watches a kicked ball sail towards a window and punch a hole in it, he watches the understanding land on her face. Her eyes open painfully wide, and in a blink, two teary blinks, are emptied of love and stuffed to their lids with shock. The bag in the footwell is pulled into her lap as though it is a helpless mammal he has injured. For a moment, she is completely still. He watches her as one might watch a small plane, thousands of feet above the earth, whose engine has stuttered into silence. Then she’s gone, the door slammed, her boots stomping up the wet path, and he is out almost as quickly, running after her, calling Flora! but she has reached the door.

Flora! he says again. At least let me explain!

She inserts her key in the door, steps inside and swivels on a heel.

Let me explain for you, Dad. You’re a real arsehole.

He stares at the closed door.

Arsehole. The last word she ever spoke to him.

Finlay?

A soft voice through a long tunnel.

Finlay?

He can’t remember the last time anyone said his name so tenderly. The tenderness alone is enough to spike tears, and lifts him like a helpless infant from the dread inevitability of memorial replay into Dr Salmon’s compassionate gaze. Though he has been far away, only seconds have passed. His hand is gripped so tightly on the whisky tumbler that it is almost slipping away from him and he replaces it, shakily, on the sticky coaster.

Dr Salmon—

He cannot find any words.

Yes.

Her eyes are too intense, so he looks at her shoes, as unscientific as her nails: pointy and scuffed.

It does seem… It would seem… He tries again. The last thing I said to my daughter. The last thing I told her—

He can’t say the terrible words. Has tried for eighteen months not to remember them.

But I don’t understand how…

No, says Dr Salmon, we’re a long way from how. I don’t have a how for you, I’m afraid. Only observations and theory. No mechanism.

There are questions, but grief disturbs them, shakes them up into a bag of crumbs he cannot wrangle into sense. Somewhere in the bag of crumbs he locates a reasonable objection.

You say mind and brain are not the same thing. But how can Flora’s mind exist independently from her brain?

As I said, we’re years from the how. Steingarten and Rodgers postulate—

He holds up a hand to halt her.

Give me something I can understand. An analogy, not citations.