His face melted in a way that it never had for me. ‘Yeah, they’re coming Friday. Little terrors. Anyway, talking about how good you’re feeling…’ He gave a wolfish smile. ‘Shall we go back to mine soon?’

I hesitated. I couldn’t simply fold.

‘Arthur… I wanted to ask you something.’

‘What’s that?’

I forced clarity. ‘Um, with reiki, do you ever use anything to relax the – what, patient?’

He looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Like, I don’t know. Hallucinogenics or – you know, like how everyone’s going on about mushrooms these days.’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said irritably. ‘It would be completely unprofessional. It’s a hands-on healing; it’s not about other substances.’

‘What, never? So, there was no way, on the retreat, you’d have given us something for – energy flow, or something?’

‘Of course not,’ he barked. ‘Anyone who does practice that way should be barred.’ Fear prickled through my body. His professional affront was real: I felt sure that, if anyone had drugged me, it wasn’t him.

‘Right, it’s just something Tim said. About how I was at the end of my session.’

Something different crossed his face now, something complicated, but he wiped it away so swiftly that I could kid myself I imagined it.

‘I’d ignore him if I were you,’ he said. ‘Conventional medicine breeds hysteria. I’ll go to the bar and settle up. Do you want to give me your card, and I’ll just tap it for you?’

‘Here you go,’ I said, pulling out my radioactive Amex out of my purse. I kept my focus on following his progress back to the bar, refusing to let my mind roam to the places it would soon be forced to travel to.

It was barely sunrise as I approached Amber’s treatment room the next morning. It was kind of her to see me at this ungodly hour, I told myself, still refusing to unravel the implications of what Arthur had said to me. Some part of me was wary, though, judging by the way my finger hovered over the buzzer the same way it had that first time I came here. But this was Amber, I insisted to myself, firmly pressing. She was my protector. The saviour of my sanity.

I felt it the moment I walked into the room. If she’d had an aura, it would have been an icy blue, the chill in the room tangible enough to make me shiver. She was sitting on the sofa, one leg folded underneath her like a ballet dancer. She didn’t get up to hug me like she normally did; instead she slowly raised her head, allowing our eyes to meet only when she was ready.

‘Hi,’ I said uncertainly, my stomach churning with a seasick dread.

‘Hello, Rachel,’ she replied, clipped. ‘Sit yourself down,’ she added, as if I should be asking her permission.