‘Listen, Sebastian, I know how urgent this feels to you and I want to help as much as I can. I normally practise from another office and, as it happens, one of my long-term patients has just completed her analysis and I now have an opening on Friday mornings at eleven forty. If you’d be interested, I would like to offer you that session. We would also have a second session a week so that you come regularly to the same office both times.’

‘So, you still had a card up your sleeve,’ said Sebastian, ‘one more ciggie hidden away that you weren’t going to share with me.’

‘It’s an opportunity that only arose this week and it only occurred to me just now that you might like to have that session. It would be free of charge, like here. You can think about it if you like.’

‘I’ll take it,’ said Sebastian. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Good,’ said Martin, getting up and smiling. ‘I’ll see you on Friday then, at eleven forty. This is the address.’

He went to his desk, took out a card and gave it to Sebastian.

Sebastian said goodbye and then paused at the door with his back still turned.

‘I think you’re a kind man,’ he mumbled, and then left abruptly, without looking round and without closing the door.

10

Now that her book was done, Olivia had the feeling of being on holiday for a while, a period in which she could choose between various research projects without any particular pressure or urgency. She was lying on the bed in her old room in Belsize Park, with a copy of Brainwashed face down on the bedspread beside her. She was already halfway through but had decided to take a break. It had been a long time since she had felt the extravagance of having nothing in particular to do, gazing at the familiar configuration of trees and roofs and windows that she had looked at throughout her life, season after season and year after year. Today, the last autumn leaves were clinging to the damp branches and the lights were already on in many of the windows opposite.