‘No, I don’t,’ said Irene, taking Bertie by the hand and beginning the walk up Dundas Street to psychotherapy. ‘Your saxophone playing is coming along really well. Grade Seven already, Bertie, and you’re only six!’

‘When will I be seven?’ asked Bertie. ‘I’ve been six for ages.’

Irene laughed. ‘Being seven is a state of mind, Bertie. You’ll be seven on your next birthday, but you can be seven inside, you know, any time.’

Bertie frowned. He was used to his mother making elliptical comments which, for the most part, it was safe to ignore; this one, however, related to birthdays – an important subject for a child, and one about which there should be no ambiguity.

‘How can you be seven inside?’ he asked. ‘Am I seven inside?’ It was clutching at straws, of course; to be seven inside would be no substitute, he thought, for being seven on the outside.

Irene did not answer for a few moments. She was preoccupied with thoughts of Bertie’s new psychotherapist, Dr St Clair. She realised that she did not know much about him – other than the fact that he was Australian – and she wanted to find out more. There was something about him that intrigued her; some of the same quality that she had seen in Dr Hugo Fairbairn. Why, she wondered, were these people so interesting? Did psychotherapy as a career attract a certain type of man, who might then appeal to a certain type of woman? If it did, then what type of woman was she? Intelligent, I suppose, thought Irene; women who have no time for those matters which occupy so many women still in a state of false consciousness – cooking, friendship, romance, clothes. What a shameful list, she thought; how limiting; and how fortunate was she, Irene, not to be in a state of false consciousness, unlike other women.

The attractiveness of psychotherapists, she decided, lay in their ability to interest themselves in what other people were thinking. It was quite simple, really: for most of us the topic of greatest interest in this world is undoubtedly ourselves. That is where the real fascination of the world lies – what happens to us, and what we think about it, is infinitely interesting, even if it is of surprisingly little moment for others. Psychotherapists understood this, and made it their concern to find out what we were thinking. In this respect, they showed that quality which marks out the sympathetic from the unsympathetic, and of course that was attractive – of course it was. I myself am simpatica, thought Irene – that is obvious enough – but we are surrounded – surrounded – by those who are not.

‘What were you saying, Bertie? Mummy was busy thinking.’

‘I asked how you could be seven inside,’ said Bertie.