Out of nowhere, from my perspective. And you brought me Dr Salmon, and Dr Salmon brought me – this! She indicates a sphere of nothing around her head.

What?

The understanding that I created everything in my life. Everything. Just with my thoughts.

Okay, he says, what about this? You didn’t create everything in your life because you didn’t create you. Your mother did.

Indeed. With her thoughts. Though she’d deny that. She’d say I was foisted on her by circumstance, but on some level she wanted a daughter. Maybe to put all her self-loathing outside herself, onto another. A little hateful external her, something she could blame instead of looking in the mirror. But it was a co-creation. On some level I was willing to be born to her, Dr Logan. Had to be. One in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, don’t they? One in four bail out. I didn’t. And yet I knew her from the inside. I would have felt her, heard her, known what I was in for. And I stuck with her all the same.

For what?

Eyes roll up in her head like a blind to let the light in. Then, two cannonballs, drop back down with an answer.

For this! For the experience. To go through what I did, do what I did, until it leads me to finally getting it.

Logan isn’t getting it.

To wake up, Dr Logan! You can get to Heaven through Hell. Through the valley of the shadow of death. How else can a person wake up? Meditate up a mountain maybe? My roots are Catford, not Kathmandu.

He is lost. His whole quest was to get her talking, yet now he is mentally flicking through a rack of medications that would render her speechless. He could rope in someone with expertise in post-process behaviour, but the thought of calling Dr Salmon is unappealing. He presses on.

Are you telling me, April, that you think mass murder is part of some spiritual path?

The eyes lift again, taking his suggestion to her brain, retrieving the answer with gun-dog efficiency.

For me it was, Dr Logan. For me it was.

He is distracted by a disturbance of his visual field in the patch of light behind April’s left shoulder: a bee banging itself against the window. Though rendered noiseless by the security glass, it batters its furry body repeatedly against it as though April were a nectar-drenched flower. Then it is off again, rebuffed, but rapidly forgetting.

He says, More than thoughts brought you here. Any of us might have murderous thoughts. You had the thoughts. But you also did the deeds.

She nods at her foot.

The thoughts led to the deeds. I couldn’t do the deeds without having the thoughts, Dr Logan. And gazing up at him, I am meant to be here.

How do you mean?