9

Sebastian was dressed in exactly the same outfit he had worn for the consultation last week: jeans, dirty trainers and a green sweater with a large hole in its right elbow, surrounded by thick, unravelling threads of wool. He sat down in the chair, crumpled up his hooded anorak and pressed it to his stomach, perhaps from anxiety that he would put it down in the wrong place, Martin felt, but also to comfort himself by not entirely letting go of the outer layer of protection he had brought with him.

‘I’m on my meds,’ said Sebastian listlessly, ‘so I’m feeling topped and tailed. I might try lying down on the couch. That’s what they do in films, isn’t it? It might feel more real, I suppose.’

Martin restrained himself from asking whether ‘real’ or ‘reel’ or ‘unreal’ or ‘unravel’ might be the right word in this case, but more immediately he wanted to restrain Sebastian from lying down on the couch.

‘Well, at our first meeting,’ he said, ‘we sat facing each other, as we are now, and perhaps we should go on doing that for some time, while we get to know each other, and face up to things together.’

‘I might try the couch,’ said Sebastian, as if he hadn’t heard.

‘Of course, you’re welcome to, but the couch is really there to help people “free associate”, and you have no problem free associating.’

‘I did when I was in the hospital.’

‘No, not in that sense. It’s a term we use for letting the mind make unexpected connections, but you make them spontaneously all the time.’

‘When do we start?’

‘We started when you came into the room,’ said Martin, ‘and you told me that your meds make you feel “topped and tailed”.’

‘Now I feel you’re spying on me.’

‘Well, in a way I suppose I am, but only because we’re working on the same team, like codebreakers, trying to uncover the same secrets, so that you don’t have to suffer so much.’

‘Like Bletchley Park.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re building a Turing machine, so less boats get sunk.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Nobody has ever wanted to be on the same team as me. At least not since my episodes began.’

‘Well, I want us to be on the same team,’ said Martin.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Sebastian, but then he looked as if he wanted to cry. He eventually compromised by staring vacantly at the carpet.

There was a long silence.