‘I can’t believe how quickly they got here,’ she said.

‘Only because of the knife,’ said Bea.

‘You were brilliant,’ said the woman.

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘Do you want a cup of tea? I’m Veena.’

They went inside.

‘Bloody donations,’ said Veena, stepping over the bags. ‘They’re the worst part of this job.’ She kicked them away, ‘You wouldn’t believe the rubbish people give us. Bags of dirty clothes, like we’re a laundry.’

They stood together in the silent aftermath, the musty air and shadows of the shop.

‘Do you need a hand?’ said Bea. ‘I’ve still got twenty minutes, and I only work down the road.’

She and Veena drank tea and sorted clothes until it was time for Bea to leave.

‘Thank God you came in,’ said Veena.

‘I was looking at the holdall in the window,’ said Bea.

‘The red one? That’s Italian leather. I’ll give you half price.’

Even at half price it was more than she could afford but Bea bought it to cheer Veena up, and because she knew Dan would love it.

In the afternoon there was the safeguarding meeting with the rest of the practice. Safeguarding was always the same: we can’t be accused of this, because we’ve done that; did you see the letter from the Trust? The guidelines from NICE? Bea took the minutes, and tried not to think about where Emma was or what would happen to her baby. She tried not to remember his defenceless hands. Then, after the meeting, back in her therapy room she waited for her half-past-two clients, a couple with their teenage son. The son gave Bea despairing looks as his father talked. The mother pretended to listen but her hand kept going for her phone, like a gunfighter. Then at four fifteen Bea saw Jill, whose husband had died of cancer, and at five thirty, Lily, who suffered from anorexia and whose family’s distress was nothing in the face of her feeble, unbreakable rage. From half past six Bea wrote up her notes and from seven she was alone. Her colleagues went home to cats and dogs and children.

‘You won’t get a medal,’ they said.

‘Bless you, love.’

A personality quiz had once told Bea to stop being self-sacrificing. Don’t be a doormat, it said. It had struck her as a particularly modern assumption that giving diminished the self rather than nourished it. She didn’t equate giving with sacrifice. And she wasn’t a doormat, she was a psychotherapist. She left her desk with a note for the morning – Chase up Lily’s psych assess. Finish safeguarding mins – turned off the lights, and shut down the office. She went up the basement steps, the pristine hoarding hanging on the scaffold above, swinging in the wind. 200 Luxury Apartments. Rooftop Terrace. Pool. Gym. 24-Hour Porter. 36 Retail Units. 46,000 Sq. Ft. The cold air hit her face like a drink of water and she saw her bus and ran. Foot in a puddle. Banging on the doors. Thanking the driver, tripping on a backpack, looking out at the crowds and wondering about all the lives and thoughts behind the faces. Holding tightly to the rail. Jostled in the crowded bus her thoughts drained away like a wave from the sand. Air between the grains, quiet in her head as the sounds receded. Peace. A voice, a cough, bus stopped, and off. Bus stop. People surging right when she was heading left. Someone banged her shoulder – stranger, not thief. Off the kerb. Cross the street. Reach the house. Bag. Keys. Front door. Inside. And stairs. And she could smell cooking from the ground-floor flat. Cumin and onions. She hadn’t been to the shops. Her shoes were wet. She would put them on the radiator. She got to her door, at an angle on the landing, and their neighbour’s bicycle next to it, dripping, just home too. Home. She went inside and there was Dan.