But she wasn’t going to tell Phoenix about Gunnar, most definitely not. Her relationship with her first boyfriend was a pleasant memory, not a source of trauma. In fact, the only trauma she’d encountered was the disappearance of her sister. She couldn’t talk to him about that, but maybe she could discuss the nature of their relationship. There was a twelve year age difference and, with Fran at boarding school and her sister at home with her parents in an army camp in Germany, they only interacted in the school holidays, three times a year. Even then Fran spent most of her time in her room reading, only leaving for meal times and when her mother insisted she play a board game to entertain her little sister. It wasn’t that Fran didn’t love Jenna – she was a sweet, if dull, little girl who loved to draw – but they had nothing in common. When Fran left for university aged eighteen she’d send her six-year-old sister sweets in the mail and occasionally speak to her on the phone, but she rarely returned home, preferring to spend her holidays in her university bedroom instead.

Not that she was able to tell Phoenix most of this, as he continually interrupted her to ask questions or to draw parallels with his own life. At one point, Tom stepped in to ask Phoenix to just listen but then the buzzer sounded to signify that their time was up. Several people in the group were in tears by this point so Tom led a half hour mindfulness session during which Fran nearly fell asleep. On the upside, Phoenix didn’t say a word, even when Tom asked them to imagine a beautiful lakeside walk and Fran sneaked a look to her left to see if Phoenix had his hand up, volunteering his idyllic vision. They broke for lunch then – a buffet affair that people either took to their rooms or ate on their knees in the living area (Fran chose her room). After lunch, they were summoned back to the heart of the house and then taken out to the garden where piles of bricks had been arranged with a slim piece of wood laid across the divide. They were invited, one by one, to approach the arrangement, shout, ‘I can overcome my fears,’ and then smash through the piece of wood with the edge of their hand. After watching several people break the plank on their first attempt Fran was dismayed when she failed to put so much as a crack in the thing.