It was almost two hours before he arrived and I sat by the open door and listened to the fragments of people’s lives. Children squabble, someone rather unwillingly practises scales on a piano, windows open, windows shut, a kettle screeches, there is laughter, a sudden riff from a drummer high up on the top floor, and the pigeons peck on the ground under the ginkgo. It is as clear in my head now as it was then: I can even get the whiff of the damp air in my nose as I write.

After about an hour and a half I began to think that he wasn’t coming; that he had told his mother he was spending the night away from home and that she had vaporised him. I sat by the open door and looked out into the garden and wished yet again that I was at home.

I never even heard the creak of the door or his steps as he crossed the room. The first inkling I had of his arrival was the weight of his hands on my shoulders and his warm voice murmuring into my ear. ‘Clara. Clara.’

How long ago?

Almost a year, but still as I tap out my name, I can hear his voice, I can feel the heat that ran through my whole body. I never liked my name before that moment, but I loved it that evening as he spoke it over and over again.

I think this is a good moment to stop.

Unlike Lar, I wish to forget. I would like in ten years’ time to be able to look at these pages and laugh.

Five years.

One year.

That’s better.

clllm.

You may now switch off.

He found the doctor an easy man to talk to. Non-judgemental. Still.

A stranger.

That was important. How easy it is to talk to a stranger, as long as they remain still. If they just breathe in and out, in and out. Nod briefly, smile from time to time.

The doctor sat across the table leaning slightly forward, his chin propped on his right hand.

I suppose, thought Lar, he does this every day, leans towards his patients like this, listening with care until they have finished whatever it is they want to tell him.

He told him everything: about their house above the sea and the steps going down to the sandy bay, about the shed where her pictures were stacked with their faces to the wall, like children being punished. He told him about his mother who always wore grey and his father, about being careful, always being careful and the tensions that caused inside your head. ‘Everyone pretends we have been living a normal life. Everyone pretends to understand. Everyone pretends that if this happened or that happened we would all love each other and be in some way translated into paradise.’

He stopped and looked across the table at the doctor. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I merely mean some form of normality. Life without hate. Or maybe that is not possible.’