‘And sometimes you wished for bad things to happen to her, yes? You wished for bad things, and then she died and you thought it was your fault, because children think everything is always their fault.’

Is Claire hypnotised? Is that what this is? Because there is a memory unfolding in her, one she’s never had before, of her mother on her knees in the garden with a pair of secateurs, and a row of stately irises snipped and toppling, one by one. Their petals, hearts and tongues, keep on quivering after they land.

‘Isn’t it a bit hackneyed to talk about mothers?’ she says, and hears the woman smile. ‘And a bit anachronistic to be using Freud on a patient from the 1850s?’

‘I said it wasn’t your fault – do you remember? I said it couldn’t possibly be your fault, because you are not a supernatural being; you cannot make things happen just by wishing they would.’

‘Obviously not.’

‘Obvious to the grown-up. But you have to tell the child.’

‘Oh my God. Who wrote this script?’

‘When she becomes agitated,’ says the woman, turning to address the room, ‘Miss Jansen suffers from a very common delusion, which is that she is not really ill, she’s just pretending to be ill. This is all a kind of performance. Allegedly, I have a script.’

The spectators laugh.

‘Oh,’ Claire says. ‘And now we’re postmodern. This really is a mess.’

They laugh a bit more.

‘Maybe,’ the woman says. ‘Maybe you are very funny. But your resistance to talking about your mother seems significant to me. Do you feel that you betrayed her, somehow, by opening up to me yesterday?’

‘Are you a volunteer?’

‘In this delusion,’ the woman explains, ‘we are all visitors to a museum of psychiatry in which she has volunteered for a project. Ingenious, isn’t it? I can’t think of a better way to make yourself feel good about being stuck in here. What have you volunteered for this time?’

‘Whatever it was, I’m starting to regret it.’

Nobody laughs at this, though Claire had meant to make a joke.

‘I’m starting to regret it,’ the woman repeats, with satisfaction. ‘Do you see how important it is to you, to feel that you have chosen the compulsory chair? We can only regret the things we choose.’

‘Fine,’ Claire says. ‘You’re not a therapist. You’re an inmate, just like me.’

‘Very good! But I am free to roam the building,’ the woman says, walking towards the doorway, ‘and even to leave the building’ – she returns – ‘whereas you are confined.’

‘I can leave. Any time I like. Mikke! Let me out!’