“This is my cue to leave,” Gad says, standing up and giving a mock bow. “I bid you lovely people adieu. My citizenship test waits.”

The Old Man blows him a kiss and Gad departs, humming.

“She hasn’t signed the divorce papers yet,” the Old Man says. “Can you believe it?”

I shrug.

“The master manipulator at work,” he says. “Incredible. Same way she’s managed to get her sixteen-year-old daughter to see a psychologist.”

“Seventeen.”

“What?”

“I’m seventeen. Not sixteen.”

The Old Man throws the towel over Gad’s empty chair. “Now, let me look at this beautiful face.” He cups my cheeks in both hands. His palms, despite the yoga, are dry from countless hours handling clay in his backyard ceramics studio. “I see you, sweetheart,” he says. Like the bloody Na’vi in Avatar. The Old Man’s way of saying, I love you.

“Are you eating properly?” he says now, frowning.

I pull away.

“You know what you need?” he says, narrowing his eyes.

“Enlighten me.”

“A dog.”

“A what?”

“One of those beautiful chocolate Labradors. Dogs can centre a person.”

“You’re allergic.”

“Your next appointment,” he says, changing tack. “It’s tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“How many more sessions do you have?”

“Six.”

“It makes me mad. You don’t need this. We should go to Brighton. There’s this Wellbeing Festival there. Love and wholesomeness, that’s what you need. And trees.”

“Right. And a dog.”

“It’s normal,” the Old Man says. “This’ll pass. It’s a phase. Life is full of phases, one after the other, you’ll see.”

Yeah right. A phase. Like marriage.

“You’re on a journey, Ana. All you have to do is find the real you.” He taps my chest bone. “The Ana Moon in here.”

Vintage Old Man. Michael Moon believes in the healing power of trees and forest walks and staring into night fires. He believes in crystals and Reiki, that the heart is the most important organ in the body, and that kindness trumps intellect any day of the week. What he doesn’t believe in is psychotherapy. But Frankie does.

“I forgot to get something from High Street,” I tell the Old Man, plunging my fingers between the plastic straps of the chair, widening them, then pinching them back in place. “It won’t take long. An hour tops.”

“Get what?”

“A book. It’s on our English Lit reading list for the next term.”

“What book?”

“Equus,” I reply. “It’s a play by Peter Shaffer.” Which is true—both the title and the author and that it’s on our reading list—the only thing I leave out is my real intention: to meet up with the one person everyone thinks is leading me astray. Bea.

“It’s all about horses,” I tell the Old Man, when I see him frown.

“Hardly,” he says. “It’s about far more than that.”

“Can I go?”