I want to tell her everything. I want to ask her for her help. But I look at the fatigue that is clear on Margaret’s face, deeper than ever since that phone call, and I struggle to get the words out. I hate the thought of being another problem. And then it’s so exposing asking for help: displaying all your weaknesses, confessing all your faults. Surely it’s better to fix yourself on your own. After all, Mum turned out to be right, didn’t she? Eventually, I coped without help back then, so surely I can do the same thing now; save myself all that embarrassment and shame. I think about what’s in those notes of Margaret’s from last year. Everything they didn’t find. All the results that said there was nothing. Instead there are the tools and techniques that the psychologist taught me, all of which I’ve been stupidly neglecting. I think about all the health-care budget cuts, reported endlessly on the news. I think about how stretched Margaret and her team must be. No doubt there are clients in crisis all the time. And here I am, making a crisis out of absolutely nothing.

I swallow down the words that were lying ready on my tongue and look down at Charlie, my beautiful son.

‘I’m fine,’ I tell her instead. ‘And Charlie’s great. Plus work is proving a good distraction. So we’re both doing absolutely grand.’

Margaret smiles. She looks so relieved. And I tell myself, it’s really just a blip. Really, I am fine.

Margaret leaves my flat five minutes later.

And I am officially discharged.

Chapter 9

BACK THEN

Prin has to remind Daddy about the ice cream. He clearly would have forgotten otherwise. There is so much fussing about getting Prin’s cousin into the car, and making sure she has her seatbelt on and that she is comfy, and asking her, like a million times, whether she needs anything.

Prin’s cousin doesn’t say much, just nodding mostly and saying yes, thank you, she is fine, and it’s only once they are about ten minutes down the road, heading home, and Prin has been waiting all that time, arms folded, to see whether Daddy, or Mum, will say anything, that Prin finally pipes up and reminds them about the ice cream.