‘Please don’t hate me.’ I’m pathetic now, bleating like a lamb. I’m really letting myself down with this ghastly neediness, I know, but it suddenly seems vitally important to me that she doesn’t hate me. If she leaves this room hating me, I feel I might go mad. Madder, I mean.

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t hate you,’ she says, and these are the most beautiful words I think I have ever heard.

‘Everyone else does,’ I say. I notice her hand slowly falling from my shoulder.

‘Perhaps they don’t understand you,’ she says. I can hear the Squeak coming down the corridor. Dr. Robinson can hear her too and suddenly flashes me that professional tight-rectum smile.

‘Do you understand me?’

She looks anxiously through the glass in the door.

‘Mrs. Ibrahim’s on her way,’ she says, and gives me that curt nod goodbye.

‘Emma!’ I cry, reaching for her hand. (I’ve never called her this before. It kind of stops her in her tracks.) ‘Do you understand me?’

I get the connection I’m after; she holds my gaze.

‘Keep telling your story and we’ll get there . . .’

And then she’s gone, leaving me standing in the middle of the room like an abandoned toy. But I’m worried now. I’m not sure I want to get to where we’re going.

Chapter 9

The local doctor’s office was a hit-and-miss affair, but you would know that already, Dr. R. There were six or so regular GPs and unless you specified a particular doctor, you got whoever was next in line. My mother, however, had a specific appointment, an important appointment. The waiting room was packed and we had squeezed ourselves into a pew by the desk; unfortunately the receptionist, a woman with the voice and pores of a seasoned smoker, was hard of hearing and I learnt far more than I wanted to about the personal ailments of my fellow waiting-roommates. I was hormonal and stressed but had promised my mother I would take her. I’d picked her up from her house where she was eagerly awaiting me at the window. To my surprise, she was wearing her best earrings and her pink floral dress. She looked as if she were off to a wedding. I complimented her and saw her anxiety lessen a little. I asked how she was feeling, whether she was still having dizzy spells, but she wasn’t listening; she was rather haphazardly putting on some red lipstick in the hall mirror. In the car, I noticed through her tights that her shins were covered in scratches; she’d been gardening, but what with the poppy smudge around her mouth, it made her seem rather vulnerable in her battle against the professional medical opinion.