Apparently I’m a ‘complex character’. That’s how Fionn described me to my father when he demanded answers for my acute demise, after just a few days of therapy. My dad thought the more money he threw at the problem, the quicker he’d get results. This place costs 10,000 euros a month. Dad must have expected me to be skipping through the meadows by Christmas. He doesn’t understand about all the wires.

I don’t actually agree with Fionn but I don’t tell him that my problem is not complex. It’s quite simple, really, I just can’t share it with him. Instead I make like I’m buying all his crap. I like to give him something to work on so I speak about Andriu sometimes. How I’d built my world around him and then he walked out on me. I was so dramatic when I first mentioned him, making it sound like a breakthrough, a revelation, a demon released. I even cried. I imagine Fionn had a celebratory bottle of wine that night. At last he was getting somewhere with the complex character. If only he knew.

That’s the thing I don’t like about this place. Fionn believes I can tell him anything. That what I have to say to him won’t destroy me even further if I let it out of my head and into the world. He’s a true believer that people can be fixed. And maybe some people can but not me. I’m broken beyond repair. I just need to find a way to operate with the cracks so I can get out of here and back to some sort of normality. Which is why I’m playing their game.

‘Today’s session went well, don’t you think?’ Fionn says, walking out the door behind me. Fionn is only a few inches taller than me and full of hope. He has more faith in me than I have in myself. He never fails to remind me of my achievements and even though he makes me confront the darker side of my personality, to him, my life is not all about failure.