It must have been the radiant smile that had confused him, creating a momentary illusion of youth. It was unusual for someone her age to beam like that – like a kid who’d just found some buried treasure and realised it was better than she’d hoped it would be. Sellers was as taken aback by the smile as by Lane’s enthusiastic cry of ‘Welcome!’ She was doing a convincing impression of someone whose day had been greatly enhanced as a result of his sudden arrival in it; no one had ever looked at him that way before – not his mother, not Stacey, not either of his kids, none of the women he’d shagged. Literally no one.

Sellers decided it meant Marjolein Baillie was probably hoping to try and con him out of something, like all his money, or into something, like a freaky religious cult. He’d done his homework. As well as being a counsellor and psychotherapist, she was – and she admitted it; she advertised it – an Ishaya of the Bright Path. There were articles on her website explaining what this meant, or purporting to, though Sellers had read all of them and was none the wiser. The Bright Path was described in several places as being a kind of meditation, though there were no instructions for how to do it, and in other paragraphs it was referred to more as if it were a religion.

‘Please come in,’ Lane Baillie stood aside and gestured with her left arm to indicate that he should enter. Using a series of arm movements that made Sellers think of ballet dancing, she directed him, wordlessly, into the second room they came to.

It was a lounge with hardly anything in it. French doors at one end led onto a small, tidy, fenced-in garden. The focal point of the room was a white marble-effect fireplace. There was a matching armchair and sofa – pale green with a white leaf pattern – a beige carpet and a rug that was made out of tiny wooden beads strung together. Sellers hadn’t met a wooden rug before. He wondered if Bright Path meditation might involve lying on it naked, with the wooden beads digging into your back. He stopped thinking about this in time to save himself from embarrassment.

‘Please have a seat.’ Still beaming at him as if he was the best visitor she’d ever had, Lane indicated the sofa.

Sellers sat, wondering what would have happened if he’d ignored the arm signal and gone for the chair.

‘I’ll be with you very soon.’ She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Sellers stared at the fireplace. Along the edge of the bottom bit were five small white pebbles and two royal blue ceramic bowls full of what looked like water. Water, fire, stone. Perhaps Bright Path meditation involved thinking about the different elements. Was stone an element?