‘She never really recovered. I don’t know where she is now. She left us about a year ago. She would go out for days, and I’d come home and find her with a needle in her arm. She never adjusted after what happened to her sister and her dad.’

It’s a bad time to stop but my next client will already be in the lobby. ‘Okay, Cormac. We’ve come to the end of our time. I’ve got you again on Thursday. I want to continue this conversation then.’

‘This coming Thursday?’ he asks, rising. I stand too.

‘Is that okay?’

‘What time?’

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘Oh jeez, I’ve got some very important business to take care of at ten.’ He smiles, to let me know he’s joking. ‘I’ll be there.’ He gently bumps my arm with his fist. The contact is too familiar, it’s not professional, but I’m not going to admonish him after what he’s just told me.

I look up into his green eyes. ‘Don’t be late,’ I say. ‘Oh, and Cormac, take ten minutes a day to write down anything you’re thinking or feeling, especially when you feel any extreme emotion: anger, rage, ecstasy, elation. Just note it and write about it. Can you do that?’

‘Alright, sure. Doctor’s orders. Write my feelings down. Got it. See you Thursday at three.’

Before bringing in my next client, I go to Anna at reception, lean down and quietly ask, ‘Has payment come through for Cormac?’

She clicks the screen. ‘Yep, all paid up for the next few sessions.’

‘Great. Give me two minutes, then you can send my next client through.’

I make a few more notes about Cormac’s parents. I’m curious, so I quickly unlock my phone and search for the story. I find something. Dublin double homicide, man in custody. It’s from years ago. But he’s alive. Cormac’s father is alive, or at least he was when he was arrested. He wasn’t shot by the police and he didn’t turn the knife on himself. He fell in love with the wrong woman. There is clearly a lot of trauma in his past, and in his family. Complex emotions he’s suppressing and internalising, no doubt. Potentially self-blame too.

Now he is under an intense level of stress to raise his sister, to provide for her in a foreign place. He could justify the essay writing for others as a means to an end. I make one last note: Father still alive in prison? Self-sabotaging or simply reckless?

•

I get through my afternoon appointments, then set off for home. I park in our driveway, listening, waiting for the song to finish. In Bloom by Nirvana. I close my eyes for a few moments.