The angel on my shoulder told me that this was private and I shouldn’t look. Mum would kill me if she knew I read a client’s file. It wasn’t like she never talked about them. She sometimes told me a joke she’d heard from one or I’d hear her talking to Dad about people she was particularly worried about, but she never mentioned their names and there was a separate entrance to her office, so the closest I ever got to identifying someone was when they walked around the house to the side door. A blur through the blinds that revealed a blonde or brunette, maybe the color of top they had on, that was it.

A name was written in Sharpie in the corner. Dominik Mazur. Heart beating slightly faster, as though she might walk in and catch me, I flipped open the file. The first pages looked like standardized forms so I skipped forward a bit.

Dominik began session saying his week was good. Talked about his mother’s new job. She is enjoying it. Dominik is relieved his younger brother is happy at school. When prompted to talk about his own week he was initially reserved. Later he admitted he was locked in bathroom by peers and got in trouble for missing class. Did not tell mother about incident as he did not want to worry her. We role-played conversation with Mum. It’s clear D does not want to discuss his difficulties out of fear of upsetting her. I asked what would be so wrong with her being upset.

I flipped back to the beginning of the file to see what age Dominik was. Fifteen. It said he came to her after an overdose. But that was ten years ago. He’d be in his twenties now. I skipped ahead to the middle of the file.

Dominik expressed anxiety about sitting Junior Cert in second language. He said he was afraid to make mistakes in grammar and punctuation. Then discussed anxiety about forgetting Polish. Woke up in the middle of the night unable to remember obscure vocabulary. He laughed but appeared distressed by this. Said he talked to his mother about speaking Polish more at home and she agreed. Previously she insisted on English to encourage learning second language but feels they are sufficiently fluent now. I expressed how incredible it was for D to be fluent in English when it is his second language. He appeared embarrassed. Discussed his inclination toward perfection and whether other students were also likely to make mistakes in punctuation and grammar.

For half an hour I sat with Dominik’s file and tracked a year in his life through my mother’s notes. He was bullied and anxious and felt alone. I thought about him coming to my house every week and talking to my mum. I wondered if it helped.