Dr St Clair opened the door to Irene and Bertie. He smiled. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Mrs Pollock and young Bertie. It’s that time already, is it? I was reading something and didn’t notice what time it was.’

‘Bertie and I were just talking about subjective time,’ said Irene. ‘Weren’t we, Bertie?’

Bertie nodded. He did not want to be here, and he did not want to start discussing subjective time all over again with Dr St Clair.

They went into the waiting room.

‘Bertie, you just sit there like a good boy for a minute or two while I have a wee talk with Dr St Clair,’ said Irene.

Bertie sat down obediently.

‘You can read those magazines,’ went on Irene. ‘Bertie is a great reader, Dr St Clair. He was reading when he was three.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Dr St Clair. ‘That’s early.’

Bertie buried himself in an old copy of Scottish Field. He wished that his mother would not discuss him in front of other people, but she always did.

‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘He read quite voraciously – fairly advanced things too – if you can call Stevenson advanced, which I do not. He read Kidnapped when he was four. And he had read all of Roald Dahl by the time he was five. All of it. Not that I approve of Dahl, who is, I think, very misguided on a number of points, but it was quite an achievement on Bertie’s part.’

‘I’ve always liked Roald Dahl,’ said Dr St Clair. ‘There’s a certain anarchic tendency there.’

‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘And patriarchal too. Do you think that he was one of those authors who punished women?’

Dr St Clair looked puzzled. ‘Punished them?’

‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘Look at Flaubert. Madame Bovary was punished – and punished very convincingly. And what about poor Anna Karenina? She was punished, wasn’t she?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Dr St Clair. He looked at his watch. ‘But time is marching on and maybe—’

Irene interrupted him. ‘I’d just like a few words with you first, if you don’t mind.’ She moved decisively towards the door of Dr St Clair’s consulting room and he followed her, glancing back at Bertie as he did so. The door closed behind them.

‘Is everything all right?’ asked Dr St Clair, gesturing for Irene to sit down. ‘He seems cheerful enough.’

‘On the surface,’ said Irene. ‘But I’m not sure if all is well underneath. He took my other child – little Ulysses – off to school the other day. Abducted him.’

Dr St Clair frowned. ‘Abducted?’

‘Yes. He removed him from the flat while I was having a lie-in and my husband – rather thoughtlessly, it must be said – had gone off to work. Bertie took it upon himself to remove Ulysses and take him to school. The first thing I heard of it was when I received a frantic call from the school.’