Verity nods again. She uncrosses her legs and places both shoes neatly on the carpet. She pouts slightly. I decide to give her something. ‘I’m having preoccupations, though. Intrusive thoughts.’ Well, I am, aren’t I? I’m looking for updates about Philippa on the news all the time.

‘Are they impacting on your day-to-day life? What do you do for a living?’

‘I work from home,’ I lie. God, I want to take off this lovely jacket.

‘So you have remote colleagues?’

All my colleagues in all my jobs were pretty remote, I think, because I kept them that way. ‘No, I kind of work on my own.’

‘And what’s your home situation? Are you married?’

I look down at my ringless left hand, where she is also looking. ‘No.’

‘Children?’

‘No.’

Do I tell her I’ve not exactly been a success when it comes to relationships? That I lost my virginity in a student bedsit when I was seventeen (I was never a student but my first terrible lover was – a very drunk boy who kept his plimsolls on)? That my love life stalled at that point and never got going again? That two particular encounters in my life have meant relationships are not something I go looking for?

‘I live with my blind father and we don’t get out much any more,’ I blurt out instead.

‘Did you used to?’

‘What?’ I’m already regretting saying it.

‘Get out much.’

‘Yes, we did. Well, obviously I did, when I was working. I started … er … working from home three years ago.’

‘What is it exactly that you do? I haven’t missed that, have I?’ She frowns, consulting her notes.

Oh, sod it, I think. I’ve only got the hour. ‘I don’t work,’ I say. ‘Not any more. I used to.’ I take a deep breath and I launch. ‘I left school at sixteen and drifted for a few years in dead-end, go-nowhere jobs, then, somehow, one of those cards in the Job Centre landed me the role of catering assistant at the North London Conference Centre, in Highbury, when I was twenty-one. I enjoyed it. I did well there. Badging, Bookings, then management … I worked at the conference centre for twenty years, until I was made redundant, then I returned to those dead-end jobs again – bars and bookies and pound shops and taxi offices and dog-burger companies …’ I give a wry smile. I enjoy Verity’s look of surprise at ‘dog burger’. ‘And for the past three years I’ve done nothing at all. Which is how I like it. My father doesn’t do anything either, although back in the day he used to have a life, despite being blind … a good life, really.’ I pause. Verity is interested, I can tell. I can see she’s fighting not to raise her eyebrows. ‘Until we lost the guide dogs.’