“Yes, I did. Very much. I got hooked on the fake stuff, that was the problem. I responded with the real thing.”

“Fake . . . love?” Sam asked.

Hannah nodded. “No man had shown an interest in me for some time, so I succumbed to the pull of the phony. My love for Damon was as real as his for me was a sham, but the sham nourished my spirits more than an absence of authentic love would have. I was happy for long spells sometimes. Then it would hit me again: he’s acting. I tried telling my heart it had been tricked and mustn’t fall for it, but it didn’t listen to me any more than any heart ever does to wise advice.” She looked doubtful suddenly. “I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t so wise. Fake love’s better than no love. It must be, or else why do the majority of my patients stay in nonnurturing romantic relationships?”

“In your work as a psychotherapist, have you ever come across a situation like yours with Damon?” Sam asked her. “People claiming their partners don’t love them but are just . . . convincingly pretending?”

“No, never,” said Hannah. “Don’t worry—the irony isn’t lost on me. I’m excellent at my job—sorry, I don’t do false modesty. I’ve never failed to get to the bottom of a patient’s relationship issue. Never. Sometimes it takes a while, but the moment always comes when things slot into place and I think, ‘Aha, that’s what’s going on here.’ With Damon, I never got there, never found my answer. Maybe I was too close to see it.”

Simon’s impatience had started to tick inside him. It was time to confront her. “Hannah, sorry if I’m being slow, but . . . if Damon’s act was so flawless, how can you be sure he didn’t really love you?”

“Because he said it too quickly. On our second date. He was—he pretended to be—too besotted too soon. So I suppose what I said before wasn’t strictly true: there was a flaw in his act, at the beginning. If he’d seemed to like me only a bit at first, to find me interesting enough to want to see me again . . . If he’d gone for a more gradual buildup and let me see his enthusiasm growing as he got to know me better, that I might have believed in. If he’d waited a few months before telling me he loved me for the first time—”

“So it was the speed of his love that you didn’t trust?” Simon interrupted her.