Instead of the damp bricks and skeletal branches that until recently had dominated the view through the glass doors of his consulting room, Martin could see salt-white hawthorn and the dark pink cherry blossom screening the walls, a trellis disappearing behind a tangle of honeysuckle shoots and, beyond that, the thick foliage of his neighbour’s chestnut tree, melding separate gardens into a single flourishing scene. Many of his patients commented on the beautiful view, if only as the starting point for a contrast to their inner state, or as a source of envy compared to what they were doomed to contemplate at home. Those with properties that ‘enjoyed’ or ‘commanded’ a magnificent view, without their owners being able to enjoy or command anything much themselves, were not likely to be consoled by Martin’s little pool of greenery when they had already been let down by Hampstead Heath or Westminster Bridge. Others hardly seemed to notice, but Sebastian was the only current patient who was almost certain to attack the burgeoning life of the garden, just as he attacked everything else. He was going through a period (if it was a period, if they were going to get to the other side of it) of psychotic transference, in which Martin was an amalgamated bad object: the person on whom Sebastian could project his deepest disturbance, paranoia and despair. This apparent deterioration was a cause for optimism: it showed that Martin’s consulting room was a safe place for Sebastian to bring more and more troubling material which, until now, had always driven people away from him and deepened his loneliness and terror. They had built up to three times a week – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – in Martin’s home and not in the more institutional clinic where they had started out.