Her dad demanded visitation rights and it was agreed that he’d have Kate every other weekend. The first few weekends were lovely. Her dad didn’t drink, he showered her with presents and he took her to the zoo. But then, one weekend, a couple of months after the separation, Kate realised something was wrong the minute she walked into her dad’s house. There were cans everywhere, overflowing ashtrays, and STUPID BITCH was written in red paint on the living room wall. Her dad opened the fridge, took out a beer and told Kate to sit at the kitchen table.

Then, for the next hour, he ranted at her. He loved her mum, he told her, but she wouldn’t take him back. She’d met someone else and betrayed them both. It was the first Kate had heard about a new boyfriend and she burst into tears. Her dad hugged her then, holding her head against his chest. He smelt of booze and cigarettes. He’d look after her, he told her. He’d love her until the day he died. And then, that night, as Kate slept in her childhood bedroom, Jim doused the house, and himself, in petrol, and set the place alight. Kate survived, coughing and spluttering but otherwise unharmed, but only because the neighbour, the same one her dad had been so paranoid about, returned from a nightshift at four a.m. and saw the smoke.

‘That’s why Kate has control issues,’ Tom told Jenna as she stared at him in shock. ‘She’s doesn’t trust anyone, not even me. I thought that I could make her well. If she hit me I told myself it wasn’t me she was angry at, it was her dad. I knew why she was doing it so I was able to separate her behaviour from who she is.’

‘That makes her sound like a child.’

‘In many ways she is. She hasn’t moved on from what happened that night, not emotionally. I suggested she see a psychiatrist, but she refused. Our relationship had moved on by then, we were … business partners, really … and it wasn’t right that I treat her. In her mind, because she’d overcome her stress-related asthma attacks, she could overcome anything. But she wouldn’t confront what had happened to her. She threw herself into making SoulShrink a success. And I was so grateful. She was doing it because she respected and believed in me and that was a heady combination but …’

‘But?’

‘When someone continually chips away at you there comes a point when they’re not just taking chunks out of your self-esteem, they’re destroying you bit by bit. I realised that if I stayed, I’d become as damaged as she is. I had to walk away, while I still could.’

‘And that’s now?’

He’d nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’