I witness her only in fleeting glances, stolen moments. Her look is timeless not in the sense that it evades antiquation, but that it simply cannot be placed. Though her hair is silver her age proves increasingly difficult to determine. She takes a moment to compose herself before speaking, as if the act of cognition weighs heavily, but she moves in a manner that betrays her appearance, suggesting a certain youthfulness.

When I ask whether it’s common for a person in her field to work out of their own home she says, ‘I am in the business of intimacy. This has been my home for as long as I can remember having one. It was my father’s, and his father’s before him. It seemed only fitting.’

In the days leading up to our first appointment I imagined the building as part of a vast institute. I saw pretentious men loitering in lab coats. Long hallways with polished floors that smelt faintly of ammonia. Concrete walls in gradations of dull pastel colours. Obscure and vaguely phallic sculptures.

And perhaps that is why the therapist speaks to Simone with a delicate humility but seems to regard me with a certain hostility, a remoteness that borders on condemnation. She considers me a sceptic, a non-believer. I have never experienced the types of depressive fits Simone finds herself prone to. The kind of sadness that falls upon a person like winter snow. Thick and suffocating and entirely without reason.

Though I try to remain sympathetic during our sessions, I find myself repeatedly insisting on actionable change, measurable progress. Instead we talk increasingly about the regalia of loss. We discuss our dreams endlessly. Simone says that she can see him so clearly when she closes her eyes that it hurts. But to me the memory of his face remains indistinct, elusive. Like something from another time.

The therapist listens to Simone intently but thanks me for my contributions in a way that feels like an act of placation, as if I am a child on some rambling, inarticulate monologue. Each time she speaks I feel my frustration like a knot at the centre of my chest. I try to will it away.

I watch as she adjusts the hem of her dress, the rim of her glasses, and feel a simmering heat inside of me. When I look round her office I spot diplomas and accolades, but not a single family photo. I wonder if she even has a family. I wonder if our blight, our sorrow, is even remotely relatable to her, or if this is all just a sad academic exercise.

It upsets me too that while she carries a notepad I never see her make note of anything during our sessions. Is our pain so pedestrian, I wonder? So transient as to not even be noteworthy?

‘Who does this help?’ I ask suddenly, surprising myself, digging my fingers so deeply into my calf that my knuckles turn white. ‘Who does this help, this endless repetition?’