And now it’s time I took my own advice.

I head home. When I reach the flat, there is still a little time left before I need to go and collect Charlie. In the kitchen, I open the cupboard under the sink. The recycling bag is still here, with those pages of notes stuffed deep inside. They are real, after all. It’s weeks since I dumped them in there. Right then, there was no way I could look at them. They were my worst nightmare, the thing I had been running from for years, thinking I could keep it at bay by punishing myself in my own bizarre ways.

I know now what I have to do.

I wonder if at some level, Dad had been fighting for this all along. Trying to find a way to talk to me about it. But for all these years, I didn’t want to speak about it, and then Dad’s first loyalty was always to Mum. No doubt the conflict inside ate him up over the years. There’s a reason he needs those small tablets that live in a drawer by his bed. In the end, it would have to come down to me. I think the reality is, I’ve been needing this the whole time.

I pull the bag out and empty it, laying all the pages out on the kitchen table. I fetch a thick dark pen from the living room, plus fresh paper and a biro, and set them on the table as well, ready.

I take each sheet of notes and order them as best I can, checking dates, checking the timeline of appointments and events. They go a long way back. My whole history.

Back then, my mother was only trying to help. Just as Freya was only trying to help her cousin. Freya stumbled on the power of the mind. She knew what a difference an alternative narrative could make. But that power can be such a danger. We can be so blinded by what we try to make ourselves believe.

I finally find the page I am looking for. An old entry, from eight years ago.

Mrs Arden (client’s mother) explained that her daughter fell asleep with her infant son on the couch at home. The child slipped down and became trapped against the cushions and suffered a degree of asphyxiation. Mrs Arden discovered mother and baby, woke her daughter and called an ambulance. Doctors examining the child report no observable damage, but Jennifer Arden has been presenting as highly agitated and distressed.

Freya would have seen this entry in my file, and – for her needs – that narrative already contained enough guilt. She fired off an anonymous accusation, confident of it landing: Jennifer Arden, I know what you did.

I stare at the typed words for a really long time. It’s even longer before I can pick up the pen, but I do it.