Simone would wake often in panic and rush to his room, her face sheet-white in the darkness. She swore that she could hear him calling out to her from the darkened corners of the house, from beneath doorframes and down flights of stairs.

I caught her once in the attic, tipping out the contents of boxes, searching desperately for his old baby monitor – weeping when she found it without power, the batteries long dead. She was sure, she said, that she could hear him over the tinny speaker. That he was calling her name.

For months she was sick with the grief. Rendered almost catatonic by a weight that hung heavy in both her mind and body. She refused to eat and spent her days wandering the halls aimlessly, drifting from room to room as if he might suddenly appear from behind the kitchen island or beneath the staircase.

There were only brief reprieves. Moments of stillness that hinted at stability, a chance to return to a sort of normalcy. But they were fragile, disturbed by the simplest of discoveries. A photograph hidden between the pages of a book could send her reeling. A tiny sandal discovered beneath a piece of furniture. An article of clothing that triggered her olfactory memory and brought him back to her for the cruellest of moments.

She suffered stress headaches, much like she had as a teenager, migraines that would blossom like cactus flowers in the depths of her eye sockets. She was struck by a terrible malaise that kept her bedridden. And though I knew only stories of her youth, I was forced to watch helplessly as the wounds of her depression reopened across the geography of her body.

In his absence I directed the excess of my attention towards her. I bathed and fed her, caring as best I could. On good days she would take small sips of soup, and between mouthfuls I would try to reason with her. I would stroke her hair and beg. But inevitably she would rebuff my attempts, slapping me away to drift upstairs and draw herself a bath.

I would sit on my knees and watch through the keyhole as she stripped naked and submerged herself in the scalding water, her skin turning lobster pink as she opened her eyes and held her breath for as long as she could bear before wrenching upwards and gasping for breath.

‘Oh God,’ she would howl. ‘Oh God.’

VI

At the beginning of each session the therapist steeps a pot of tea, serving the liquid in porcelain cups and saucers that she delivers on a steel tray reminiscent of a piece of surgical equipment, something you might have found in an operating theatre at the turn of the century. It is a strange and disconcerting juxtaposition.

I decline the offer of a beverage but Simone partakes. I can tell that she is fond of the therapist, but in truth I find the woman deeply unsettling. Her eyes are so dark they seem to swallow the light round them; her gaze so intense, so unwavering in its certainty, that I feel myself carried away by it.