When she wakes it is morning.

‘I dreamt we were at sea,’ she says.

II

We are told to use the journals to write stray thoughts and observations between sessions. It’s a vague assignment that I find more irritating than liberating. And though I make a few genuine attempts, all I can ever bring myself to write about is how punishingly tired I feel.

‘It’s as if someone is cutting into me while I sleep and gradually stitching weights into the muscles and tendons of my body. And though it’s not debilitating I find it harder each day to fight to the surface. To re-become myself,’ I read aloud during our next session.

‘And is that what you want?’ the therapist asks. ‘To re-become yourself?’

I think about that in the dark on the way home, my car illuminated every so often by passing headlights. And when I see the house approaching I consider blowing straight past it. Just disappearing into the night.

When I pull into the driveway Simone is sat on the doorstep waiting for me. She palms up a fistful of snow and rubs it into her cheeks. When she pulls her hands away her face is shot red with the shock, her skin alive and screaming, and I am almost relieved.

III

There is a newfound levity to Simone in the weeks after we begin therapy. It’s as if a cloud has begun to lift. Early one morning I suggest we take a drive into the city and to my surprise she agrees. I can hardly remember the last time she left the house for any kind of recreational pursuit. As I help her into the car I realise I am holding my breath. I allow myself, for the briefest moment, to hope. Perhaps the fresh air will do her good, I think. Perhaps some time away is all she’ll need.

She sits with her hands folded in her lap and as I merge onto the freeway I tell myself that we have turned a corner. But with each passing mile I feel a tension building in the car. Her hands reaching up slowly to cross her chest, her muscles bracing for some imagined impact.

We order breakfast at a small diner we used to visit often. Simone had been instantly smitten by the place when we first stumbled upon it. She used to say it made her feel like she was part of an Edward Hopper painting. The chefs here wear paper forage hats and go about their work in immaculate white smocks. They serve comfort foods. Pie with ice cream, coffee and eggs.

We sit in a booth and watch as patrons shuffle in and out of doorways, as they hop on and off bar stools. Behind us a young couple sit hand in hand. They lean into each other and whisper. I watch them and try to imagine their darkest secrets, to fantasise their intimacies. They touch the napes of each other’s necks. They giggle.