‘Wow.’ He shakes his head. ‘Still a bitch. Some things never change.’

Kate watches as he sidles off to join the clients, and, not for the first time, she wonders what the hell she’s doing, staying married to him. She’s spent nine months trying to rebuild his confidence, to turn him back into the man she first met, and while he can still charm a crowd, he’s also weak, spineless and directionless beneath the facade. Everything good about SoulShrink comes from her – the drive, the ambition, the determination and the resourcefulness. She’s the one that crafted the SoulShrink Instagram posts that became memes. She’s the one who combed the news to spin into a SoulShrink soundbite. She’s the one who courted the media and tipped off the paparazzi to follow Tom into London and take photos of him giving a fifty pound note to a homeless man. She created SoulShrink. Tom may be its figurehead but she’s the power behind the throne. The only time Tom grew a backbone was when he threatened to leave her in Gozo, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not after everything she’d done, not when she’d worked so hard. SoulShrink is hers.

She tried to keep it going after Tom was sent to prison. She arranged interviews and press appearances. She anticipated the questions she knew she’d be asked and recorded herself answering them; zooming in afterwards to check that the ‘pain’ in her eyes matched the words from her mouth. She’d express regret for what had happened in the sweat lodge but she wouldn’t denounce her husband. Instead, she’d talk about his mental health. She’d demonstrate her compassion, her insight and her deep, deep empathy for those who struggle with their own mental health. The interviewer would regard her with silent admiration. She wasn’t just Tom Wade’s wife: she was a force in her own right.

Only none of that happened.

Instead of letting her talk, the interviewers interrupted her, angling the conversation back to Tom: how had the sweat lodge deaths affected him? How was he coping with prison life? Tom, Tom, Tom. It was all she could do not to scream. What was the media’s obsession with men? Six years had passed since she’d given up her PR business to work on the SoulShrink retreats full time and nothing had changed. No matter how good she was, how professional, how informed, how educated, she was never going to be accepted as the face of SoulShrink. Because she wasn’t a man.

So where did that leave her? She could leave Tom, go it alone and grub around in the dirt of London’s temping agencies, earning precisely fuck all, or she could resurrect SoulShrink. She didn’t need Tom’s help for that. How many puppets pull their own strings?