‘Oh, hello!’ the woman called out. ‘Thank goodness! I think we’re a little lost…’ And she made to clamber over the drystone wall that acted as a boundary between the footpath and his garden. Brody started to back away, even as the woman made eye contact and waved a badly folded map at him. ‘I don’t suppose you know the way to Hexworthy, do you?’ she said loudly, completely ignoring the fact she’d just hopped onto his property uninvited. She was middle-aged, and what his mother would have called a ‘jolly hockey sticks’ type. ‘We’re booked at a B&B in the village…’ She broke off to look at her partner in crime.

‘The Sheep Dip Bed and Breakfast,’ he supplied.

‘The Sheep Dip Bed and Breakfast,’ she repeated, as if her companion hadn’t just said exactly the same thing, and turned her hopeful gaze back to Brody.

Brody just stared at her, frozen to the spot. His heart began to pound, and his fingers went numb and tingly.

Remember what Ibrahim said, he told himself inside his head. You are okay. You are not having a stroke. Just the same non-dangerous symptoms you get every time you have a panic attack. Don’t fight it, just… notice. Accept.

Ibrahim had suggested keeping a record of when and where he had his most anxious moments: what triggered them, how long they lasted, and how bad they were on a scale of one to ten.

Six, Brody thought matter-of-factly in the corner of his brain that seemed to be functioning almost normally. Although it could peak at an eight or nine if she keeps striding towards me that way.

From talking to Ibrahim, he’d worked out that it was other people – strangers, more specifically – that triggered most of his panic attacks, and the more of them there were around, the more severe the episode, especially if he was in a confined space, like a shop, or even an outside area without many exits. He needed to know that he could get away, that he could escape.

Not for the first time, Brody chided himself for not planting a hedge or getting a fence, but hardly anyone used this old footpath. These were the first walkers he’d seen in months.

There was nothing he could do about that now. His only options were: (a) turn on his heels and run, which would make him seem incredibly rude, or (b) talk to the woman. And since his feet seemed to be cemented to the dusty ground, it appeared option (a) was more wishful thinking than anything else.

Concentrate, Brody! What was the first technique Ibrahim said to employ?

Breathe.

He needed to breathe.

The thought came cleanly and smoothly into his head like magic. As if it belonged there. He dug his feet even harder into the cobblestones and lifted his head, stared the woman in the face, all the while inhaling as evenly as he could, then letting the air out slowly again.