‘It belongs to a friend of hers, apparently. She’s minding it. I didn’t like the way it looked at me. I thought a reptile would be the last thing Mum would want in the house, but she seems to be fond of it because, when I left, it was sitting on her lap and she was stroking its shell.’

‘And what about your father? How is he?’

‘Fine, I suppose.’

‘I saw him on television this weekend,’ said Dr Oristo. ‘Interviewing Mick Jagger. I thought he looked rather tired.’

‘Which one?’

‘Well, both of them, I suppose. Perhaps the burdens of fatherhood just happen to be weighing on his mind right now. He sees you struggle, and from what you’ve told me, living with Elizabeth and Achilles isn’t always easy. Perhaps he’s looking for a way to connect with you all? You should allow that to happen if that’s what he’s after. I’m sure he loves you very much.’

‘I know he does,’ said Nelson. ‘I know they both do. I have no terrible dark secrets from my childhood so I don’t understand why I’m so messed up. A twenty-two-year-old virgin who can’t talk to women and is being bullied at school by the same man who bullied me when we were pupils. Achilles is five years younger than me and he’s so much better evolved.’

Dr Oristo glanced at the clock. Their session was coming to an end and she had yet to tell Nelson her news. It was bad timing, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She put her notepad away and leaned forward.

‘Nelson,’ she said. ‘I have something to tell you and, at first, you might find it upsetting, but I want to assure you that you have nothing to worry about. I need you to trust me and to remain calm. Can you do that for me, Nelson? Can you trust me and remain calm?’

He stared at her and thought about this for a long time. ‘It seems unlikely,’ he said eventually.

SANGERS FOR SKANGERS

A few months earlier, Elizabeth Cleverley had read a novel about a girl born with a halo above her head. Having spent the morning preparing sandwiches for the homeless, she felt she could relate to the girl’s predicament and longed for her shift to be over so she could go somewhere with Wi-Fi to post pictures of her philanthropy online. She, too, deserved a halo, she believed. A digital one, anyway.

Sangers for Skangers – the ‘g’ was hard in both cases – was an initiative dreamed up by her boyfriend, Wilkes Maguire, who spent his evenings trawling through supermarket dumpsters in search of stale, discarded bread before toasting every slice, adding past-its-sell-by-date ham, turkey or cheese, and wandering the streets, handing out his efforts to the homeless, before kissing their hands, taking a selfie and assuring them that he saw them.