

Over-Anxious Anonymous

or

The Life Support Group

or

The Friday Night Confessional

by

John Eider

Copyright 2019

Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Week 1 – Absence

Chapter 1 – The Landing

'Are you here for Lawrence Yale?' asked the young man, as he arrived on the landing.

'Yes, I bloody am. Where is he?' replied the young woman already waiting.

And so began their friendship. It continued,

'You've been waiting here an hour,' deduced the young man.

'How do you know?' questioned the woman. She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs arranged neatly against the walls of the landing.

'Because, if you're the session before me; and if your session is as long as mine...'

'Yes, yes,' she said, to shut him up. 'Bloody Einstein.'

'You say "bloody" a lot,' he responded, rather bravely for him.

'It's a diversion tactic,' she answered.

'How so?'

'I say it so I don't say other things, things that might get me into trouble. And it doesn't work for me to try and say nothing.' She was speaking a little more calmly now, though no less defensively. 'Anyway, it's not quite the hour, it's a quarter-to.'

'Yes, it is,' he answered her, 'but I always get here early. I sometimes see you leave; before the pause before he lets me in.'

'Ah yes,' she recalled, 'the ten minutes where he writes up the session – don't you burn to know what he writes about you?'

'I can't say I ever think about it.'

'Really?'

'No, I'm usually more occupied with what we've just discussed.'

'Which is?'

But he went shy on her.

'Pull up a chair,' she offered, to change the subject, 'you're making the place untidy.'

He did so, observing, 'I don't think that there's anything untidy about Lawrence.'

'Do you think he has a cleaner?' she asked. 'I can't believe he does all this himself.' She gestured across the spotless corridor.

'I really don't know,' he answered.

'Or a woman then – a man's never this clean on his own.'

'I don't know,' he repeated. 'I suppose none of us know. His clients in general, I mean – not you and me specifically.' He became nervous of his words sounding to presume that he knew anything of her thoughts on the matter. But she didn't bite as he feared. Instead she answered,

'But that's his plan, isn't it? He told me, "We're friendly, but we're not friends. We sign a contract to share a safe space." And he's brilliant, don't get me wrong. But he's not really there, is he, not like he would be down the pub, or smooching with...'

'...with whoever does his cleaning?'

The girl laughed at the ad-lib.

'Oh, but I don't see it myself.' The young man began speaking with some confidence, for social observations were his thing. He elaborated, 'The kind of woman that a man like Lawrence marries wouldn't do her own cleaning.'

'Get you, social snob,' she snapped. 'What's wrong with women who do their own cleaning?'

He went rigid; but she laughed, and he learnt that she was joking.

'Scared of your own shadow, you are, aren't you?'

He nodded.

'I guess that's what you're here for.'

Suddenly defensive, he asked, 'And why do you care?'

He saw a moment of compassion in her face, before she bucked away from it. Instead, she offered boldly,

'I'm interested in people. Aren't you?'

'Yes,' he answered.

'I can tell that, with your interest in rich cleaning women.'

He questioned whether this was a dig. But when he looked up, she was smiling, and her warm confidence was quickly bringing him around. Indeed, enough for him to make another observation,

'Although, I'd have thought that you might have observed something about me.'

'Like what?' she asked.

'That, for me to turn up while you're still out here means that Lawrence isn't only late, he's going to miss your whole session.'

'Oh, I knew that,' she said.

'Oh?'

'There's a note under the door.'

He looked, and saw it poking out from there.

'Read it,' she offered.

'I can't. It's not for me.'

'Well, I did. I thought, if I'm going to be left out here waiting, no response even when I knock the door, then I've got a right to find out why. I mean, he might have left it there for me to find, as an explanation.'

'And did he?'

'No.'

'Though it was just plausible,' he conceded, allowing her to continue by asking, 'So what does it say?'

'It's not from him,' she repeated, 'it's from some bird called Laura.' The young woman recited from memory in a slightly silly voice, '"Lawrence. I waited till half-past four, but you didn't come. I've knocked but no one answered, and you haven't responded to the voicemail I left you. Next time, if you have to cancel, please let me know before I catch the bus over. Laura."'

'So, he's been gone all afternoon?'

'And I called his number,' she added, 'and banged the door myself. And this Laura's right – there is no answer.'

'Half-four,' he noted. Then added, hopefully tenderly, 'So, it wasn't looking good for you at six.'

'No, it wasn't.'

'So, why have you hung around?'

'Because I didn't want to leave.'
Chapter 2 – Then, at Ten Past Seven

'I didn't want to leave... because I was scared of what I'd do if I left here.'

Her confession scared the young man, because he wasn't up to it. He was reminded that Lawrence was offering a healthcare service, and that she and he were customers. Though now he was in danger of having to become her proxy counsellor.

She must have noticed his discomfort, and changed the subject,

'Well, if we're going to sit here, then we may as well introduce ourselves.'

'Christopher Minim,' he declared. 'They call me... well, well my friends call me Chris.'

'God,' she said with something like admiration, 'you can start, and lose, and gain your confidence again all in one sentence.'

He smiled at someone caring to notice, and replied,

'Maybe you should be a counsellor yourself...' – but then he feared she'd think he'd been sarcastic, when he only meant to praise her perception. Though she answered,

'And I'd be bloody good at it too.'

'Another "bloody",' he observed in turn.

'If that shocks you, then you don't want to be around me when I'm not on my best behaviour.'

'Is that a warning or a threat?'

She smiled, 'You're so funny when you're instantaneous.'

Suddenly he felt such warmth. It was as though a fire had lit beneath him, through the simple act of someone being interested.

Though the kindling was quickly blown out by the sound of further feet upon the stairs. The pair sitting down looked up at the clock on the hall wall, which they hadn't notice creep around a little further while they'd talked. And this was shock enough for the bolder one of them to blast at the newcomer,

'I thought seven was Lawrence's last appointment – so who the bloody hell are you?'

Chris both thrilled to the excitement of the girl he had just discovered, and cringed in reflected awkwardness for the man just emerging at the top of the stairs. Yet the man did not respond as Chris would have done. Instead, he seemed barely non-plussed to have been shouted at,

'I changed shifts,' he said, 'for Lawrence.'

'And do you always get here fifty minutes early?' asked Cara. (The clock had barely moved around past Chris's starting time.)

'It's bitter outside. He lets me sleep on the chairs.'

'Well, I'm afraid we're occupying two of them already,' she went on, 'so count yourself lucky that you're not left standing.'

The man pulled the third away from the wall roughly, though with no violent intent, and sat down a little way away. He said,

'Well, you're a hell of a girl, aren't you. I bet you chew your fella's ear right off.'

'I haven't got a fella,' she snapped.

'No surprise there.'

She went to introduce Christopher, but got not no further than, 'This is...' before the man burst out,

'Minnie!'

'Oh God.' She stifled a laugh, turning to Chris, 'is that what they call you?'

'Minnie Minim,' announced the newcomer, 'as I live and breathe.'

'How'd you know him?' she asked the laughing man.

'He went to school with my eldest cousin. Four years above me.'

'Wait.' She turned to Chris, 'How old are you?'

'Thirty-eight.'

'God, I'd have put you ten years younger!'

'Well, I'm barely out of cotton wool, am I?' There was hardly any point in him not speaking honestly now.

Meanwhile, the newcomer pulled his backpack up over his shoulder until it sat against his neck, then shuffled in the chair until he had an angle at which he could rest. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.

'He's not here, you know.'

He opened his eyes again and looked up at the woman speaking. He processed this new information for himself a moment, then declared,

'Nah, he's just with another patient.'

Chris couldn't help but laugh, daring to reply,

'We're the other patients.'

'So, where is he?'

'We don't know...' he said.

'...And there's some girl called Laura,' added the young woman, 'who came earlier and had to go home too.'

'A girl called Laura?'

'Laura.'

'He didn't show for her either?'

'No.'

'No?'

The fact of the girl called Laura seemed to sway the argument for the newcomer, and he sat up then, looking to the locked door also.

'So, you guys are waiting for him too, yeah?'

A silence developed when there was no answer.

The woman looked at the sign at waist-height beside the door, and read aloud,

'"Lawrence Yale, BACP Counsellor and Therapist." Don't you ever notice, if you moved the space he'd be "The rapist"?'

This brought no response from either man.

'So,' she changed the topic, 'is that it for night-time callers?'

'There was never anyone after me,' said the latecomer. 'Lawrence'd always joke about going home to his supper after nine. "I can't miss my meal," he'd say. "How could I look after you if I didn't look after myself?"'

'He's hardly looking after us tonight though, is he,' she added.

'It's a bit early for that,' said Chris. 'He's never let us down before.'

'No, he hasn't,' she conceded.

'You're just peeved after waiting here and Lawrence not turning up,' said the other man.

'"Peeved"?' she answered. 'Honestly, who uses that word anymore?'

Which closed off the passage of conversation.

'Well, that looks like that,' said the fellow with the shoulder bag. He rearranged it and his crumpled jacket, standing to leave.

'Should we leave a note?' asked Chris.

'I don't think so,' said the woman. 'He'll know he wasn't here. And there's nothing we can add to what that other girl wrote him.'

'So, we should be off then?' asked Chris.

'No, don't go,' she said like a little girl. 'We're all here now, and...'

'...all geared up for a session?' added the standing man, now stretching as if for a run.

'Easy, tiger,' she couldn't resist replying. Then added, 'But yeah, we don't want to just go home.'

Chris looked about himself, 'Well, we can't hang around here.'

She concluded, 'Well, if I'm not seeing Lawrence, then I want a drink.'
Chapter 3 – The Rose and Crown

'I'm going to the cashpoint,' said Chris as they walked.

'Didn't you bring any money for your session?' asked the others.

'I pay by bank transfer,' he answered; to which they snorted as he turned on his heels.

'How many weeks for you, love?' asked the younger man of his other newfound friend.

'Four months for me,' she answered, 'every week, without fail. What about you?'

'About three, I guess. How about you, Minnie?'

'Oh, years, off and on,' answered Chris as he came back, not even noticing the name he'd been addressed by.

The woman stopped in the road and turned to face the two men, addressing 'Minnie' specifically,

'We can't call you that.'

'Then don't call me anything.'

'No, I'm going to call you everything – I'm going to call you Max.'

'Max it is then,' laughed the other guy, continually pulling at the strap of his bag that ran across his chest; as others do with car seat-belts to hear the mechanism release and then wind back up. 'So, that just leaves you, love.' He turned to face her, as did the newly-christened Max.

'Cara,' she at last revealed, like a treasured jewel. 'I don't always give men my name.'

'Lucky us.'

'And who are you then?' she demanded in return, realising that she hadn't been the last.

'Oh, that's The Rozzer,' offered Max, as he pushed past them both. 'Come on, it's cold out here.'

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in the Rose and Crown. The Drunk Beggar had been vetoed on account of its disco music that would have 'cut right through our conversation' (Max); and the Little Girl Lost for its 'creepy name' (Cara).

Once sat down at the small round table with her gin and tonic, she joked,

'I suppose we should have checked that none of us was seeing Lawrence for a drink problem.'

'It's funny, though, isn't it,' began 'The Rozzer', barely sat down with a pint of what he called his 'yob juice'.

'What's funny?' asked Cara, who in all their future conversations would take on a role of Mistress of Ceremonies.

'Well, I'm sat here in the pub and I'm not scared.'

'Scared of what?'

'Of you lot knowing my problems. Usually, with the lads from work, I'd be scared of them finding out.'

'Finding out what?'

'That I'm "seeing someone", "a shrink", that I have "my panics". I start dreading one of the fellas saying something, or cracking a joke that makes me sweat. But here, it's the opposite. We don't have to hide 'em, because we all have 'em.'

'We three, you mean?' asked Max.

He nodded, 'And because we know we have 'em, we hardly have to share 'em. That's half the thing, isn't it, just wanting people to know there's something more about you, that you're struggling, that you're not just giving in.'

'Say "me", not "you",' said Cara and Max in unison, and laughed.

As did the other man, 'Aye, Lor tells us all the same things,' he said, as if learning that it wasn't all especially meant for him.

Cara just kept laughing, though,

'"Lor"?' she asked. 'You've even got a nickname for your counsellor?'

'Saves a syllable,' noted Max.

'And while we're on the subject,' she began, in the tone each man was swiftly getting used to, 'I can't spend the rest of my life calling you The Rozzer.'

'Rhys,' he answered, with an outstretched hand to shake each of theirs with; and with the merest hint of Welsh becoming apparent in his accent, which he then played up, 'on account of a mother from the valleys. I moved here when I was twelve to live with my dad.

'But yeah,' he went on, after things had settled down, 'Lawrence tells us all the same things, doesn't he?'

'Perhaps he's good at making each of us feel special?' suggested Max, wiping the condensation from his bottle of Mexican beer.

'But let's share anyway, eh?' offered Cara, in the spirit of boarders in a dorm room pooling their rations.

'Well, you know mine,' said Max, head down, his early defensiveness gotten-over.

'Do we?' asked Cara.

'He was a shy kid,' said Rhys.

'Well, I could guess that,' said Cara.

'No one understands shyness,' blurted Max suddenly. 'They think it's something small and quiet. But it's not, it's an explosion in my head, it's a life trying to get out!'

'You used "my", good work,' noted Rhys, who the other two would come to learn had an earnest and studious side.

'Why can't it "get out" of your head?' asked Cara.

Max took a slow intake of breath, then answered, 'Fear of humiliation.'

'Then who humiliated you? Someone back in your earliest memories?'

Max looked startled at that second sentence. She clarified,

'Well, I don't know if it is in your earliest memories. But that's Lawrence's method, isn't it: going back as early as we can remember, even earlier than we can remember.'

He looked relieved, explaining,

'I'm glad Lawrence does the same thing with you. For a moment there I had the mad thought you'd heard our conversations.'

'Well, humiliation's horrible,' agreed Cara.

'I guess you mean us, right?' asked Rhys, entering the exchange. He was speaking jovially, almost conversationally. 'Kids at school, my cousin's mates? But it wasn't that bad, was it?'

Max recoiled to his side of the table.

Cara saw this, but didn't try to work it out for now.

'And what about you then?' she asked Rhys, taking the heat off Max awhile. 'If you're so happy to share your secrets.'

He suddenly let out a chirruping sound, high and bright,

'Sorry, nervous laugh. I can't help it, it's like a mechanism. I don't know if it's me trying to cover things up, or making light of it, or... I don't know.'

'Okay.'

'I get panics.'

'Panics?' asked Cara.

'At work. They started there, but now I get them everywhere.' He turned to Max, 'You won't believe this, mate, but I envy you. People can see your feelings, it's just who you are. But if they saw mine, I'd lose my standing, I'd lose...'

Max's movement was swift and aimed at Rhys's face. He didn't get there, and all he did was knock all three drinks over and bash his own chest across his edge of the table.

'No worries, mate,' called Rhys in light tones to the barman who had turned to look at them. 'No worries. You got a cloth?'

Cara grabbed the beer bottle just as it was about to roll off the edge of the table.

'Is everyone all right then?' This was Rhys in his sing-song voice. 'You need to learn to box, mate. You'll learn where your body goes when you throw an arm like that – it's not always where you think.'

Cara thought she should say something, but there was nothing; only the barroom codes of conduct as issued by their resident expert, Rhys:

'I know the landlord, we're fine tonight. And I'm always happy to meet you for a drink. But the one thing we can never have, buddy, is that again. Never again, okay?'
Chapter 4 – The Little Girl Lost

The night ended around an hour later, with Max looking at his watch and making noises about wanting to go home,

'I've never been one for late nights,' he hardly amazed the others by saying.

The other two didn't want to stay just the two of them together, so all left.

'We should meet again,' said Cara, as the three almost tried to chase each other off.

'Same time next week?' ventured Rhys.

'We don't have to wait a week.'

And so, they hadn't.

'Alcohol,' said Cara three days later.

'Yes, it is,' offered Max, ridiculously, raising his bottle to clink.

'Lawrence would call this self-medicating,' she added.

'He never said that to me,' said Max, concerned.

'Well, you probably don't do anything, do you.'

'You don't know what I do,' he snapped defensively.

'Easy,' calmed Rhys – he deliberately left 'mate' off the end of the sentence, guessing it might aggravate him like the last time. 'I guess she only means you don't "do" anything too bad – drink, drugs, gambling, the stuff that hurts people. And good for you on that score, there's too much harm comes from those things.'

'It was brave,' said Max to Cara, 'suggesting that we meet again. It's always hard to venture something social, for the fear that the other people won't want to do it. And so the one who asks can look lonely and desperate, as if they don't know any other friends.'

She tried her best to answer politely, 'I'm sure that started out as a compliment, Max. It didn't really end as one though, did it.'

'But it doesn't matter,' enthused the man who was the eldest of the three, but seemed so very much younger, 'because even if you are lonely and desperate, then I am too! That's the whole point of this.'

'I don't want to start comparing our problems,' she said, squirming in her chair.

'But still, last week was good,' added Rhys, who had been listening. 'I mean, it was awkward, but I didn't want to just go home.'

'None of us did,' said Cara and Max together.

'Well, here we are,' ventured Cara. 'I guess we ought to talk then.'

Still wary after Max went off on one the previous time, she started in the other direction,

'So, what about your panics?' she asked Rhys.

He jumped up to attention, and was keen to speak, even as his body became uncomfortable and the words stuck in his mouth. He managed to say,

'I used to love my job.' He began in tones that became more Welsh the more he relaxed into it. 'There was a gang of us, we'd be sent out on repairs. We had a staff room we could hang out in; and we could blag the time-sheets, say it took us longer to get back from a job than it did, and have an hour in the pub. And the gaffer was all right, you know?

'But then they moved me into the office, called it a promotion! One day, all of a sudden, I was wearing a shirt and tie, stuck on nine-to-five and indoors all day, with these old secretaries who thought I was a yobbo, and blokes who'd been there years and didn't trust me.

'And I'd have to run these spreadsheets, and they'd just go on forever – right off the end of the page! And the slightest mistake and someone would be barrelling over, "You've done this wrong," or "You've missed this column." And I didn't have a clue what I was doing!

'My old mates would text me, asking where I was, and if I fancied a drink. And I couldn't get away, I wasn't even meant to be looking at my phone – I'd get stares across the room from old biddies who probably didn't know what a mobile phone was!

'At night I was just shattered. And at work I began to get really tense, like I never had before. Tightness across the chest, you know? Like a belt being pulled? I began to dread these spreadsheets a week before they came up, and I'd come in early – unpaid – to get them started. And I began to feel that no one knew me there, and no one cared how busy I was.'

'Oh God,' said Cara. 'Your voice, and your face, when you talk like that – it's like you're laughing and crying at the same time.'

'Oh, get away,' he swiped the notion to one side. 'And... this is so ridiculous.'

'Just say it,' said Cara. 'Like Lawrence would ask you to.'

'...I felt like I was a kid again, like I was back at school; and struggling with the work, and worried that I wouldn't get it done before the end of the lesson, and that all the other kids would get it done before me and be allowed to go outside to play, while I'd be stuck in there.'

'Didn't you like school?'

'I hated it.'

'I thought you loved school?' shot across Max.

'What makes you think that?' said Rhys, lifting his head for the others to see he was in tears.

'But you were always laughing.'

'Laughing? I hated the place. Don't you remember me being on report, getting my card signed at the Head's Office every morning?'

The look of shock and fury on Max's face suggested that he didn't remember.

'Max,' said Cara, 'Rhys is trying to share here. You don't know what his time at school was like, just because you hated yours.

'Max...' began Cara again, but the men were locked into something that she couldn't seem to interrupt.

Max stared at each of his table-mates in turn, then at the members of the bar, some of whom had begun to look over.

For the second night in a row, Max was the one to leave...
Chapter 5 – The Shopping Centre

...And for the second night in a row, the other two rose to follow him. Though this time Cara held Rhys back, asking,

'Let me talk to him.'

It was early evening, but outside the street was already dark and the shops shut. Leaving the warmth of the Little Girl Lost behind her, the only other light was over the automated door to a shopping centre. She watched Max jogging over there.

'He doesn't want to go home either,' she muttered to herself. Then asked, 'What the hell am I doing playing nursemaid?' Before shaking herself down and skipping after him.

As the shopping centre doors opened for her, she saw him in the long central hall at the nearest set of benches. Her heels sounded loudly on the stone floor, and the noise echoed freely through the empty chamber. The shops were closed, but the hall was still lit.

'Joe Babbacot,' he said, as he saw her coming.

'Sorry?' she asked, sitting down a space away from him.

'Rhys. His cousin's name is Joe Babbacot. Do you know what that name means? It means a baby's crib. So why make fun of my name? Why did no one make fun of his?'

'I don't think it works like that.'

'Then, how does it work?'

Lost for words, she fell back on her favourite person,

'Is that what you asked Lawrence?'

Max squirmed, 'He told me "not to think of it on those terms."'

'He's right, mate.' In softer shoes, Rhys had followed Cara and had kept his distance. 'You have to loosen the knot to untie it. You're winding it tighter.' His tone was of someone wanting to make peace; but something in Max was half-rigid and half-furious. He spluttered as he tried to get the words out,

'How can you talk to me?'

'What do you mean, mate?'

'Chill out!' offered Cara; then instantly regretted giving out the kind of useless advice she herself would have riled at.

Max repeated, 'How can you talk to me? After what you did to me?'

'Mate,' offered Rhys, 'I didn't do anything. I wasn't there.'

'You all laughed, the whole class laughed!'

'I wasn't in your class!'

'You all laughed!'

'I wasn't there!'

'Kids like you, your sort!'

'What the hell are "My sort"?'

'Confident people... you moan that you didn't like the lessons?' asked Max again, his volume rising.

'Max...' pleaded Cara. But Max went on at Rhys,

'You're upset just because you didn't like the lessons? You didn't have what I had!'

'Max,' she interrupted again, 'come back to the pub with us.'

'No!'

'Come back, please?'

'No! Because he doesn't know what he did! He doesn't know what he did!'

'And what was that?'

'He bullied me! He bullied me!'

It came out in a shrill tone, like a child straining to make a point.

For a second, the sound bounced around the glass shop-fronts and the windowed ceilings and the brass elevators, stunning them to silence as Max's words had previously silenced the pub.

'There're people coming, Max,' said Cara, noticing. 'People from the cinema.'

Indeed there were, at first a slow trickle of film-goers, soon becoming a flood. These new faces were oddly quiet, as if knowing they had entered a scene. Most looked forward till they saw the three human statues, then kept their eyes well clear. Among this slow stream of humanity, they stood, held in pained expressions like dinosaurs in a tar pit.

They were unable to continue until the crowd had thinned and the way was clear.

'Why do you talk to me?' was the first thing Max said afterwards, speaking much more quietly now and without the accompanying body-language. The other two didn't understand.

'Why do you talk to me now,' he repeated, 'when you didn't back then?'

'Mate, I was eleven.'

Cara had a hand on Rhys's arm. 'Don't say a word,' she said quietly to him. 'Don't say a word.' It had clicked for her then. 'He isn't talking to you.'

Though Rhys did speak,

'I wasn't there, mate,' he repeated. 'I wasn't there.' He spoke so softly that the words were like a mantra, soothing all.

'Come back,' said Cara, equally tenderly.

'I can't,' said Max, not meeting her eye. 'Because that means I have to accept what he did. And I never can.'
Chapter 6 – Afters

They didn't meet again for another three days; though when they did, Cara secretly offered Max a meeting-time half an hour earlier than she gave Rhys.

'I'm glad you came back,' she began. 'I don't want it to be just any two of us – then it becomes too much like a date.'

'I guess.'

'If you know what I mean.'

'I know – a woman has to be careful.'

'I meant that I didn't want to lose you.'

'Why would you lose us?' he began. But the way she quickly looked away, he could see she wasn't ready to talk about herself. He brought the conversation back around,

'Yeah, I don't want to share with just one person either. I like it being a group.' Max looked around, cautiously. 'I haven't scared him off?'

'He said he might be late from work,' she remembered, half-truthfully.

Soon Rhys did appear, plaster on his hands, dust on his jeans, and his rope-strapped bag pulled diagonally across his chest as always.

'Have you been doing DIY?' she asked.

'Nah, I'm back on the crew!' he beamed. 'They were short and needed someone urgently.'

'That's great,' she said, seeing how happy he was.

'It gets me out of that office anyway,' he declared, his every pore exuding relief.

'Why don't you get us all a drink?' suggested Cara kindly to the silent Max, and gave him a ten pound note.

'Don't worry, I'll pay,' he said, refusing the money. After the slightest embarrassed smile of greeting to Rhys, he bobbed over to the bar, allowing the other two to speak.

'Thanks for coming,' she began.

'Aye.'

'Maybe if we can get him to open up a bit, then he can get it out of his system.'

'Though I don't know what I can say.'

'Then we'll say nothing,' she offered.

'Yes, I think that's best.'

As Max returned, she resumed brightly,

'Then we might get somewhere with all this.'

'Yeah,' agreed Rhys like a true counselling convert, 'and not lose time on our journeys until Lawrence comes back.'

'If he comes back,' she cautioned.

'Maybe we should find out how he is?' asked Rhys.

'Maybe.'

Though no one did.

Max was still silent.

'So,' joked Rhys, 'we made it to the Drunk Beggar after all.'

'We black-balled ourselves in the other two,' said Max meekly.

'Soon there won't be any pubs left,' Cara joked back.

'I can't just let it go, though.'

This stunned the others, who would never have brought the topic up.

'Max?'

'I can't let it go... school, all that. I'm scared of what I'd lose.'

'What would you lose?' asked Cara.

'People knowing how I've struggled, what I've had to cope with, why life has been hard for me. I need air,' he added. Then straight after, 'You're not going anywhere, are you?'

'We'll be here,' she answered. Though it turned out that he didn't leave, he just went silent again, looking down.

'We know you've struggled, mate,' said Rhys. 'You wouldn't be at Lawrence's otherwise. Just like us.'

'But people in life don't know that, people on the street. Asking why I haven't been as successful as them, why I don't have the things they have, why I don't have a wife and kids and car and career.'

'What does it matter what they think?' asked Rhys.

'They're probably not even thinking that anyway,' said Cara, to wise nods from Rhys.

'No...' Max tried to agree.

'Remember what Lawrence says,' said Cara, 'every thought is a memory.'

He nodded to her words.

'So, why are you left thinking these things? These judgements? Who's spoken to you like that?'

Though Max was lost, he simply didn't have the recall.

Rhys took a sip of his lager and blackcurrant, rolled back in his chair, and prophesied,

'What it really comes down to is, do you feel you've lived an honest life? That's all any of us can ask ourselves.'

'Amen to that,' said Cara, taking a sip of her gin with lime.

'I mean, it's a question I struggle with myself.'

'Rhys!'

'I know, it's okay. I know I'm not Hitler or anything. I just mean, maybe an honest life means we won't make as much money as someone else, won't have it as easy as others.'

'Who are these "others"? Don't generalise!' she snapped.

'Other people.'

'What other person?'

'Well,' Rhys fished for a name, 'there's a useless manager at our place who's just got himself a brand-new Mercedes.'

'So?'

'So, do you know how much those things cost?'

'And do you care about this manager?' she grilled.

'Not really, no.'

'Does he mean a thing to you?'

'If I'm honest, I couldn't give a hoot about him.'

'So, why do you search around for someone, anyone, to compare yourself to?'

Rhys let the question sink in, before adding,

'Anyway, it's probably leased.'

Cara and Max stared with open mouths, silently asking what he was on about.

'The Mercedes,' explained Rhys. 'You pay a small fortune each month for two years, and you don't even own it at the end.'

For the first time, all three of them burst out laughing.
Week 2 – Replacement

Chapter 7 – The Star of India

They met the next night too. Not through an acceleration of their pub-going, but to mark what had then been a full week. They went for a meal.

'Curry it is then,' cheered Rhys, rubbing his hands as he began the walk to his favourite restaurant.

Cara went to follow, before pausing when she noticed Max rooted to the spot.

'I don't know curry,' he explained. 'I haven't eaten it before.'

'They do English meals,' said Rhys, undeterred.

'I can't tell you how profoundly I feel a sense of failure contemplating that,' he offered.

'Then have a korma,' suggested Cara. 'It's just chicken in yoghurt. Tastes like coconut.'

'Okay,' he mumbled, falling into step, 'but I'll probably scrape most of it off.'

Once at the restaurant, Max settled down to the homely atmosphere and gentle traditional music.

'Mr Rhys!' greeted the proprietor upon seeing a familiar customer.

'Mr Mo!' he greeted back. 'You're back from India! You've been gone forever.'

'Three months, my friend. Three happy months.'

'I wish I had family in a warm country who I could stay with. But mine are all in Wales!'

(While this was going on, younger staff were taking Cara and Max's coats and guiding them to their seats.)

'Mr Rhys, I hadn't seen my sister and her family for three years. It was so wonderful to spend time with them.'

'It must have been,' said Rhys, full of warmth.

And that wasn't the only warmth available, as the snacks and dips soon began arriving.

'This mint sauce is beautiful,' said Max, dipping his large round crisp into it, with the other two secretly smiling to each other.

'Try the chutney,' said Cara.

'No, I've found one thing I love and I'm sticking to it!'

Soon the mains came, and with them the main test of the evening. Though he tentatively dipped at the yellow sauce at first, soon Max had tipped it all onto his plate. He mashed it with the rice into a fortress, from which he took great forkfuls, moaning with delight,

'Why hadn't anyone told me about this before?'

'Looks like I've made a convert,' said Rhys between laughs.

Mr Mo came over then with a mobile phone, its screen the size of a photo frame,

'Mr Rhys, look at this. Do you know how cheaply they sell these phones in India?'

'Next time you're over there, get me one, will you?'

'And look at the camera.' The proprietor slid the screen to show the most recent high-resolution photo, beaming with pride, 'My great niece, I hadn't seen her since she was born.'

'Don't worry,' chuckled Rhys, 'we're all a long way from home.' Though something had slipped in him, as he saw the photo of the happy little girl. Cara and Max were getting good at this now, and both had noticed the change.

Cara smiled as the photo was passed around to her. Max had eaten too quickly, and put his fork down for a breather. Cara picked like a bird at her exotic stir-fry. Though Rhys was now definitely done with his vindaloo.

'When can we go back?' asked Max as they left the warm embrace of the restaurant and hit the cool night air. He was as happy as either of the others had seen him.

'You don't want to spoil it for yourself,' said Rhys.

'And did you enjoy yours?' asked Cara.

'Yeah,' answered Rhys. 'They give you so much though, don't they?'

'So, are we off to the pub then?' ventured Max.

Rhys grimaced, then said,

'You know, Max, if you want to do something, then just do it, don't pussyfoot around it.' It was as close to a snap as Rhys had shown them, and didn't sit well with him. He went on, 'Don't worry about whether others want to go to the pub. Just say, "I'm going to the pub."'

'"I'm going to the pub",' he repeated by rote.

'We have to anyway,' said Cara. 'I told someone we'll be there tonight.'

'Who?' asked Max, as their feet followed the route to the Drunk Beggar.

'Someone I met outside Lawrence's,' she said quietly.
Chapter 8 – The Drunk Beggar

'Right, drinks,' said Cara as they arrived.

'My turn,' said Rhys, and stormed off to the bar. It was Friday night and busy. There were no tables free, so the other two found a space by a pillar at the edge of the cleared dance floor.

Max noticed Cara looking through the gathered faces of the pub-goers, as if for someone.

'Who've you lost?' he joked.

'Brunette, so tall,' she answered straight-faced, holding her hand up so high. She continued to look around for another couple of minutes.

'Oh,' remembered Max. 'The person from Lawrence's?'

'Who's this?' asked Rhys, returning with the glasses.

'Just a girl,' she said, downcast.

'What's her name?' asked Max.

Cara didn't answer.

'Do you have her number?'

Again, she looked away.

'Well, maybe it's not surprising – women don't like to go into busy places on their own sometimes.'

'What, we can't do anything for ourselves?'

The men shared a look. Rhys might normally have been the one to offer the encouraging words; but something had been biting him since the restaurant. So it was left to Max to ask Cara,

'You went back to the waiting room?'

'Yeah.'

'To look for Lawrence?'

'Yeah, kind of.'

'And?'

'He's not been back. Though the note's gone from under the door, so someone has been.'

'And you met someone there?'

'Yeah, a girl.'

'Laura?'

'Good memory, but no, not Laura. I didn't catch this one's name.'

'Was she pretty?'

'Yeah, I guess so.'

'Shame,' muttered Max, suddenly feeling her absence too. Though he was on a roll with his questions, and quickly shook the lonely Romeo feeling off. He turned to Rhys and asked, 'And how are you, buddy?'

Rhys's body answered where his words could not. His chest tightened and his breaths became shallow.

Seeing this shook Cara from her own disappointment. She took his hand quickly,

'It's okay, Rhys, forget it. Let's move on. Max, you talk about football.'

'What do I know about football?'

'Everyone knows about football.'

'He doesn't,' said Rhys, on safer ground. 'Not if you were forced to play it at our place.'

'And he doesn't either,' replied Max, 'He's Welsh – they're all egg-chasers over there.'

All three were smiling, in relief or happiness. So much that Cara risked saying,

'Look at us, all getting on for once.'

'Yes, look at us,' echoed Max, beaming. 'And more than that.'

'How so?' asked Rhys.

'I mean in general. These past few nights: the three of us baring our souls.' He shivered, in a way he possibly hoped would come over as laughter.

'And what better place,' joked Cara. 'Here in the pub. Where all we need is a patient bartender to hear our stories!'

'The Friday Night Confessional!' declared Max. 'As enacted a thousand-thousand times over since the invention of the public house.'

'Though, Max,' she cautioned after their toast had died down. 'This still isn't Lawrence's room. We can't go ape out here, like you did that time.'

'Then maybe we should find somewhere where we can?' he asked, voicing the plain-ridiculous.

'And how are we going to afford that?' asked Rhys, definitely not himself.

'How much do you pay for a session?' Max asked back, matter-of-factly.

'Forty.'

'And are you telling me an adult education classroom costs more than three times that? We can only save.'

Later on, the lights went dim and the music rose in volume, and there were people all around them on the dance floor. Cara, a little woozy, watched Max's head bobbing to the music.

'So,' she leaned in to ask, 'do you think you've got it all out now?'

'Sorry?' he asked.

'Your frustrations. Have you got them all out?'

'Not one tenth of them,' he answered.

'I know that feeling,' she muttered. 'We need to book that room.'

'Well, someone's luck is in!' Her last words had caught the ear of a man with an earring and a full pint who happened to be walking past from the bar. 'Got your night all planned out, eh?'

'Yes, and it doesn't include you!' spat Cara.

'Someone's got the fighting spirit! It's a good job some men like that kind of thing. Is this your fella then?' He looked at Max, who quickly looked away with shock. (It was telling that Rhys was so distant that evening that the man hadn't even noticed him being there.)

'He's more of a man than you'll ever be!' answered Cara on Max's behalf.

'You both look about as happy as each other,' the man said with a smirk. 'You'll be having a barrel of laughs tonight, I can tell. I'll leave you to it.'

And with a glint in his eye, he was gone on his way.

'Without a care in the world, some people,' said Max.

'Don't let it spoil your mood,' said Cara. 'Women get it all the time.'

'I guess,' said Max, suddenly ashamed to be a man.

'I should get going,' she said.

'Oh, why?' asked Max.

'Because the one after him, or the one after that, I won't think is a total idiot. And I'll start playing along, and he'll think he's pulled, and I will ruin his night.'

'What do you mean? Any man would be proud to...'

'Stop,' she shushed him. 'Don't.'

She took her coat and bag and went to leave.

'And book that room!' she shouted across the dance floor as she left, making his face go as red as anything.
Chapter 9 – The Adult Education Centre

Though the invited person hadn't shown that night in the pub, the principle would hold: it would be the last time that it was only the three of them.

In response to a text from Max, Cara met him at the town's Sixth Form College. It was Tuesday, just before seven-thirty. He was waiting on the benches outside, as it was a dry evening.

'Thanks for coming,' he offered almost apologetically, standing to greet her. 'Is this all right?'

'Of course! Thank you for booking it.'

'No problem. I like organising things. I do our works meals.'

'And how much do I owe you?'

He was holding the large glass door open for her at that moment, bearing an uncharacteristic smile. He held her at the door as he filled her in,

'Well, that's the funny thing. When I explained what we were doing, the woman I spoke to asked what category it fell under. She suggested "Public Health?" and I said, "Okay"; and she told me that for Public Health we get the room for free. Though I paid five pounds for tea and biscuits.'

'Then that's a couple of pounds each from me and Rhys. Oh, and did you get his message saying he'll be late?'

'Yes I did, thank you. And no need with the money. Tell you what, if we make a second week, you buy the biscuits!'

'Deal!'

They approached the desk, and Max took the lead,

'Hi, I booked a room under the name of Minim?'

'Ah yes.' The receptionist remembered him and keyed at her computer. '"Life Support Group". You're in Lecture Hall Three.'

'Oh, we don't need anywhere that grand,' he explained. Though she just smiled,

'The rooms are already heated from the working day – it costs us no more to keep them open for evening classes.'

Max thought that that would be that, but she continued to type. After a moment she added,

'I wonder, did you get our email?'

'No, was it sent today? I've not been home, you see.'

'There was a query over whether there was a charge for attendance. You remember that we discussed that when you booked?'

'Yes, yes,' he confirmed

'A query from who?' asked Cara.

'A member of the public,' explained the woman. 'There's an email address on the website, so that they can contact us about the classes we post.'

'Website?'

'Yes, everything goes on the website.'

Cara looked to Max, who looked back equally baffled, and who shrugged,

'Well, it doesn't bother me.'

Cara realised the same, 'Nor me.'

'And we had a phone call too,' said the receptionist, 'asking exactly what the group was about – "Life Support"? I told them that you sounded like group therapy? Helping people with their problems?'

'Right,' said Max, as if he could remember his babbled explanation of what they'd wanted the room for.

The woman continued to stare for a moment, though didn't press the point. She went on,

'Anyway, they sounded interested and said they'd be along.'

The pair just looked at the woman, who looked back before breaking the silence with,

'Very well then. It's along that corridor, left at the end.'

The pair smiled and bid her well. As they left though, she called after them,

'And your drinks will be up at eight.'

'Thank you!' each hollered, pushing through the first set of corridor doors.

'Well, they didn't tell me all that the first time I was here,' said Max, once they were safely alone.

'What an adventure!' laughed Cara. She was already looking on her phone; but then put it away, saying, 'It's too late to check for messages. We'll see what this evening brings, then look up the College website tomorrow.'

She added, 'Though, I have to say, Max, that was genius: "The Life Support Group". That's exactly what we are!'

'Well, it was that or "Over-Anxious Anonymous".'

'Oh, I like that too.'

'But is it too knowing, too smirky?'

'If that's what you are, then go with it.'

'No, I like the first one,' he decided. 'We'll keep the other just for us.'
Chapter 10 – Lecture Hall Three – Introductions

'Wow, this room is wonderful,' cooed Cara as they each pushed open one of the wooden double-doors to the lecture hall. 'It's like a theatre – when does the panto start?'

Max too was overawed by the shell-shaped room with its concentric semi-circles of seats and desks rising up from the stage.

'Maybe it's a circus,' he asked, 'and we're the clowns? What are we doing here?'

She thought quickly, 'Though we'll only need the stage, won't we?'

They pulled six chairs, stacked at the sides, into a circle on the stage beside the lectern. Behind them were triple blackboards. Cara sat down for a moment, then got up and looked at the centre board – on it was a scruffy mess of circles intersected by rough lines with words beside them like SALES and TOTAL MARKET SHARE. She brushed it down and wrote LIFE SUPPORT GROUP in huge letters.

'There,' she said, 'it's ours now,' and sat down again.

Suddenly the pair were alone in the vast space.

'This isn't much like Lawrence's room, is it,' observed Max.

'No,' agreed Cara, 'though at least it's private.'

'This Friday will be our third week without him.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Actually, I thought that he was back just now.'

'You've been back there tonight?'

'A note was gone from under the door...'

'The note from that Laura?'

'No, Laura's note was gone last week. This was my own note. So I knocked, and send a text, and waited half-an-hour.'

'But your note had been collected by someone?'

'Yes!'

'And what did it say?'

'That I wanted to see him.'

'And what would you have said to him if you could have seen him?'

'That I'm lonely.'

'And what do you think he might have said back?'

'That I should find strength in myself, not look for it in others...'

'Yes, yes.'

'...and wouldn't it be wonderful if I could create love for myself, instead of hoping for it as a gift from someone else.'

'Yes, yes.'

'But I still feel so lonely.'

On cue, there was a bump as someone came through the heavy doors.

'Here you two are!'

'Hello, Rhys...' each offered. Though they got no further, as he began ranting,

'You would not believe the journey I've just had. The traffic here was hell. Then, having to ask for directions around this building; and having some mad receptionist asking me what I thought I knew about my own group!' He looked around himself, 'And what kind of room is this?'

He pulled up a chair and threw himself down, legs apart and jutting outwards, declaring,

'I think I preferred the Drunk Beggar.'

'You might thank Max for organising it,' said Cara.

'And that name – "Life Support" – you make us sound like a defibrillator!'

'And what would you have called us instead, Rhys?'

Though, of course, he had no answer. He went on,

'And on a Tuesday? So, there's no Fridays anymore?'

The door creaked again.

'Thank God!' muttered Cara.

A man came in, his hair greyer than his beard, and with his crumpled shirt struggling to hold itself within his straining waistband.

'Is this the place for people to talk?' he asked as genially as if enquiring after the drinks aisle in Tesco's, which Cara wondered whether he might not know rather well.

'It is. Won't you let me take your coat?' But he kept hold of it tight around his arm and held close to his person.

'Sit anywhere?' asked the man.

'Wherever you like,' said Max. 'There's coffee coming.'

'Do I... pay?'

Cara was getting used to the question,

'No, and they wouldn't let us charge you if we wanted to! Come and take the weight off.'

Which he did, still holding his coat over his lap as he sat down.

'Who's this?' asked Rhys.

'The College put the booking online,' said Cara quietly. 'We didn't know.'

'So, now I've got to tell my secrets to a bunch of strangers?'

Cara turned sharply to Rhys,

'Something's been biting you since last week, and we are going to get to the bottom of it, mister!'

There was a polite knock at the door, which then creaked as it opened.

'Hi, I'm Simone,' she introduced.

'This is Cara,' offered Max, who jumped up to hold the door for the new visitor, 'and Rhys, and... sorry, I don't know your name?'

'Graham,' offered the bearded man, standing to shake the young woman's hand as she approached the circle.

'And I'm Max,' he added finally. 'Can I take your coat?'

'It's a lovely thing,' observed Cara. 'I can't help but notice it. Is it Parisian?'

'Only a copy,' smiled Simone.

As Max took it, he expected to feel weight; but instead he noticed only thickness. He guessed at a man-made cross of wool and marshmallow, shaped in a way that enclosed her completely.

Simone slid reluctantly from her soft cocoon; but necessarily so, Cara thought to herself. She sensed it was the kind of garment where a person wouldn't have offered a thing of herself as long as she had it wrapped around her.

'Well, it's very stylish anyway,' noted its admirer. 'I can imagine a lady wearing it in Nineteen Fifty-Seven.'

All this flattered Simone, and she went to her seat smiling, which had been the intention.
Chapter 11 – The Circle, as yet Unbroken

'So, do we just go around the circle?' asked Simone, the newest member of the group.

'Yes,' said Max, 'why don't we say a bit about ourselves?'

Cara asked, 'So, does anyone want to start?'

'Look at us,' joked Graham after ten seconds of silence. 'A room of people coming here to talk...'

'Knock us out then, mate,' offered Rhys.

'Okay. Well, I'm Graham. Married twenty-five years...'

'Divorced?' asked Cara.

'No, she's still very much with me, more's the pity.'

Rhys snorted with laughter, which underlined the surprise all felt at the remark. Graham went on,

'In fact, if I seem relaxed tonight, it's probably because being here gives me an hour away from her.'

Cue more hilarity.

'But how can you just joke about it?' asked Cara, becoming exercised.

'I think it helps me to release it.'

'But doesn't it mean... that you've had a life wasted?'

'Cara!' pleaded Max.

Graham, though, looked untroubled, answering,

'No, we've had our good times. We were as happy as any others, I suppose. But just recently, well...' he shook his head mournfully.

Yet he turned the question around,

'And what of you, young lady, if you don't mind my asking? Relationships seem very important to you.'

'Yes, they are; though I can't seem to find one. That's all my problem is.'

'Well, now,' said Graham, as a kind father might, 'a pretty thing like you? They must be queuing at the door.'

'That's half the problem.'

'Then what's the other half?'

'I'm... not sure I'm ready to share that yet.' She answered with a shyness her two friends had yet to see from her.

'I'll go next then,' said Max. He gulped, and really did try his best,

'I... I... struggle with everything.'

'Oh, Max,' said Cara, suddenly fine when she had someone else to care for.

'No, it's true. Everywhere I go, and everything I do, is difficult. And I really can't get people to realise it.'

'But you were fine booking this room,' said Cara, 'and greeting people when they came in.'

The look on his face answered better than words could: a wincing grimace, turning to one side, not able to look anyone in the eye.

'Well, that's me anyway,' he managed. And his body-language – crossing his arms and legs and pushing himself back into his chair – was a clear sign of that.

'So much for the sharing circle,' muttered Rhys, almost below earshot.

'So, is it my turn?' asked Simone.

'Please,' said Cara.

'Well, I'm having real trouble at work.'

'I know that feeling,' said Rhys.

'I mean, my job is tough – whose isn't? – and I'm fine if I'm allowed to just get on with it. But there are such prima donnas there! It's like they draw me into their dramas. And then they start having a go at me over things!'

'They're trying to needle you,' said Graham.

'Yes! And... oh, there's this one... grrr.' (She actually growled, like a brown bear.) 'It is all I can do to paint on a smile and grimace through our every encounter. It's like she's waiting for someone to offend her principles, so she can go away and bitch about whatever she thinks just happened – when half the time nothing has happened at all!'

'Then, she is a very damaged person.' This was Graham again, stunning everyone with his calm insight. 'At some point in her life she was hurt very badly; and now she's like a ghost haunting the scene of the crime, destined to repeat her trauma again and again until it is resolved.'

'And what resolves it?' asked Max.

'Talking, just talking.'

'Sorry,' asked Simone. Her eyes flickered over to Max and then settled back on Graham, 'Are you in charge of this group?'

He smiled warmly, 'No, I've only been here as long as you have. But I've seen it before. I'm a teacher.'

'Oh yes,' said Simone, understanding now. 'I bet there's some sniping going on in that staff room!'

He smiled again, 'I meant with the children; but the principle still holds.'

Max, though, was still thinking of Simone's work nemesis,

'That poor woman.'

'You don't have to work with her!' said Simone.

'But after hearing what Graham said, it's like I now know all her secrets – when I don't even know her!'

Graham spoke again, 'Moments like this can happen in student counselling and group scenarios. Realisations, connections. Though, I guess you youngsters know that, setting up a group like this?'

'Of course!' shouted Cara. 'And you don't even know how we all met!'

'But, yes,' said Max, wanting to quickly get things back around to Simone's problems. 'Work can be tough.' And he nodded earnestly in support.

'Shall I tell you something about work, though?'

This was Rhys, in a tone of almost-sarcasm that suddenly had Cara and Max go on high alert.

'Shall I tell you something about work?'
Chapter 12 – Cara and Rhys

The group waited, poised for Rhys's contribution to the discussion of Simone's work troubles.

'The thing about work,' he resumed, in an amplified interpretation of his familiar rolling vowels, 'is that at least we understand the people there. We're all there because we have to be; and someone that we're stuck with all day might be narked off, but we are too, and we're all in the same boat.'

'Okay?' queried Simone.

'So,' he asked, 'this difficult woman, what does she do?'

'She gets on my wick!'

'No, outside of work?'

'Oh, she does amateur dramatics.'

Graham chortled, 'You can't make this up, can you.'

'Then, there you go!' said Rhys. 'She wants to be up on stage, not stuck in some dreary office.'

'Hey, speak for your own office!' answered Simone. 'I'm a partner in my own firm, and we spent a fortune on the place.'

'Well, if you're in charge then what are you moaning about?'

'Rhys!' snapped Cara.

Simone answered regardless, 'Because I still have to follow the rules!'

Rhys snorted, 'I'll save my worry for the workers, thanks, not the bosses.'

'Rhys!' shouted Cara. 'You really are just another lout off the building sites, aren't you.'

'And what are you, Cara? What have you shared about yourself? We don't know a thing about you.'

'And you never will!'

As her speaking screamed attack, so Cara's body curled into a ball.

Rhys was clearly enjoying it, relishing the silence he had shocked people into. He asked,

'So, who's next around the circle, me?'

No one answered.

'So what, we're going around telling everyone our troubles?'

'Yes, Rhys,' snapped Cara. 'Why don't you tell us what's troubling you?'

'Do you want to know what's troubling me?' He was suddenly moving his hands all over the place in an agitated fashion. 'Do you want to know what's troubling me? It's you people!' He jabbed a finger right at her. 'You know how important Fridays are to me, how I need somewhere to go that day...'

'No, we didn't know that.'

'...and you go and book a Tuesday!'

'No, we didn't know!' echoed Max.

'You do know! What about last week?'

Cara remembered aloud, 'Last week we went for an Indian meal, you got all moody after, and you haven't said a straight word to us since!'

Something changed in Rhys; and in the softest Welsh lilt ever heard, right on the edge of breaking, he declared,

'You know, Cara, when you speak in that tone of voice, it sounds like you're shouting at me.'

'I'm not shouting,' she said, as everyone always says, often while still shouting. Though his words had hurt her, and she had sadness in her voice also now.

'So, why are Fridays important?' asked Graham, increasingly becoming their facilitator.

'Because I used to see my daughter on the weekends.'

'Oh?' Cara's interest perked up.

'I'd pick her up on Fridays after work, then have Saturdays with her.'

'But not anymore?' asked Graham.

'Her mother moved back to Scotland.'

Cara let out an involuntary snicker; explaining,

'I'm sorry, it was just the way you said that, with your sad little face. For a big bloke, it was...'

'Funny? Ridiculous?'

'No, not really.' She was suddenly ashamed. 'I guess laughing like that is the last thing Lawrence would have done.'

'He was good, wasn't he?' said Rhys.

'He was,' she agreed, sharing the past tense.

'You think he's coming back?'

'I don't know.'

'Go on,' said Graham.

Rhys continued, 'So anyway, when I was on the maintenance vans I took a later shift so I wasn't sitting around the house on Friday evenings – my huge bloody house I can hardly pay for, with a room for her which she sleeps in twice a year now.'

'Do you want a hug?' asked Cara.

'Yes, please.'

The mood between them had completely changed. After hugging, they sat back down and he went on,

'But I still think of her. At work, at home. It's like, no matter how late I get back there, the empty house is always waiting.'

'You poor sod,' said Graham, who hadn't mentioned whether he had kids himself.

'The owner of the curry house,' remembered Max. 'He had a photo of his niece.'

'He did,' said Rhys. 'He half-killed me with it.'
Chapter 13 – Cara Defiant – Cara's Turn

The five sat in their circle in the empty lecture room. It was as though, with Rhys's release, all were exhausted.

'So, your little girl's away,' pondered Cara. 'For how long?'

'Coming up on a year now,' answered Rhys.

'And you've only been seeing Lawrence for how long?'

'Ten or twelve weeks. I never miss it.'

She asked, 'Do you cry with him?'

'Sometimes. You?'

'No, never,' answered Cara, defiant.

'Never?'

'Oh, you think girls cry all the time?'

'No, I just thought... I don't know.' Rhys asked, 'So, what about you?'

'What? Why I see Lawrence on Fridays?'

'Why at all?

'Oh, haven't I said?'

'You know you haven't.'

And she knew she hadn't. Cara answered,

'Well, Fridays used to be my big night out.'

'Not Saturdays?'

She shook her head and made a bleaugh face. 'I was always as rough as hell on Saturdays. Fridays I used to go out with work. They were down the pub – managers, staff, all of them.'

'It sounds like a real drinking culture.'

'Yes, I suppose it was.'

'But?'

'But... I had to stop myself going.' She bit her lip and looked down to her side, avoiding his eye. Rhys sensed that she was keen to continue but needed the encouragement. He could come up with nothing more imaginative than,

'So, why did you stop?'

She suddenly went haughty, sitting upright and straightening her skirt over her lap, and declaring, like a lady of the manor,

'Because I used to make a fool of myself.' She stood and paced around, her heels clacking quite decisively on the stage with each step.

'Come on, spill,' urged Rhys. 'You know you want to. We've got this whole blinking room to ourselves.'

And his voice echoed through the hall; just as the voices of those lecturing all day long would have done; words resounding from the wooden walls, to be absorbed in the woollen backs of the soft, low chairs.

Cara's shoes continued to sound on the pockmarked wooden floor.

'Look, just sit down and tell us,' demanded Rhys, though in much-changed tones from his earlier moodiness.

As soon as he had said it, Cara corrected her pacing and appeared calm. She obeyed his instruction, first sitting down, and then declaring to the gathered group of four,

'I used to go for men. I felt I wasn't valued unless someone looked at me. Though only someone that I wanted to look at me, you know? It's easy for you men,' she said, casting looks at all but Simone. 'You can just go up to any girl. But we have to wait to be asked; and half the time the ones you want to ask don't; and the one who do ask, well... desperate isn't the word.'

She took a breather, then resumed, 'I did everything I could, though: giving them the eye, showing some leg, dancing with the girls and looking their way. Maybe even giving a little wink and a nod to "Come on over, get it on with us."'

'Easy, tiger,' said Rhys, lightly.

'Oh, they knew what they were getting,' she explained; but that was all she'd say for the moment. Suddenly Cara became the lip-biting womanchild seen only fleetingly those recent weeks, often when talking of Lawrence. She continued, 'I only felt loved if someone wanted me. But they never stayed.'

'What a surprise,' offered Rhys, a little more caustically.

'What's that supposed to mean?' she asked.

'Well. You don't look for a wife in a nightclub, do you?'

'Maybe not,' she said, looking down again. 'But some liked me, some were nice.'

'And what happened to them?'

She answered a different question to the one he had asked,

'Lawrence thought I got into a cycle: Try and find a guy to feel loved, then get rid as soon as. Half the time I came to my senses, or they came to theirs.'

'Don't talk like that,' pleaded Max from across the room.

'Like what?'

'Like you're a mistake.'

'Well, I was. For a lot of people.'

'Only in your mind, when you're feeling low.'

'Stop trying to fix me, Max!'

Max moved back in his chair and returned to being silent – his assumption had been confirmed that he was only a boy and he should leave the important things to the grown-ups. For Graham's part, he recognised these youngsters had to have this out. Simone, though, only looked at her feet and her watch.

Rhys then tried again,

'And you came to Lawrence to break the cycle?'

'I wasn't thinking that clearly. I just hated myself. I'd heard two guys talking in the office – they didn't know I was there. Talking about, "That girl in Sales. Always the last one on the dance floor. She'll go home with anybody..."'

'Oh no.'

'"...Even if you've struck out, there's always her to go for. Call her second prize."'

'I'd have knocked their lights out for you,' said Rhys.

Cara smiled, though asked,

'And you don't talk like that with your mates?'

'No. Well, some of them might, but I'd always tell 'em.'

'So, you're the nice one, eh? The kind one? The one who treats women with respect?'

Rhys recognised the infinitesimal change of tone, answering,

'Don't make this about me. Don't turn this on to me.'

'The nice lad among all the rotters? I wondered where you'd been hiding.'

'Oh, get off.'

'You're all the bloody same!'

'No, we're not!'

'And I bet your girlfriend took your kid away for no reason at all!'

'Cara,' said Graham quietly, to no effect at all.

Rhys stood up and kicked the chair backwards as he did.

'You're all rotten!' she shouted, standing to meet him.

From somewhere he blurted,

'I bet we're not. I bet you've known nice ones.'

And this hit home, almost too successfully. She was struck still, her face like a dropped plate. China shattered as she answered, slowly,

'Yes, but I got rid of those ones just as quickly.'

'How?'

'However I had to.'

Rhys offered, 'Don't shoot me down if I say, thank you for sharing.'

Cara's mood was entirely poignant as she said, 'Look at you, looking all serious.' She cautioned though, as she moved back to her seat, 'Don't you dare hit on me.'

'I wouldn't dream of it,' he answered, turning to retrieve his chair.

At that point, Simone rose and moved to where her coat was hanging, saying,

'I don't think this is quite for me.'

'Simone, please don't go,' pleaded Cara, rising again.

'You seem to know each other, and you have things to work out.'

'I don't know anyone,' said Graham, heedless to all.

'I'm so sorry,' said Cara, as Simone left with apologies.

Graham stretched in his chair, and Cara turned to him,

'Oh no, please don't you leave too.'

But the man was readying to address the others, beaming as he stated,

'This is excellent. Do we all get a go?'
Week 3 – Movement

Chapter 14 – Kicking Puppies, and Little Nell

'I embarrassed you with all that,' began Cara, speaking to Max in the Rose and Crown that Friday.

'No, not at all,' he answered, embarrassed.

'Me talking about men?'

'I've never had much luck with women... you know.'

'I guess it's tough, with everything you're working through.'

'I wish it hadn't been.'

She watched him, curled up at his side of the table, looking like the pub cat (who at that moment was slinking around the bench sofas licking salt off an offered crisp).

It was just the two of them, that bright early evening, and she had to say,

'See, I have embarrassed you. And don't think like that, Max. You're as loveable as anyone. You're someone's romantic hero, you just haven't found her yet.' Though she added the same caution she'd given Rhys, 'Though, you know it's not me, right? Because I'd eat you alive, and I wouldn't even want to.'

'I've had that line before,' he said quietly. '"There's a nice girl out there somewhere, it's just not me." I always thought it was a fob off.'

'No, we really do mean it, we mean it totally.' And she was being sincere, as Max knew, even without raising his eyes to look at her; which he did do anyway, just to see a pretty girl bear such emotion – pure poetry! He wished he was an artist or writer to capture it. She went on,

'The nice guys are the hardest to dump. It's easy when they're devils – then a girl has all the ammunition. But if it's just not working out, well... And the hardest part is...' (She needed to speak, so Max let her.) '...the hardest part is, the nice guys don't get angry back, instead they start trying to work things out. "Let's talk. What can we do? What can I change?" And...'

'Go on.'

'You really won't want to hear this, Max.'

'I need to, don't I,' he reasoned, 'if I'm going to make a success of dating.'

She went on, hesitantly,

'Well, when a girl wants to end a thing like that, and the guy just wants to fix it, sometimes she has to kick him to the kerb. Kick him so hard he doesn't want to come back.'

'Right,' said Max.

'I told you you wouldn't want to hear it.'

'"Kick them hard"?'

'"Kicking puppies", my mate calls it; because you men don't see your own faces when you're down like that. It's... Oh God, I can't believe I'm saying this, to you most of all...'

'Go on!' he urged.

'Well, when a man's being all... friendly like that, I can tell you, whatever a woman looks for in a man, that's the total opposite!'

He considered, 'But, if it isn't working anyway?'

'Right! If it isn't working anyway, don't make it work! What are you going to do, be someone who you're not for the rest of your life?'

'I might have to go and write all this down,' he said. As a reminder, he sent a text to himself of a few key words, reading aloud as he typed, 'Kick... Puppy... Kerb...'

'It was a good idea to come back here,' said Max a little later on, regarding their first pub.

'We hadn't really been booted out,' said Cara, who sometimes felt a sharp need to correct someone slipping into sentiment. 'That was just Rhys being daft.'

'I know,' answered Max. 'I just meant it's good for me especially to come back. I went for Rhys that night. I'm still ashamed of it.'

'You shouldn't be. He knew his cousin had bullied you, then told you he envied you. He should have seen you were upset.'

'But still...'

'Max, it was one of the best things you've done.'

'It's funny, isn't it,' he observed, glowing from the praise, 'how we all have the things that trigger us.'

As they sat there in the pub, each looked to the door from time to time: not because they needed Rhys there to save the conversation, but because wondering where he was was an easy topic to fill in the gaps.

'You've heard from him?' asked Max.

'He said he might be late,' she answered.

'He was in a right state on Tuesday, wasn't he.'

'Wasn't he just!' answered Cara, getting upon her haunches like the professional gossip she loved to be amongst her girl friends. 'And all because he was embarrassed about losing his daughter.'

'I think it was the distance,' thought Max, 'her going to Scotland.'

'Why though?' she asked the room.

'You did laugh when he told us,' he answered.

She got sharp again, as if she needed to justify herself, making a cutting motion with her hand at key points,

'But that's just something people have to get over. That's just something they have to get over when they're about five. You fall over with a tray of cakes you spent the morning baking, they'll laugh. Someone spills a drink all over your best shirt, and you're the one they're laughing at. People will laugh, they won't care about your feelings.'

'They laugh because of the shock,' he commented, 'they laugh because of the pratfall.'

'Even if they love you to bits, they won't care!'

'The Death of Little Nell.'

'Who?'

'Wilde,' he explained. 'He thought you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh.'

'Exactly,' she agreed, though not entirely sure what she was agreeing to.

'Honestly, though,' she said, going back to the safer subject of Rhys, 'I don't know a woman my age who's with the dad of her kids.'
Chapter 15 – The Friday Night Confessional

'Well, it was good of them to let us change to Fridays,' cooed Cara as they returned to Lecture Hall Three.

'And I've made sure they know that this will be our regular evening,' said Max. 'We don't want people turning up next Tuesday, now that that has turned out to be a one-off.'

'So, how is everyone?' asked Graham, arriving hot on the heels of the organisers, even though this was twenty minutes before the stated time.

Cara and Max nodded their good health,

'Though I haven't heard from Rhys since Tuesday,' said Cara.

'No need to worry about Rhys.'

All turned to see him sitting high up at the back of the lecture theatre.

'Rhys! How long have you been up there?' asked Max.

'I finished work an hour ago. You remember Lawrence used to let me sleep in his waiting room on Fridays?' He stretched and yawned as though he'd been enjoying the same privilege there.

Max laughed, 'I'm so glad you're here.'

'It got a bit heated last time, eh buddy?'

'Just a little.'

'Yes, about that...' Cara spun on her heels and managed to look both upwards and downwards at once.

'You were magnificent,' said Rhys, making her look decisively up. 'A force of nature.'

'It was wonderful,' echoed Graham.

'It's brilliant,' said Max, who had been cowed into silence that particular night, 'that we can vent so angrily, and still be accepted. Like a validation.'

'That's the point!' said Graham.

'Is it?' asked the others, as Rhys joined them from the heavens.

'You mean to say,' asked Graham, 'you're at the point of setting up this group without having had group therapy yourselves?'

The three looked at each other with blank faces.

'Well, I've been doing groups like this with the pupils for years.' Graham turned to Max especially, 'If you'll allow me to presume, Max, you're a reserved person? You keep things inside, always scared of expressing them?'

'Yes,' he answered.

'To the point where you hold things back even in a space intended for them? Then, the kind of flare-ups we saw last time are exactly what can trigger someone to "blurt it all out", so to speak.'

'We're lucky to find him,' whispered Cara to Rhys as they went to arrange the chairs.

Max walked away a sad and wiser man, as he went to help them.

There was a knock on the door as it opened again,

'Hello, is this the Listening Circle?'

'Indeed. Welcome.'

'I'm Petula,' announced a woman of early middle-age. 'Though call me Pet.'

Her warm face didn't match her business suit, thought Cara. In her eyes, it struggled to contain what she considered might have been the happy plumpness of motherhood.

'Pleased to meet you,' issued Rhys, quite transformed from the previous occasion.

'And you have another guest outside, she's just gone to the Ladies.'

'Slim, dark hair, big coat?' asked Max, expectantly.

'No, a bit of a blonde bombshell,' answered the woman. 'Were you expecting someone?'

'Not really.'

'You took a shine to last week's visitor then, Max?' asked Rhys, as they began to sit around the formed circle.

'Leave him alone,' said Cara; before she added quietly, 'Though I was expecting someone too.'

Rhys braced himself, knowing what was coming next, as he asked,

'Someone from Lawrence's?'

'Yes.'

'So, have you heard from him?'

'No,' answered Cara. 'Though I was outside his room last night.'

'Has that been every night this week?'

'I like being there,' she offered in her little girl voice, suddenly curling up in her chair, arms wrapped around her knees. 'It makes me feel like I'll be seeing him soon, that I'll be able to talk, that I'll be comfortable for an hour.'

'Dependence,' said Rhys.

'Give her a break, will you?' snapped Max.

'I like being there,' she repeated.

'Even though you knew he wouldn't be there?' asked Rhys, more sensitively.

'It doesn't seem to matter – it carries his aura.'

'And the door's still locked?'

She nodded, still curled up, 'Though I've met a couple of girls now, waiting on other nights. I told them about this place.'

'Oh?' asked Max.

'One said she probably couldn't make it.'

Rhys quipped, 'That's okay, he only needs one.'

Max flashed him a glare. Then spat out, as a question to Cara,

'So, you only asked the women?'

'Who else would I ask? The man at the Post Office counter?'

He grimaced, 'I mean, were there only those women there?'

'Yeah, yeah, only the two women.'

'Really?'

'Yes, they were the only people I met.'

'And don't forget that bird who left the note,' added Rhys, being helpful.

Max had turned away in thought, musing,

'He must have had more patients than that, though. Six in total?'

'That might not be all of them,' suggested Rhys.

'She's already said she's been there all week.'

'What does that matter?'

'It means that not everyone has been left waiting in the foyer like a spare part! Someone else is getting the message of what's happened to Lawrence, it's only us they don't care about!'

'We don't know that,' said Rhys.

Though Max was on a roll and went on undaunted,

'It's always us who get left out! It's always us they don't care about! Always bottom of the list! They think the others are more important!'

'Will you shut up!' snapped Rhys.

'Rhys; Max,' cautioned Graham.

'It's the truth!' said Max. 'It has to be the truth!'

'You're in a right bloody state all of a sudden, aren't you?' asked Cara.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'I mean, Max, do you realise how stroppily you can come across?'

He was shocked, 'What do you mean?'

'I mean the look on your face, and the sharp way you speak. I don't think you realise how... intimidating people could find you.'

Max looked around the small group, who oddly enough were all smiling at him in a fashion suggesting they were worried for him. He stammered,

'But... I'm a shy person. I'm not stroppy.'

Rhys tried to be comforting,

'Maybe you've built those defences up stronger than you realise?' For once Max didn't answer right back, and so Rhys risked going on, 'Maybe you think others are fine because their problems aren't like your problems. Though, there are as many ways to be messed up as there are people who are messed up.' Again silence; and, thus emboldened, Rhys went even further, 'I don't know, it's like you get into your groove and you're determined to enjoy it.'

'That's easy for you to say, with your rugby club mates!'

'Whoever said I was in a rugby club?' Rhys looked away, 'I need some air to wake me up.'

Though he didn't have a chance to raise himself out of his seat before Cara's phone buzzed, and she went to look at it,

'Oh, Tammie can't come.'

'That's the one who's couldn't make it?' asked Max with agitation.

'No, that's the other one.'

'So neither of them are coming?'

'Calm down, Casanova,' offered Rhys. 'There's more than one woman in the world.'

'It might seem like that to you,' answered Max, 'with your lads' nights out on the town. But I assure you, after years spent alone, then the picture takes on a very different hue!'

'You're absolutely crackers,' said Rhys.
Chapter 16 – Patience

Ignoring the others, Rhys turned to Cara, speaking as if alone,

'After all I've said about my girlfriend leaving, and he comes out with rubbish like that?'

Max could still hear them – they were only sat a few chairs away – but thankfully events distracted him.

'Is it all right to come in now?' The blonde bombshell was waiting by the door, unnoticed by all.

'My dear woman, of course.' Graham rose to greet her.

'I heard you talking and I didn't like to interrupt.'

'I'm so sorry.'

'Not at all,' she smiled. 'That's what we're here for, isn't it? Talking?'

'Indeed it is.'

'I'm Sophie.'

'Graham.'

There was another knock on the door, and a tall thin man entered. All welcomed him, as he followed the other's lead. Graham offered them seats in the circle; where new arrival Sophie saw Max visibly upset.

She whispered to Graham,

'So what's his problem?'

'Don't ask,' answered Rhys, overhearing.

'No,' corrected Cara, 'asking is what we're meant to do.' She smiled, 'We're here to talk.'

Sophie looked around the room,

'So, how does it work?'

'I don't know,' answered Cara, 'we've only been here twice. We were all seeing Lawrence.'

'Who's he then, some kind of gigolo?'

The sheer inappropriateness of it made Max look aghast, and the others burst out laughing.

'He's our counsellor,' said Cara, admitting this to people who didn't feel like strangers. 'That's where we three met.'

'What, like group therapy?'

'No, in the waiting room.'

Sophie looked across the faces with befuddlement.

'Great, now she's about to leave as well,' said Rhys. But instead she started giggling, her hands up around her face like a little girl,

'"In the waiting room",' she echoed. 'That's so funny!'

'Now we're a living joke,' muttered Rhys; to a wry look from Cara.

The door creaked afresh... and Max could hardly contain his happiness to see Simone, the young woman in the comfort coat from the previous meeting.

Rhys saw her too, and saw Max's reaction. 'Sit yourself down, love.' The words rang out in Welsh tones. With the merest nods of greeting, she followed Rhys's offer. Rhys gave Max a crafty look; who glared back and turned away.

The tall thin man, who hadn't said much as of yet, asked,

'Is it like a horse shoe?'

'Sorry?' asked Graham.

'Do we go around the horse shoe?'

'We can do.'

'What, here, in the middle of this big room?'

'No one will hear through those wooden doors, I promise you – it's designed for private lectures. And the background noise in the corridor is quite high.'

'I don't know...'

But it was after the stated time, and others were keen to start.

'Perhaps we could get on?' asked Graham. With Max in a huff, and with a meeting's experience under his belt, Graham's practical experience was coming to the fore.

Meanwhile, Sophie and Cara had fallen into a conversation. Cara was saying,

'So, it's been two weeks since any of us have seen Lawrence.'

'What nights do you see him?'

'Shall we get on?' asked Graham again, with just the tiniest increase in pitch.

Cara looked up, realising afresh how much she enjoyed being led by a man she respected.

'So, hello everyone. Thank you for coming. I'm Graham. Perhaps I could kick things off...'

He hadn't asked it as a question, but he had looked to Cara, Rhys and Max, who all either nodded or otherwise did nothing to object to what had become obvious: for all their ownership of the situation, Graham knew what he was doing in such a room, in a way that none of the originators did.

After the introductions, Graham went on,

'This meeting isn't run by an organisation, it's a gathering of friends. Though, I will add, I've been a teacher for twenty-six years, and have run many such groups for students in that time.

'Group therapy,' he explained, '"the talking cure" – call it what you will. I think we all have an idea of what we expect from tonight, and what we hope to get out of it. The only principle is that everyone has a chance to speak. Accepting that fact, then I ask that no one interrupt when someone else is having their turn.

'Now, a few words of warning. People will be sharing, so we must listen with respect. Hearing another's story, we may be burning to offer advice. I should caution against that: what, to us, may feel like perfect sense, may, to the person with the problem, come across as criticism for the state that they, in their own mind, have got themselves into.

'So, if you do feel the need to give advice: wait till they've finished speaking, offer it once, allow the suggestion to be noted... and then move on.

'Groups such as these thrive from a desperation to communicate...'

Cara felt the air go out of her – such an obvious sentence to utter! Was that Graham's genius, to simplify to the point of dumbness? Was dumbness genius, to make things so easy?

Around her, she felt the same in everyone – like a plane about to land, their ears popping, a lurch sideways in the breeze.
Chapter 17 – The Listening Circle

With Graham leading the group, he went on,

'...In all my years with troubled students – troubled people, indeed: they are adults by that age – half the problem is the sense that their problem can't be talked about. How awful, eh, to be upset and for that upset to be shameful.'

Cara turned to hear tears beside her. They came from blonde Sophie, the newcomer who had been so bubbly earlier. Cara looked to Graham with urgency, though he looked back with a smile and continued in the softest tones,

'We offer a safe space for people to explore. And a reminder to you all that this isn't "normal life". The whole point is that it isn't normal life. This is the one place where people can talk. So, there can be no judgement here, even if you hear things that shock you.

'To the speaker, I say: you won't be criticised for what you say; and if you are, that will be the failing of the criticiser and I will speak to them about it. This is not a room for morality, it is a facility for healing and release.

'To the listener, I say: you are not here to be offended, to have your hackles raised. You are here for the speaker to say the unsayable to an audience – that is your only role when listening. Because a secret is a funny thing: we can tell it to ourselves all day long, and it won't make a difference. We don't even need to tell it to the person it may concern. We only need to tell it to one other person...'

(The quiet sobs continued next to Cara; but Graham still didn't acknowledge them, so Cara took his lead.)

'...and that is our function today,' he wrapped up, 'to be that "one other person" for anyone needing to share. "In here" is not "out there". The heavy stuff is made for rooms like these.

'And so, shall we begin?'

Before they could, though, Simone shuffled in her chair in the thick warm coat she hadn't taken off.

'I don't think this is for me,' she said, and got up and left.

'Leaving so soon?' joked Rhys, in a way he instantly regretted. 'That went well again,' he remarked, once the wooden doors had bumped shut after her.

'If you'll permit me a few words behind a person's back,' said Graham, 'I think this group is "exactly" for her.'

'One day she might even stay for it,' joked Rhys; who turned to Max, 'She can't laugh about herself. I think you're right, Max. She's perfect for you.'

'Then shall we follow our friend's suggestion...' asked Graham (nodding to the tall thin man who had yet to give his name) '...and go around the circle and say a little about ourselves?'

Graham gestured to his right; and closest to him in that direction was Petula, 'call me Pet', the first of the new faces to arrive. She had been watching everything since her arrival with what seemed a keen interest.

'Hello everyone,' she began with a little wave. 'Well, I'm Petula. I'm married with three lovely kids.'

'How old?' asked Cara.

'My youngest's nine, and my oldest's just turned fifteen.'

Graham smiled and laughed lightly.

'You've known teenagers too,' she smiled back, 'I can tell.'

'They can be tough,' said Sophie, whose tears didn't seem to get in the way of her contributing.

Petula smiled again, 'Oh, my baby boy's still in there somewhere. I'll get him back one day!' Her happiness suggested to Cara that her children weren't the problem; but she went slightly serious before continuing,

'The thing is, I...'

'Go on,' urged Graham.

'Well, I don't really have a reason for being here tonight. I feel a little like I don't have any problems; as if I'm wasting your time listening to me, while others might have much more serious issues.'

'Not at all,' said Rhys.

'Agreed,' said Graham. 'We all get a chance here. And it isn't Trauma Top Trumps – everyone's got something that's brought them to this room.'

'He's good at this,' whispered Cara to Rhys.

Petula resumed, 'Well, that's just it. I don't think I have any "trauma" at all.'

'Forgive the wording,' offered Graham.

'Oh, nothing to forgive,' she answered with a smile. 'I... well, it's a funny thing...'

'Go on, if you'd like to.'

'I grew up a Quaker,' she announced. 'I'd go with my mother to the House of Friends. We would sit in the listening circle.'

'Who was talking?' asked Max.

'No one!' she laughed. 'It was silent, we listened to the silence. I loved it. It was so peaceful. Kids today, they never get a moment's quiet. I used to live for those afternoons with the women.'

'But how did you know anything about each other?' asked Sophie, dabbing her eyes.

'Oh, I knew them better than I knew anyone!'

'It sounds wonderful,' said Graham.

'It was. But... don't get me wrong. I love my life. I love my husband, my kids; even my eldest, though he does carry on a bit just lately! And, you can see...' she gestured to the strait-laced skirt suit so incongruous to the rest of her personality, '...I've just come from work. I love my work, I've got to be a team leader. I have a career in a way my mother never would have. And I know some women say they're torn between the two, but I never have been! I'm very lucky with my husband, he's a rock – he even knows I'm here tonight, and is going to make me dinner for when I'm back home. It's just...'

This was what Cara would come to know as 'the threshold moment'.

'...I miss that hall, I miss the silence, I miss the women... That's what I'd get here, I think. Even though I know we're all talking! That sense of calm, away from everything else. For that I'd come here every week!'
Chapter 18 – Thresholds

'Thank you, Petula,' offered Graham. 'Shall we move on in that direction?'

'Hi, I'm Max...' announced the next member, '...that's not my real name.'

'Whatever you're comfortable with,' said Graham.

'I'm... I still find it hard to say what I am. I have to get upset to say it.'

In the silence, Sophie looked to Graham, who nodded. So she asked a short question,

'Maybe you'd be better talking one-to-one with someone?'

'I did do,' said Max, 'but he vanished.'

'Vanished?'

'He just went,' said Cara.

'Into thin air,' added Rhys.

'That's why we're doing this,' said Max. 'To try and keep something going.'

'It's very brave,' said Graham, 'though I might try and track this fellow down for you at some point.'

'I was bullied,' added Max as an afterthought. And all knew that that was that.

'Right, shall we...?' Graham moved on. 'If you're happy to?'

'Thank you. I'm Sophie. Forgive the tears, I get very weepy. You don't want to take me to the cinema, I'd be crying all over your shoulder! I've just always been an emotional person. It's upsetting isn't it, how people behave? What we see on the news? How can people be like that to each other? How can they do those awful things?'

'Do you live alone?' asked Rhys suddenly.

'Yes,' she answered, slightly startled.

'I'm the same.' He went on, 'I just mean, since my girlfriend went, I get the same sometimes. It's the evenings.'

'Yes, yes. Sat alone.'

Though Sophie must have had half a decade on Rhys, Cara saw it directly. And on such matters, she believed herself to be never wrong. She felt their connection as an object truth; and what she felt was envy.

'Your girlfriend went away, you said?' asked Sophie of Rhys.

'And took my daughter.'

'Oh my, that's awful for you.'

'I feel it every day.'

'I had someone too,' she continued, 'but I don't think of them so much anymore. They weren't my "lost love" or my "one". It just left me so alone when it ended.'

The focus moved around,

'Hi, I'm Rhys. I think you've already heard a bit about me. I was seeing Lawrence too, I was one of the first here.'

'I'm Cara. I was one of Lawrence's people. He was helping me a lot.' She shot out a look of, 'Don't ask me any more'. And the focus moved around,

Next was the tall, thin, silent man, upon whom a lot of expectation had built up. He began,

'I was in prison for eighteen years.'

The room was electrified – no one had expected that.

'That's what I told my therapist after I started talking to her. I told her, starting therapy was like being released from prison...'

The room breathed again, reassured but deflated somehow. He went on,

'...I could see myself, like in a scene from a film, walking around these docks and harbours – bright sunlight, all that space and air – like a man released from prison.'

'I must admit,' said Graham, 'at first I thought you meant you had literally been in prison.'

'Oh no,' he chortled, at last breaking the ice. 'Sorry, it's just how it came out. I haven't told anyone else about those days. I don't have anyone to tell. It was... a dramatic time for me.'

'It sounds it.'

'I just wanted to share my experiences and see if anyone else had had something similar.'

'We can certainly do that tonight,' said Graham. He wrapped up the intros, 'Well, thank you everyone for offering a bit about yourselves. It will help as we share our stories. First though, maybe we could take Petula's memory of the Quaker Hall as a cue for a moment's quiet contemplation of our own: shall we try for two minutes? Close your eyes too, if you like.'

'Now's when they go through our bags,' laughed Rhys, to a stare from Cara.

They didn't last two seconds before Max began moving in his chair uncomfortably; though they made the two minutes.

As some opened their eyes and others breathed, Graham asked,

'So, how did people find that?'

The look on Max's face said it all for him.

Rhys laughed, then went reflective,

'It reminded me of football matches...'

'Oh yes, the minute's silence!' agreed Sophie.

He nodded, '...and how I spend the entire minute hoping some idiot won't make a noise.'

'Silence can unsettle us,' said Graham. 'It's how some people say mindfulness brings out anxiety.'

Cara had used the time to think,

'Thought it wasn't everyone, was it?' she noted.

'It wasn't everyone what?' asked Graham.

'It wasn't everyone in the introductions. You didn't introduce yourself.'

'I'm sure I did.'

'As the host, yes,' said Max, jumping in, 'but you weren't hired for the role; the role found you. You arrived here the first time as an attendee like the rest of us.'

Rhys asked, in a warm invitation, 'Would you tell us why, Graham? For the new members of the group?'

'Well, if you really...' The host was smiling, but all were looking now, so he was committed.

'Well. I'm Graham. Fifty-three, married many, many years. And... yes, I see what you mean. In a formal circle it's harder than you think!'
Chapter 19 – Afters

At the door, as all were leaving and waving their goodbyes, Cara caught Rhys,

'It wasn't working out tonight, was it?'

'No, the three of us were like clams.'

'Graham wasn't much better,' she added.

He looked at her sadly, in agreement.

'And what did you make of Max?' she asked.

'He wasn't at his worst...'

'...nor his best,' she said, finishing the sentence for him.

'Though I wasn't much better the other week.'

'I think we've all had our moments,' she conceded.

They watched people leave till the organisers were the last ones there.

'You and Sophie got on well,' she noted, in that passive way people can have when they're burning to know.

Rhys's involuntary smile told her all that she needed.

'Same time next Friday then?' he asked.

'Does it have to be Friday?'

'I'm seeing a film on Monday,' he remembered.

'I'm at my Dad's on Wednesdays,' she remembered.

'Tuesday then?' asked Rhys? And they left without another word.
Chapter 20 – The Little Girl... by Day

'Thanks for meeting up, Rhys,' said Cara as he pulled up a chair to join her.

'That's okay.'

'You're looking smart,' she noticed.

'I'm back in the office.'

'Oh?'

He smiled, 'It's better now.'

'You've told them how you were feeling?'

'No, I think it's sorting itself out.'

She smiled, but a seed of doubt had nestled in her brain and wouldn't be going away any time soon.

'This pub's so different in daytime,' she noted.

'Aye, it's more like a café.' His Welsh accent rang out on that last word in a way that made Cara smile. 'Everyone's having lunches.'

'I'm not hungry, though.'

'Me neither.'

She pondered, then announced, 'Don't say anything to him, but it's easier to talk without Max sometimes. He just makes things so...'

'...Dramatic?'

She nodded.

'He doesn't mean it, though,' thought Rhys. 'He's just fighting things so much.'

She asked, 'So, what was he like in school?'

'He was just a quiet kid, you know.'

'Quiet? Like unresponsive, withdrawn, repressed?'

'Okay, okay. The trouble is...' he began.

'Yes?'

'...they were so sharp, and clever with it, and what they did to him... well, you couldn't help but laugh.'

Cara remained unconvinced. Then Rhys's tone changed,

'Those lads, though...' he shook his head, 'the lives they led. Beating on Minnie was about the only fun times they ever had. One went straight off to prison, another lost his mum.'

'They were struggling themselves,' she pondered.

'But still... they were wicked with him.'

'So, we're all cracked then?' asked Cara to change the subject.

'It looks like it,' he answered, and they shared the joke. 'So...' he went on, 'you needed to talk?'

'Not about anything special.' She smiled a faint smile.

'No, I'm the same.' And so they didn't.
Chapter 21 – The Green Folder

'You all right, love?'

'Eh?'

'It's not that bad, is it?'

'Yeah, it's fine.'

Rhys was back at his office desk, and his colleague Trudy couldn't help picking up on every little thing...

'Back in the office then? I bet you had to look for a clean shirt.'

'I've got loads of clean shirts!'

'Okay, no worries. I believe you, millions wouldn't!'

...picking, picking, picking; or so it felt to him. He remembered Lawrence's words: 'When we're panicked, normal conversation can seem aggressive or sarcastic or insulting. Try to notice the sensations that come with these feelings, and remember them if you feel them again.'

Rhys tried to notice the sensations: of his head being made of glass, his senses stuffed with old wires, every call for his attention a buzzer going off in his ear, a flashbulb popping in his eyeball.

'Hey, Rhys...'

'Yeah?'

'"Keep your shirt on!"'

Trudy chuckled at her joke, but Rhys could barely keep his head on his shoulders.

He looked around, suddenly alarmed as a door closed.

'What?' asked this newcomer as they entered the room to what appeared to be a full-blown stare. But Rhys just looked away.

Lawrence again: 'When we are startled, we can appear startling to others – big eyes, darting stare, turning our head quickly. This can draw attention to us and begin a vicious circle, confirming to us that we "are" being watched or stared at, that others "do" think we're acting oddly or weirdly. Usually, though, people are only responding instinctively to our sudden movements or dramatic postures – this is instinct in all animals – and they are thinking about us a lot less than we think they are.'

So says Lawrence, thought Rhys to himself (his mind was going nineteen-to-the-dozen now, and so he had capacity for several thoughts at once). Cool, clever Lawrence in his big leather chair, I bet he's never had a panic attack. I bet it's all theoretical to him. All these happy-clappy posh professionals, getting it from books. They've never known the sharp end.

Rhys had said to Lawrence once: 'There are times I get annoyed with you in my head, Lor,' for that was what Rhys called him in the sessions, always enjoying a nickname. 'When I remember your advice at a stressful moment; but it seems too innocent, too unconnected with the...'

'...Intensity?'

'Yes, with the "intensity" of what I'm feeling then.'

'That's natural,' explained the counsellor. 'In the therapy room, our talk is either memories of the past, or is theoretical for the future. I'm not at your shoulder when you next begin panicking, I'm not with you when you next feel sad.'

'But I feel bad afterwards, Lor, for shouting at you in my head.'

'Therapy is physical, Rhys. Words are physical, words in our head are physical. Use me as your punchbag, and save it being someone else.'

Back in the office, Rhys tried to concentrate on the computer screen: at the email inbox, on the spreadsheet he had open, and the report he had saved for a later task. On his desk was a printout of names which he had found easier to work through in hard copy, with a pen to tick or cross or make real notes with. And at his side was the green folder, full of waiting tasks like a miserable Christmas stocking, one that had to be opened and offered no joy.

He felt the folder cramp him physically, clog his elbow-room, as much as the work contained within it oppressed his mind. It drained him with the time its tasks were going to take, and the effort he would be expending on them – just looking at it, he projected into the future the hours he would lose to it and how tired he would be at the end, how that exhaustion would spoil his evening.

'You're a visionary, Rhys,' had said Lawrence. 'You have to be to be coming up with these mental pictures.'

'But I don't want to be,' he said, so sadly. 'I just want to be a normal bloke.'

'It's not a curse, Rhys. But it means you can't just carry on doing things that upset you and not be upset. You have to take care of yourself, your mind can build up joy or sadness.'

The green folder sat there, though Rhys couldn't even get started on it yet! Before then he had emails marked URGENT or ATTENTION; and there was the report he was keeping open on his screen for later; and the printed lists that would have to be gone through at some time...

Rhys hated the green folder; but had moved past hate already, knowing it was futile. He had moved on to a morbid grief: acknowledging that the tasks within the folder were his and his alone; that no staff member, however outwardly friendly, could help him with them; and that no complaint or anger or even humour could reduce or defeat the tasks awaiting.
Chapter 22 – The Worker's Charter

That particular morning, Rhys was following a colleague's advice, of doing a little of a lot of things at once. 'Keep dipping in: a bit of this, a bit of that.' The approach he had been trying before had been to focus on each single thing, complete it, then move on. But this had left other tasks unstarted; and, from certain phrases used by colleagues and which stuck in his mind, he sensed a growing belief that he was 'lacking flexibility'.

Meanwhile...

One small sensible voice in his head was saying: it doesn't matter what order things are done in, whether done in whole or in several pieces. There is more work here than I can do. Maybe enough for others, but not for me. Racing cars can't pull tractor loads, and tractors can't go at two-hundred miles an hour. And it's no use trying to make the one do the other.

But he couldn't listen to that voice: because that meant leaving his job; which meant having no money; which meant losing his home; which meant the street, and state support, and the worst bedsit in the worst neighbourhood, screams and backfiring engines all night, heard through shattered glass that wouldn't keep out the cold – and imagine having his daughter stay at such a place, the look of anger on her mother's face!

But back up, back up, he told himself. What was that train of thought? Where was that awful bedsit he was suddenly living in? Why not throw in a few rats and cockroaches too? Why not a lump of rotting meat on the sideboard as a symbol of his moral decay?

He went through the steps of his disaster movie: firstly, he would have to speak to management to say he couldn't cope. This was admitting weakness, which was the cardinal sin, as it put him in the thrall of others, dependent on their mercies.

He dreaded that: for all the good regard he hoped he'd garnered at the company, there'd be nothing they could do for him. He'd be admitting he couldn't do the job. And they would love to help, and would feel bad for him on a personal level. But in these hard financial times...

...which were all times nowadays, weren't they? When had been the last time people hadn't used that phrase? The firm would have no option but to terminate his contract. Would he then get a reference, or would he want such a reference? And, being an honest sort of guy, in a future interview, when asked why he had left his last job, even if he tried to blag the question, wouldn't he, in effect, be having to say to every prospective employer that he hadn't coped with his last job and so wouldn't cope with theirs?

To leave one job was to leave them all; to cease this work was to never work again. And all this happening in a workplace that he felt he couldn't trust. Because – he suddenly realised! – they had put him in the office role, they even thought he would appreciate it! So how much did they really know him?

A calm voice, creeping in at that moment, might have asked, though: wouldn't the tiny matter of correcting the company's misunderstanding of their employee's career wishes, have allowed the company to find him something that was a better fit? Weren't there endless charters to ensure worker wellbeing, and legislation requiring that they did so?

Though, to Rhys, in such stricken moments – which could stretch out into hours and days – such a simple, clean and good idea was untenable.
Chapter 23 – Team Meeting

'You coming, Rhys?' asked Trudy, interrupting his daydreaming.

'What?'

'To the Team Meeting? It's half-past-ten.'

It was indeed half-past-ten, but Rhys had forgotten the meeting. Amid the clutter of his computer screen, and with his mind elsewhere, he had missed the appointment reminder flashing along his taskbar.

'Do I need anything, Trudes?' he asked, in a tone of confiding desperation.

For all the unintentional annoyance she had caused him that morning, she was his closest friend in the office. While others he acknowledged as 'the bosses' or as 'more senior' or as 'company' men or women, Trudy was in some key regard 'just like him'; a female version of the lads from the maintenance lorry, perhaps the type of woman one of them might marry; or have as a sister, meeting each Sunday around their parents' kitchen table and sniping at each other like teenagers again.

She did her job, did it well, had a moan, had a laugh, and went off home. 'Well, it doesn't rule your life, does it?' she would say. 'I'm not one of those who answers emails at ten o'clock at night, and has the laptop open on the table at Sunday Lunch.' (And there were managers and techs who did both these things.)

What stresses boiled up inside Trudy, she released on her 'Girls' Nights Out'. The gossip from these nights was legendary, and kept her going for the two or three weeks until the next one. She had even invited Rhys along; only jokingly though, he was sure. And anyway, he would think to himself, who'd want to date a bloke with a kid, with no money, who couldn't even hold down an office job – as he was certain he'd be sacked almost any day now.

Others were rising around them and gathering papers and aluminium heat-retaining coffee mugs.

He called to his compadre with almost tearful eyes,

'What do I need to bring?'

'Just grab your pen and notebook... and look interested!'

'Brace yourself,' said their boss, a serious woman who somehow found an extra element of herself in the evenings to enjoy salsa dancing. 'We might need to fight our corner in there.'

Such meetings were new fayre to Rhys, bred as he was for outdoor living; and they provided at least two major challenges. Firstly, remaining sincere throughout them, nodding along, when he wondered if anyone really wanted to be there. And secondly, and most simply, merely remaining focused. For Rhys, given the stresses that sat waiting for him back at his desk, such breaks in the routine provided something of the feeling of a school field trip.

He wasn't the only one to feel this, he could see. Around the table, others bore the air of men and women released. Some – like Trudy – were catching up with friends from other teams and laughing like drains. Meanwhile, there were always two or three who'd printed off minutes and were dishing out papers to attendees.

Also there, was Rhys's work nemesis. His real name remained unknown, but to himself, Rhys knew him as Facenoise. To Rhys, this was the only name the man had ever needed; and he was living up to his moniker again in the meeting: alone among the attendees, he had brought food, and was already noisily engaged in eating it. Most amazingly for Rhys, however, was the fact that no one else seemed to notice! Rhys could only imagine the looks he himself would have received had he brought, say, a sausage roll to the proceedings, and then began to munch his way through it. Others were now calling the meeting to order; while Facenoice had the lid off a meat pie and was nuzzling the contents.

As the quiet burble of voices proceeded in their talk of 'services' and 'subscribers' and 'system exploitation', so Rhys's relaxation became complete. He cast a look across at Trudy, who cast one back. Surely what was being discussed would not affect someone at their level...

'...and Rhys is going to be supporting the new system when it's implemented.'

Suddenly all eyes were on him.

'Rachel spoke to you about it?'

Silence from Rhys, and from Rachel, his boss.

There was disquiet in the room, there was shuffling in chairs, and no longer laughter to be heard, only the muffled munching of one member, as he wiped his gravy-fingers on the meeting minutes so as to get a better grip of the pie's crust.

Rhys was agog, a lost child.

What had begun as a break from the work pressure had become more of it; and it had come with him being caught him out, and it happening in public, and with his white, round face now captivating the attention of all who saw it, like a hunter's moon crossing the heavens on a dark night.

The speaker went to her notes, half-telling and half-asking him,

'IT were going to give you access to the testing version of the system? So you could write up training notes?'

'But I haven't had time. I've been so busy with the...' he couldn't stammer it out, couldn't state all the tasks he had heaving on his shoulders; though he knew them like he knew parts of his own body, parts of his body he had learnt to hate.

'You were going to liaise with Ollie?' asked the speaker.

'Who's Ollie?'

'Ollie.' She gestured with her hand to point out...

'Facenoise?'

'What did you say...?'

'He works in IT?'

The eater's mouth was too full to speak, but he evidently did work in IT. And also, evidently knew what the meeting was being held for, as did everybody there except for Rhys.

'Yes, he works in IT,' said Rhys's boss. 'Where did you think he worked?'

'Gregg's, most likely.'

This did bring a chuckle, but nervously so, as even those laughing were aware that they were watching someone about to lose the skin off their back.

Rhys's boss looked to the table, to her notes, anywhere but at him,

'Maybe I had better catch up with you back at your desk?'

He was being sent away; he was a boy among adults. He stood up and backed away, nearly knocking his chair over with the backs of his legs. He turned and walked to the door.
Chapter 24 – Cathedral of Noise

What would Rhys remember afterwards? When he came to speak of it, it was the sensation of every nerve in his body being alive for those few minutes; as he walked out of the room quite calmly, as he went along the grey corridor, as he passed through the empty office, feeling – knowing – that it was for the last time. It was a clarity, he'd say, absolute awareness – the worst had happened, worry was no longer a rehearsal of what might occur, it had become the reality of each moment as he lived it.

His desk felt a dismal grounding for such electricity, and so he turned for Reception – he would later regret not going back for his coat and keys.

He walked past the woman there, waving slightly, giving none of his usual smiles and greetings. He didn't toss his security pass over to her, didn't make a scene; though he knew it was his last chance to do so, and that it would have been the brass cap on everything.

He went outside into the street, shirtsleeves in the cold, in a hyper-reality. Every sensation was amplified: each truck made him judder as it passed, every breeze caught his body like a ghost had walked over his grave, a pedestrian passing too closely made him jump; every voice heard was a word about him, or could have been about him; and how could he live with that, process so much data coming in all about him?

He couldn't cope with the High Street, and so took an alleyway past small shops and take-aways, toward a grassy area with benches. There he sat; but that was worse. He felt the cold even more strongly; and in the quiet, any passing voice stood out, could be focused on more intently.

A group of college lads walked past with takeaway lunches,

'You all right, bro?' asked one. Maybe this was out of concern, maybe as the prelude to making fun, but Rhys's startled stare soon had the lad turn on his heels and go on his way.

He sat on the edge of the bench, unable to relax, not wanting to think about what he would do. He turned and entered a shopping centre. He had last been in there on that night with Cara and Max, when the place had been as quiet as an empty cathedral. Now it was filled with the clamour of a thousand souls.

People bumped his shoulder. He apologised as he walked into a queue outside a sandwich bar. It stretched across the walkway and met another queue for a cashpoint, forming a human wall across the hall. A baby buggy nearly went into him. A rough bloke told him to 'Get outta it!' A woman squeaked as he knocked her bag from her shoulder. She clutched the bag, and backed away, as an old lady behind him asked very politely, 'Excuse me, would you mind if I came past?'

He couldn't move, he couldn't stand. He lurched sideways to where he knew there was a door. Someone else came through it, and Rhys came to a sharp halt to avoid them. He lost his footing, hitting the wall. As he stood again the blood drained from his face. His shirt sleeve had come unstitched, its hem had come untucked – his appearance was beginning to match his inner-state.

People were moving away from him now – how quickly he had become apart from them, had fallen from their peer group and their common regard, to become an outsider, a danger, a straggler, a stranger, a type who 'shouldn't be allowed in here'.

Normal, good, decent people were being distracted by him, were having their shopping visits ruined. A little girl threw her ice-cream to the floor, as though her day out had been irrevocably spoilt by his presence.

The green blazers came towards him. He welcomed them, he threw himself at one of them; who mistook it for an attack, and soon had his arm in a lock and had Rhys down on his knees. The other murmured into the wire that coiled along his neck and down under his shirt collar. The police were coming. He went limp, and the guard's grip lessened. He breathed and relaxed, and soon it was all over.
Chapter 25 – Hospital Bed

'Were they rough with you?' asked Cara, after getting there as soon as she could.

'No,' answered Rhys lightly from his reclining position on the bed, the nearest to the window on a ward of four. 'By the time the police came I was in a heap.' His singsong voice was back to normal, which even he noticed.

'So, are you injured?'

'No, they made me put this on as routine.' He gestured to the shapeless white tunic he was wearing, then lay back against his pillows. 'And look at those for a pair of pale legs.' He looked towards them comically. Then he raised one arm expressly, 'Though, as for this drip, your guess is as good as mine.'

'They must have thought you looked malnourished.'

'I was pretty weak,' he conceded.

'And... what about the other thing?' she asked.

'A psychiatrist saw me when I came in. Though I'd calmed down a bit by then, I guess. That's why I'm not on the Psych Ward; though he's coming over later, to see how I'm getting on.'

Both looked around at the sound of distant voices, and saw a nurse pointing Max in their direction. When he arrived, he looked the most distressed of all of them.

'Has Cara told you what happened?' asked Rhys.

'I got her text, yes,' answered Max.

Rhys shook his head, 'The nurses called the number I'd called last, it happened to be Cara's.'

'But what's happened? What are you doing here?'

'I... got a bit stressed at work. It's ridiculous really.'

'Well, it's over now, isn't it,' said Cara, 'so you're relaxed again.'

'It's more than that, though,' said Rhys. 'I feel a kind of... release.'

'Don't worry,' she counselled, 'we'll get your job back. They can't sack you over a thing like this, or it'll be all across the local paper by next week!'

Max looked aghast at the prospect, 'He doesn't want this in the paper!'

'You mean, you wouldn't want it in the paper if it were you,' declared Cara. 'Rhys can own up to his feelings...'

'Well...'

'He can live them out in public, he's not ashamed.'

'I'm not sure I'm that either!' said Rhys with a laugh. 'Now, are you pair quite done with telling me what I'm feeling?'

Both were chastened by this, though it was said very lightly. 'I already know what I'm doing,' continued Rhys. 'I'm selling the house. It was bought for a life I'm not living.'

'But the bank will take the lion's share!' worried Cara.

'I'll get back what I've been paying in. And I can live off that for months.'

'They'll foreclose!' said Max.

'Not if I sell it quickly; and places on my street are being snapped up in days.'

He went on, talking with the open shoulders and open lungs of a man who'd been pulling on a concrete suit for work just lately,

'I need to move on. I've needed it for months. What was that fellow saying the other night? "I've been released from prison."'

'It's the drugs talking,' said Cara to Max.

'At least he can't take any action from a hospital bed,' he said back to her.

Just then all heard more voices, as a pair of new faces, in business dress were spotted talking to the nurse.

Max snapped, 'God, will he never be set free?'

'Max,' pleaded Rhys, 'you're living this as if it's happening to you. Go with Cara and get a coffee. Let me do this.'

Max got up to leave with Cara, but said finally, 'Maybe it terrifies me that it could be me?'

Rhys answered, 'Maybe only Jonah is calm in the belly of the whale?'

The new arrivals smiled politely and said 'Hi' as they passed Max and Cara at the threshold of the room.

'Well, what a turn up,' began Rhys's work pal Trudy as she arrived at the bed alone (his boss remained engaged in earnest discussion with the nurses). 'This morning you were at your desk, this afternoon you're in hospital!' She couldn't help but smile despite the circumstances, as neither could he. 'Oh, but your poor arm.' She touched the cable of the drip, as though not quite feeling able to touch the arm it was attached to.

He patted away her concerns, 'Oh, they said I'll have it out after a couple of hot meals.'

'Have you not been taking care of yourself, mister?' She stroked the drip tube again. 'All this lying here helpless, it's like you're trying to trigger my maternal instinct.'

He smiled, 'Give a woman someone to care for, and you've got her for life.'

'Careful, one day someone might take you up on that!' Her face went, if not serious, then more considered, 'They let me come here as your pal; but she's here about work.' Trudy looked back towards boss Rachel.

'I guessed.'

'They had a crash-meeting at her desk, they didn't even have time to find a room.'

'So, you just happened to hear every word?' asked Rhys.

'Well, you know that I'm a noticing kind of person. You've scared them to death, Rhys.'

'What I'm about to tell her might relax her.'

'Oh no,' Trudy guessed, 'they won't let you resign! Remember Janice?'

Rhys had to struggle.

'She was off with stress for eight months, full pay, and she's still taking them to a tribunal. There's legislation now, companies have responsibilities. If you resign, they'll think that you'll be back in a week claiming constructive dismissal.'

Rhys didn't know the term, but he could guess its meaning. Trudy continued, still looking towards their boss at the door,

'She's talking to the doctors because she wants to know your condition. I just needed to know you were all right.' She leant over and hugged him. 'And don't ever go doing that again, okay? Next time, you talk to me. Forget it all and call me. We'll have a code word, and you use it and I'll drop everything.' She looked around, saw a bowl of fruit beside a neighbouring bed, and called out,

'Banana!'

Each burst out laughing.

'This is the worst place to be laughing,' she said, unable to stop herself.

'It might be the best place,' he answered. He could only add, 'I've never felt better. It's like my body made things happen that I couldn't.'

They finally heard footsteps getting nearer.

'Right.' Trudy made herself look business-like. 'I'm going to leave you to the boss.' Though as a final aside, she added, '"Facenoise" though – that was so funny. He'll never live it down.'
Chapter 26 – Meeting Alone?

Cara and Max sat with their plastic cups at the plastic table.

'Do they think we're going to steal the chairs?' he asked, as he squeezed himself into a small bucket seat bolted to a steel pipe that ran beneath it.

'It's always a shock, isn't it,' she observed.

'Hospital?' he asked.

'Look at their faces.' She peered around at the people at the other tables.

Max followed her gaze and noted, 'They're not angry, not crying, just relieved.'

'The canteen is where they come for a breather,' she remarked.

'So, what do you make of it?' asked Max, still visibly shaken. 'Us being here?'

'I know we all have our troubles,' she said, 'but for one of us to end up in hospital...'

'Yes,' he agreed. 'Therapy seems so middle-class and harmless; but it's professional care.'

'A psychiatrist saw him when he came in,' said Cara. 'Max, if Rhys had still been in a state when he got here, we might not have been allowed to see him. I knew a guy once, he was dating a friend of mine. He flipped out, and was throwing punches and all sorts. They zonked him out for a week.'

'That isn't Rhys, though,' said Max.

'But it could have been.'

They each took a sip of their hot drinks and reflected.

'So...' asked Max, 'yours was the most recent number on Rhys's phone?' He hadn't been able to resist asking for long. It was a fifty-fifty chance which of the two of them had been the most recent number for the nurses to find; but the way that Cara looked down gave Max the sense that she had something to hide. Finally she said,

'We met.'

'When?'

'The other lunchtime. Look...'

'You met without me?'

'You and I have met alone too, Max,' said Cara.

'Yeah, if Rhys couldn't make it.'

He went off on a self-righteous tip,

'I should have guessed. You got the kid out of the way, and the adults could talk?'

'You're used to this now, Max. We all need someone to talk to.'

'So, one night without me, and you both spilled?'

'It sounds awful when you put it that way, but it really wasn't meant like that...'

'You and your soft bloody voice!'

'Max! You're shouting at me like this in a hospital?' Cara looked around, but thankfully no one was staring.

'Max,' she pleaded, 'please don't go back there. Don't get angry again.'

'You and Rhys meeting together...' he spluttered. 'And you can't rustle me up one bloody girl from Lawrence's waiting room.'

First his eyes squinted at the ridiculousness of his statement, then his face cracked into a smile from the rigidity of trying so hard to stop it doing so. Soon she was corpsing too.

'No, don't laugh at me,' he managed, while laughing at himself.

'Oh Max, you are the single maddest person I know. In another world you are a criminal mastermind, I'm telling you.'

'At least then I'd have money,' he replied, apparently in earnest.

'And all the girls you could eat,' added Cara gleefully.

'I only need one,' he answered. And he smiled, authentically, relaxedly, 'I only need one.'

'And it isn't romantic,' she explained, 'me and Rhys. If anything, his eye is on that girl we passed as we left – did you see the look he gave her?'

'Or that blonde from the other night who couldn't stop crying.'

'Yes, her too.' She considered, 'I get the feeling that our Rhys can be a real ladies' man.'

'Funny,' said Max, 'how we can be envious of a thing we didn't know we wanted.'

She didn't really know what he meant; he wasn't sure himself, explaining,

'I mean love in general, in other people.'

She smiled.

'Let me get you another coffee to say sorry,' he offered.

'I can't,' she answered, 'I'm going to see my Dad.'
Chapter 27 – Cara and Father

'Dad, I'm here.' Cara called through the hall after shutting the front door behind her (she had her own keys). It was evening and the lights were off, but this was nothing unusual. She bustled through the narrow hall into the kitchen, where she could finally offload the plastic shopping bags that had been cutting into her hands all the way from the bus stop.

'Dad,' she called again. Though again there was no response – it was common for her to have to call out several times.

Leaving the bags propped up, she went through into the living room. This was the only door in the maisonette that was closed; and as she pushed through it, so a wall of TV noise and radiator warmth hit her like a forcefield.

'Dad, it's me,' she tried a third time.

'Hello, love,' he replied, hardly turning in his chair to smile.

In the early years of her father living there alone, she might have asked him exasperatedly, 'Didn't you hear me calling?' But he wouldn't understand why she was frustrated. There was a truth between them, which her father had appeared to understand as instinct, while Cara had had to learn it. As she had told Lawrence, dear missed Lawrence,

'It's like, no matter how long it's been since I last called around, my time away doesn't count. It's like I've just gone out of the room and come back.'

'And what would you expect?' he asked.

'I want my visits to be special.'

Lawrence would smile a knowing smile, suggesting,

'Perhaps you are the bird who flew the nest – every return is a mini-barrage of guilt, expectation, wanting to put things right? You feel you have to make up for lost time, have your one day a week count for the six you're not there?'

She looked to him for more, and he offered,

'Perhaps you want your absence noted? To have been missed, and your return celebrated?'

'Dad just smiles at me like I've been out to get ice-cream.'

'He doesn't jump up, hug you, say, "I'm so glad you're back"?'

Her face showed that he didn't.

'And was your father ever a demonstrative man?'

Her face showed that he hadn't been.

'It can kill a thoughtful person for those around them not to be so.'

'"I don't want to talk about it," my parents used to say.'

'Was that what you longed to do?' asked Lawrence, getting it exactly...

...Back in the warm lounge, Cara smiled back at her father.

'I've got the shopping. Did you want a pie?'

'Yes, please.' She knew his favourites, the things he'd never turn down.

'And do you want a cup of tea?' she asked, going back into the kitchen.

'Keep the door closed, won't you? I don't want to lose the heat.'

'No risk of that,' she smiled to herself as she pulled the door to, boiling as she hadn't yet taken off her coat.

He'd been living there since her mother died, six years now. Once a week and once a weekend she visited – she'd thought that was fair. 'You have your own life to lead,' her aunt agreed. 'I'll pop in on the other days.' Her aunt was closer and had more time – that was Cara's argument, not that it had ever needed to be made.

With the oven on and the tea made, she came back into the lounge.

'Do you want the curtains open?'

'The sun was so bright earlier.'

'It might have been three hours ago,' she said, going to open them.

'It'll be cold now, there'll be a draft.'

She sat back down. 'What are you watching?' she asked.

'Ah, just some rubbish,' he answered, still glued to the channel.

'Well, why don't you watch something interesting? I showed you how to use the TV planner. Look, I've recorded you that documentary about adopted kids who found their long-lost parents.'

She tried to take the controller off him, and he strengthened his grip, declaring,

'You're as bad as your mother, watching stuff like that. I'll stick with this, ta.'

She turned her eyes to spend a moment studying what was so important to him. At first she thought it must have been a baking show, as the camera lingered over an oven; then an antiques show, when they started studying the oven rather than putting any food in it; before she finally decided it was a property show, as they moved from the fixtures and fittings of the kitchen, and went to look around the rest of the house.

'This property is a little under-valued at five-hundred-thousand pounds...' declared a young man in a tweed jacket, as he stood outside the farmhouse with five acres of its own land. 'A judicious buyer would get a bid in right away,' he whispered, conspiratorially to camera.

'Well,' she mused, 'at least we know where to move if we win the Lottery.' She looked to her father for a smile, but he hadn't heard the joke.
Chapter 28 – The Good Daughter

The front door opened again, and the scene of earlier was repeated. Only now it was Cara's aunt in the hallway, and Cara in the living room to answer when the visitor called, 'Hello.'

'Bee?' asked her niece, who since a toddler had called her aunt by her nickname. 'It's not your day,' said the younger woman almost sternly.

'Hi Cara. I was passing and I thought I'd pop in,' said her aunt. 'What, did you want him all to yourself?' They both turned to the man still watching the screen and laughed.

'Are you all right, Gus?' shouted Bee as if to a deaf invalid.

'Yeah, yeah,' he answered, not even slightly turning for his sister as he had for his daughter. So, Cara wondered, maybe in her father's mind she had been given special treatment?

'I've brought his tea,' said Bee, 'but it looks like you've already got something on?'

'I bought a pie,' said Cara, suddenly bracing for adult approval.

'Oh yes, he'll like that,' said her aunt, allowing Cara to breathe.

Bee noticed this; though instead of acknowledging it, said loud enough for the dead to hear,

'I'll put this in the fridge then, Gus,' and ushered Cara into the kitchen with her.

'So,' she asked while they unpacked yet more food, 'still with the old...?'

'...Anxiety? Yes.'

'I could tell. What's brought it on, love?'

'I don't know,' she said, with a plea in her voice to show how she wished she did know.

Bee paused, and inhaled; and so did Cara, for she knew what was coming.

'I know you don't like me saying this, but when I was your age every girl had a home and a husband.'

'Bee, I can't...'

'It's no wonder you're lonely when you're still alone at, what? Thirty-four?'

'I can't have this argument again, Aunt Bee.'

'Are you even looking for a man?'

'Gah! Have you any idea...?'

'I only know I can't imagine my life if I hadn't met Carlo.'

'And now I bet you can't imagine your life if you hadn't divorced him!'

'But we had a lot of good years. And he gave me Robbie and Louisa. And I cannot imagine my days without them...'

If only Cara could force a silence, block the words. She had half-opened up, then cursed herself for doing so. She had needed to communicate, but the opened channel hadn't brought her what she wanted: which was sharing... and then no response at all.

She answered, with all the force she could muster,

'I am working so hard!'

Bee didn't argue back. She held her tongue against every instinct to do so, and instead turned to the last of the shopping, then closed the refrigerator door.

'And it's thirty-five,' snapped Cara. 'I'm alone at thirty-five.' Before retreating to her father's room and the sanctuary of Not Talking.

'Everything all right?' he asked.

She almost retorted, 'You don't have to ask out of duty.' ...But she didn't, she retained her wall of silence, which had become so recognisable amongst the family members since her teens that it was almost visible.

A few minutes later Bee came in with more tea, and they all watched the television. The show had changed.

'Travel?' asked Bee.

'Homes,' said Cara.

'Homes abroad,' said Gus.

None looked at the other, or looked away from the screen.

'Have you put a pie in for yourself?' asked Bee.

'I'll have something at home,' she bit back.

'I'm going to spend a penny,' said Cara, using the family's time-worn term for a bathroom break. Though she only stood in the hall. She listened out over the mumble of the television through the shut door, almost willing them to talk about her; which of course they did,

'Any sign of a man?' asked her father.

'What do you think?' answered her aunt.

Sainted Lawrence came back to her again. Cara recalled his words, remembered almost by rote, drilled into her brain like little mantras,

'Concern, however it's expressed, is care.'

'But it's "how" they speak!' she would plead.

'Ignore the tone, hear the care.'

'But their clumsiness, and saying the wrong thing....'

'If they didn't care, they wouldn't say anything at all.'

'...and not knowing what's going on in my head!'

'So, they're not psychic? And guess what, neither are you. So you don't know what they're thinking either. And that's what makes it so amazing when we find someone who feels like they do know what we're thinking.'

'I want to find that person.'

'And, from what you say, it sounds like that is all your aunt wants for you.'

Standing in the hall, remembering Lawrence's words made Cara sad. For she loved the words, and loved the people in that room ahead of her, but she couldn't connect them together. And another thought came to Cara – it seemed too much effort not to do it. She quietly took her coat from the hook and slipped the latch on the front door.
Chapter 29 – Max Alone – The Afternoon Feeling – An Essay

The following afternoon, Max walked home from work dejected. He had even cheered himself up earlier by asking to leave work an hour early, and so had spent the day looking forward to the extra time. Though a familiar thing with him was the anticipation of free time being the real pleasure, and the free time itself becoming only more time to fret in, to feel worthless in, to feel he was wasting.

And once the one doubt was there, then others piled in.

'My mind's like a turbine,' he had told Lawrence in their sessions together. 'It fills the whole room; and once it's fired up it's impossible to stop.'

'Is it happening now?' he asked, softly.

'No,' considered Max. Though he hadn't been known as Max back then, he was Christopher Minim.

'It happens every afternoon,' he'd explained.

'Every afternoon?' asked Lawrence.

'Every single afternoon.'

Lawrence paused, and considered, before asking,

'Christopher, what do you feel on these afternoons?'

'I feel like the day is draining away, and I have wasted it, and nothing good can happen now, and the sun is going down, and everything is golden brown, and... everything is dying!'

'That's very vivid, Christopher.'

'It takes me over.'

Lawrence considered again, then asked, 'You say these depressing afternoons are "golden brown", but isn't that a nice colour?'

'Yes,' agreed Christopher, hesitant again, as he often was with Lawrence, 'but on the afternoons it feels grimy and sleazy, like it's left its fingerprints on everything. It's weird,' he pondered, 'because the sun is only at the same angle in the sky as it was in the morning. Though morning light is not the same as afternoon light.'

'No, it isn't,' agreed Lawrence.

'Is it like heat then?' asked Christopher. 'How, by afternoon, we've had a day of heat, so it will linger as the light fades?'

'As opposed to morning dewy freshness, you mean?' asked Lawrence.

'Yes, maybe,' considered Christopher.

The therapist smiled, 'And I can't help but ask – "Golden Brown" – what do you feel when you hear that song?'

'What, The Stranglers? Oh, I love it, I could listen to it all day.'

Lawrence scanned his notes,

'And this is what you call your "Afternoon Feeling"?'

'Yes!'

'You don't feel it in the mornings?'

'No!' he explained, 'Because the mornings are bright and clear and fresh and full of possibility.'

'And what about the evenings?'

Christopher had to think, before answering hesitantly,

'They're okay if I do something with them, if I go out or see a good film.'

'But, otherwise...?'

'Otherwise I feel I've wasted the day.'

'And bedtime?'

'Oh, I love bedtime.'

'Really?' asked Lawrence, pleasantly surprised. 'You'd be surprised how many don't.'

'I can't wait to get to bed, I sleep like a log.'

Lawrence smiled a slightly cheeky smile, suggesting,

'After a day like that, I'm not surprised!'

'It feels like a whole new thing.'

'The Tibetan Book of the Dead called each sleep a little death,' said Lawrence, showing off.

'Then those Tibetans knew a thing or two!' smiled Christopher.

Lawrence summarised,

'So, you feel bright in the mornings and want to get things done; feel groggy in the afternoons, and can't get things done; then feel better in the evenings, but only if you've got things done?'

'That about sums it up, though it's harder living it minute by minute.'

'Do you ever nap?'

'Yes, I often can't avoid it.'

'In your groggy afternoons?'

'Yes! But should I worry about them?'

Lawrence considered, 'If you had a bad sleep pattern, maybe; but in your case that hardly sounds a problem.'

Christopher was relieved. Lawrence went on,

'Though it sounds like a lot of pressure, Christopher: for you to have to feel that your every waking moment must be engaged in something useful...?'

'Yes, it is.'

'...That you can't have a morning where you use your bright phase to do something fun but meaningless, like do a jigsaw, or complete a puzzle...?'

'No.'

'...And then, you have to get through this difficult phase you have every afternoon, as you say, "when the sun is going down"?'

'Yes; and it feels worse if I haven't done enough that morning.'

'Because you feel even more strongly that you've wasted your day?'

'Yes.'

'And then it comes to evening; and you say you feel a little better?'

'Yes!'

'Though, at the risk of bringing it all back for you,' asked Lawrence, 'you explain that what upsets you is the setting of the sun; so, isn't night-time the total absence of the sun?'

Christopher realised he was considering things he hadn't ever considered before. He said,

'So it's not that the sun isn't there, it's that I've watched it dying.'

'Well, there is grief in a nutshell, wouldn't you say?'

'Oh?'

'You don't grieve for the day being over once it's over, because you've moved your focus off it once it's out of sight. Night is your "whole new thing" – it looks different, is lit differently, has new moods and excitements.'

Lawrence tried to explain, 'If we're faced with a funeral cortege passing us in the street, we feel sad for that spell; but a minute later, we could be talking about someone's new love affair or new baby. Do you see what I'm getting at, Christopher?'

He went on, 'That's perhaps one of the lies we tell ourselves as a society – no one wants to be forgotten, though we have to be, or our loved ones would have a coffin around their necks.'

'But not entirely,' said Christopher, shocked. 'There are anniversaries, and visits to the grave.'

'...And conversations about them,' agreed Lawrence, 'and reminiscences of them, and photographs, and visits to their favourite places.'

'We remember them,' said Christopher, 'just not all the time.'

'It's a balancing act,' said Lawrence. 'A calm person gets this instinctively. That's why I worry,' he confided, 'when I see the tattoos people get these days, "Dad R.I.P." and "Never Forgotten". They remind a person of their grief every day; interrupting thoughts of new things, that are equally essential. Death is a part of life, but so is life a part of life!'
Chapter 30 – Setting Sons – The Underlying Feeling

When Max arrived at the development of flats he lived in, he already felt it waiting for him. The memories of his conversations with Lawrence carried him past the carpark, and up the stairs and to his floor. But there they seemed to desert him, and left him alone to survey the space.

He opened the door to his rooms and stood at the threshold. It had been dark recently of an evening when he got home; today though, with the early hour, all was cast in his 'golden brown'. He liked to keep the curtains open of a day 'to let the light in' even if he wasn't there – he felt it 'opened up the space'. Though now he feared the sun had spent the hours fading his sofa.

The dying sunlight was also just bright enough to show the dust along the surfaces, and the hairs that came from nowhere and bunched up along the skirting board like tumbleweed. He saw some CD cases that needed sorting; a cardboard package to go in the recycling; a corner of wallpaper coming loose. All of these represented a task, small or large, that at some point would 'need doing'.

For all that, it was a still a tidy flat – there were no plates left out, no clothes bedraggled, no pile of unpaid bills. What dust there was was only the result of daily life, and was no worse than in a hundred-thousand other homes, he was sure. Though Lawrence had warned him against comparison:

'To compare confirms in your mind that you are being judged by others; and that only by believing you are doing no worse than many others on an imaginary scale do you feel you can justify yourself. It's like a defence plea in a court of popular opinion. It makes that court feel real, when it is only in your mind.'

'But what if there "are" people who do think this of me?' Max had pleaded.

'Then spin it around – who are they to judge you?'

...Max moved through the rooms, dropping his work-things off in their evening locations, and tidying up what he could along the way.

The bathroom and the kitchen offered up another half-a-dozen minor tasks for his attention. 'But I've been working all day,' he pleaded to himself, 'I'm entitled to a rest.'

He turned his small oven on to warm up, and opened the fridge: nothing was very overdue, not gone-off at any rate. But there were things that needed eating, and which, if he didn't eat in time, would make him feel he'd wasted the money – and then he'd start worrying about the farmers who had grown it, or the animals that had given their lives.

'They're starving back in China, so finish what you've got,' went the song – it was a simple rule to live by. Max had realised that, for struggling people, small notes of personal morality like that could offer a kind of code; a justification, even, for things they couldn't face – 'I'd never drive, it's bad for the environment', 'I won't get on a plane to exotic countries with no civil rights'. Yet to break these codes could feel monstrous. He had once read how depression was the absence of love, as love cushioned the soul. For Max, the 'absence of love' was noticing bits of dead leaves at the bottom of the salad cooler.

With the dinner on, he went back into the living area. What to do about the curtains now night was falling? Did he want to close out the burgeoning dark? Or would that also be shutting out the night-time skyline, peppered as it was with the lights of the town around him? Would he rather shut out the dark, or shut out the world? Which option would make him less down? Plus, if he made the wrong choice would he later regret it?

If he were thinking clearly, or with any objectivity, Max might have framed the question instead as: If I had anything going on anywhere that I was the slightest bit excited by, would I even notice the curtains?

Max recognised he might be in danger here. Recent turbulence with Lawrence, Rhys and Cara he put aside, as he knew that grasping for recent reasons for an ancient illness was a fool's game – like blaming gravity for tiredness.

'Think about your underlying moods,' Lawrence had advised him, back when Max had been telling him of the 'afternoon feeling'.

'Evening is a change of mood,' supposed Max, 'because the sun is no longer present.'

And Lawrence smiled, because Max had just cracked it. Lawrence went on, explaining,

'Sometimes, one thought or mood or sense of things can bring an underlying feeling. We may not notice it, but that feeling can decide how we spend our whole day. Imagine if you were wearing blue glasses one day, so everything blue was coloured brighter; and then the next day you wore red glasses, so everything red stood out more. You would spend each day noticing entirely different things in the world.'

Lawrence continued, 'When the morning is "bright", you might notice bright things; and when the afternoon comes, who knows? Perhaps you feel a little hungry, or full, or sleepy, and you respond to an entirely different tone of colours – in Spain they'd go to sleep at that time – there's nothing unusual in it.'

Max had reacted badly in the consulting room that day, answering,

'So, you're saying that it's my fault for not being able to stay in a "bright" mood? That sounds like "victim shaming".'

Lawrence only shook his head, answering,

'Which only goes to show how much you feel that everyone's against you.'

...Standing at the window now, staring at the evening, Max tried to sum the current decision up in his head another way: he could either enjoy the view of a town, that, up in his room, he already felt disconnected from; or shut them out, and so feel conclusively alone. He felt the evening stretch ahead, and wished it was a night with Rhys and Cara.

'Write an essay,' Lawrence had once said, 'of everything you're feeling.' Max knew he would start that soon, any day now... Though, in immediate terms, he remembered Lawrence's advice to change the mood. He took the television remote and found the silliest comedy that he had waiting for him on his media player.
Chapter 31 – A Legal Letter

Cara got to Lawrence's landing at the same time as when she used to have appointments there. She went through a new familiar ritual: first turning to the waiting chairs and looking for fellow leave-behinds; then trying the handle of the door to the office; and then – if no one was there to witness her – getting on her hands and knees and looking for notes under the door.

The original note from the mythic 'Laura' had long been collected, as had Cara's own note, left as soon as she'd seen that Laura's had been successfully picked up. Though 'success' was a disputable term, as no call had been made to Cara on the number she had included, from Lawrence or anyone else.

'Uh, hullo?'

Cara spun around on her hands and knees, and was trapped mid-crawl in the eyes of a young and very serious-looking woman.

'Laura,' guessed Cara as she rose.

'Yes, how...?' Then Laura realised, 'If you've been looking for notes, then you'd have seen mine.'

'Yes. I'm Cara.'

'Hello, Cara,' said the girl. She fumbled in her small leather satchel handbag and handed Cara a new letter. It had no envelope, but was formal, on twice-folded paper. 'Here's what I came to leave today.'

Cara read aloud the typed contents,

'"Dear Lawrence, or whoever is handling your mail.

'"I have left a previous note asking for someone to contact me, without reply. Please take this as a formal request for a response, either from yourself or from a legal representative.

'"My first point of contention is that we contracted for a series of six sessions, only four of which have been completed. I had shared many personal details and had brought you into my trust. Our sessions were at a critical point. For you to break off contact now is a dereliction of your duty. I will complain about you to the highest authority if I do not receive a reply, in any form, within one week of the date of this letter.

'"That is not the real issue, though. The issue is that you, Lawrence, were not running any normal business here. It is not a case of lost laundry or a half-painted fence. You advertised a very specific service; and to leave a locked door and no explanation half-way through providing that service, can leave a customer feeling abandoned."'

'Do you think "abandoned" is a bit much?' asked the author.

'No,' confirmed Cara, 'it's the only possible word.' She went on reading,

'"As a final note, I have left this letter unsealed, as I didn't want it sitting in a pile of bills and junk mail somewhere, waiting for your return – from wherever you are. Therefore, I have left it open for anyone with access to your office to read.

'"There is also the possibility that you are ill. If so, whoever reads this, please pass on my hopes for Lawrence's recovery. In which case these words may seem harsh. Though still, a customer requires some kind of notification.

'"I look forward to hearing from you.

'"Yours..."'

It was signed and dated below.

'Very good,' said Cara, with a mixture of agreement and her own disappointment.

'You were a patient of his too?' asked Laura, as she moved and sat on one of the plastic chairs.

'I suppose it's obvious,' answered Cara, doing likewise.

'And like me, you still come here?'

Cara nodded; as Laura explained,

'I've been back a few times. I just check the door, knock then dash off. I don't stay for long – part of me always wants to see someone else here; part of me dreads it.'

Cara saw a tiny fracture beneath Laura's features.

'I've never really thought about other patients,' replied Cara. 'If they're here, I say "Hi". Some like to talk, some don't.'

'You don't worry about... getting along with people?'

'No, I never have. Do you?'

If the look on Laura's face had earlier shown a fracture, right then it was the San Andreas Fault.

'I dread conversations. I see people looking at me, waiting for me to answer; and it's like going into a black hole.' Laura looked at Cara, asking, 'You're not shocked?'

'You should come to our group,' said Cara. 'A few of us who used to see Lawrence meet up now.' She fumbled for a piece of paper and a pen, and scribbled out the place and time.

'Does it make up for it?' asked Laura. 'For not seeing Lawrence?'

Cara hadn't asked herself the question before. She surprised herself by answering,

'Yes, it does a bit.'

'What's it called?' asked Laura.

'I don't know,' she answered, suddenly embarrassed to share.

'Well, what's it like?'

'A bit like Alcoholics Anonymous, I guess, but with different problems.'

'Then what problems do you have?'

'The old favourites,' joked Cara, 'depression, anxiety.'

'Anxiety?'

'Oh, a lot of anxiety.'

'Really?'

'Overtime on the anxiety.'

For the first time, Laura smiled,

'Then you're Anxiety Anonymous!'
Week 4 – Consolation

Chapter 32 – Absent Friends

'Good evening, how are you? So glad you could come.'

Graham greeted each attendee in turn, as they arrived for the third night of the Life Support Group.

Cara and Max had gone for water, and now stood at the open wooden doors of Lecture Hall Three with their plastic cups, observing the group as it grew,

'So, who've we got?' she asked aloud, egging Max on to narrate the scene for her.

'Well, there's Graham the Teacher,' he began, 'and Pet the Quaker, and the Tall Thin Man.'

'Sounds like a Western,' she decided, enjoying the names they'd made up for each of them.

'No sign of Simone with the Coat,' lamented Max.

Then there she was, right at his shoulder, having obviously caught herself being talked about. She clutched the great puff-garment around her body and bundled past them to the chairs.

'Great,' he moaned, 'we haven't even started, and I've already messed things up.'

'Did you see the look on her face, though?' asked Cara rhetorically. 'I've a good mind to give her what for.'

Another time, Max might have queried that approach. But the way he was feeling that night, very little made an impact.

The pair made their way to the chairs; when, at the very last moment, in came Mythic Laura. She offered little, smiled momentarily upon spotting Cara, but otherwise formed herself as a part of the circle with the bearing of an Easter Island Statue. There was no interaction being invited, and none being offered.

Cara remembered Laura talking of her social 'black hole'. 'She wasn't joking,' muttered Cara as she took her own seat.

'A few of the regulars are absent tonight,' began the host. However, unless Graham also counted Blonde Sophie, who had cried at every story told around the circle, then there was only Rhys missing. 'For those who know Rhys, I'm told he's doing well, but the doctors are still keeping an eye on him.'

Graham's a good counsellor, isn't he? thought Cara to herself. Not quite like Lawrence though, who was ever the professional, however emotional things got. Instead, Graham would smile a comforting smile. She noticed how his beard moved around his mouth as the shape of his words changed.

They went around the circle. There were two new members, both women, which put the men in a distinct minority. There was an elderly lady who could talk for England, and a young girl, whose motives were entirely opaque until she spoke,

'My Dad's in hospital again,' she began.

'I'm sorry to hear that,' offered Graham.

'Oh, he's always in there. He goes out drinking and gets into fights. But these days, he tends to come off worst. I don't know what's harder for me to watch,' she said, quite plainly, but with feeling, 'the injuries, or that his mates think he's a joke.'

The focus came around to Simone, who that night hadn't even taken off her coat. Cara remembered that she had allocated this evening to tear a strip off her. She couldn't have explained why, there was no rationale behind it. Perhaps she just needed to let rip at someone every so often?

Simone began,

'Well, if you were here the other week, you'll remember that I have a couple of staff members who cause me so much trouble. These girls, I swear, if I didn't employ them, then no one would! They're lazy, they bitch about me and about half the rest of the team. And one of them, the way she carries on with her boyfriend... Well, it wouldn't be for me to judge...'

'...But you will anyway?' said Cara quite audibly.

'Well, if it didn't affect her work, of course I wouldn't care...'

'Let her run out enough rope,' murmured Cara to herself.

'...But when I need her focussed on the task I've set her, she's phoning him, and shouting down the line. And I try and interrupt, and she shouts at me – me, her superior!'

'Maybe you're just envious,' asked Cara, 'that she's got a love-life?'

To gasps around the circle, Graham requested,

'Cara, let me talk with you a minute.'

But Cara was in full-on pub-fight mode,

'No. Anything you've got to say to me, you can say in front of the group.'

'This isn't the Queen Vic,' said Graham. 'Come on.' And, as he rose from his seat and left the circle, she found that she followed.

She began, 'I hope you're not going to...'

But he cut her off quite calmly and quietly,

'Cara, this group is bigger than you now. You may have been here at the start, but that doesn't mean you own it. Every person here is your equal.'

He added, 'And have you seen your friend tonight? Have you noticed that he's hardly spoken?'

As Simone resumed in their absence, Cara looked and saw Max listening listlessly, head down, unanimated. Graham concluded,

'Then let's put someone else first for a while.'

He led back to the circle, and Cara followed just as dutifully.

Simone gave her a cautious look, but concluded her piece,

'Well, I'm only saying. I give this girl a living. I have all the bills, all the pressure. I wouldn't mind if someone noticed that once in a while, that's all I'm saying.'

'Thank you, Simone,' said Graham. 'Work can grate against us all.'

'I know what Rhys would say, if he were here.' All looked to Max, some of whom hadn't heard him speak before. 'He'd say that it's because we can't be ourselves at work, that's why we build up secrets there.'

'Thank you, Max,' said Graham, 'very wise.' And they went on around the circle.
Chapter 33 – Laura – Animus

Laura had watched impassively as others had spoken, answered, fallen out, as if such things went on all the time.

Now she took her turn,

'So, was everyone here seeing Lawrence?'

Some answered 'Yes,' some hadn't heard his name before, so Graham explained who he'd been to put them in the picture.

'He had a strange tone, didn't he,' said Laura of Lawrence, a man who was now living very much in the past tense.

'How so?' asked Cara.

'He was kind,' said Laura, 'but also decisive. Though he never seemed to be telling me what to think, only giving me things to think about.'

'That's what you want,' said Cara, 'We don't want someone lily-livered.'

'You like strong men?' she observed.

'Yes, I do,' answered Cara.

'Did you fancy him?' asked Laura.

'I don't know. A lot of women go for older men, like a father figure.'

'And do you need a father figure?'

'I have a father.'

'But do you need a "father figure"?'

'The thing is, if I'd have said "Goodbye" I'd barely have got a murmur back...' Cara lost herself to memory. '...say nothing, though, and forget it! It's like I've stolen the Crown Jewels.'

Graham tried to pick up the thread,

'Has something happened with your family, Cara?'

'We just can't talk!'

Knowing her story a little, he asked, 'Is this your father? But where would he have learnt people-skills, or conversation-skills, or listening-skills? His times are not yours, Cara, he's a generation behind you. Don't judge him for that.'

'Anyway,' she went on, 'it's not my dad so much, it's my aunt. Dad's not very judgemental, see. I don't even know if he notices I'm there.'

'Dads don't,' said Laura. 'You have to take it as read, and go and sit with them, ask about the football. Phone him after this.'

'You know,' observed Cara, smiling, 'you've got a bit of Lawrence's tone in you too.'

'Oh, yes?' asked Laura, clearly thrilled and smiling a rare smile.

'You say things directly. Not many people do.'

'"Life is clearly so much better when you can get straight to the point,"' quoted Graham. 'Morrissey,' he explained to an expectant crowd. 'We did his book in Cultural Studies last year.'

'Well, whoever he is, he talks a lot of sense,' said Cara.

'And you really need to stop being a bitch... if we're talking openly.' This was Simone.

'Maybe that's what I am?' answered Cara without flinching. 'Maybe you'd better get used to it?'

'Oh, I could handle you all day.'

'You keep telling yourself that.'

'Why the animus, Simone?' asked Graham, in the same calm spirit.

'Because I don't want her here.'

'Why not?'

She turned to Cara, addressing her directly,

'You say how much you want us all to share; yet you've hardly said a thing about yourself, just mumbled fragments. And now you want to stop another person from having a chance.'

'It's what I do,' answered Cara. 'I get narked off with things, with people.'

'But you barely know Simone,' queried Graham.

'I've heard enough.'

'Enough of what?'

'Enough of her having none of the problems the rest of us have.'

'Not having a boss, you mean? Not being powerless at work?'

She nodded.

Pet the Quaker interjected,

'Though you haven't mentioned your work, Cara. You've mentioned your dad and your aunt. Don't you think Simone has family troubles too?'

'But it makes life easier, doesn't it, being able to just ditch out of work any time you like.'

'Gah,' gasped Simone. '"Just ditch out"? From the workplace I'm in sole charge of? I'm there two hours after everybody else! Why do you think I don't have time to change before I come here?'

'Well, we don't know what you're wearing, do we,' snapped Cara. 'You could be naked under that coat. You've had it buttoned up to your neck all night.'

'Do you want me to show you?' and Simone started undoing it from the top.

'Wow, this could be a show!' laughed the Tall Thin Man.

Even Max couldn't fail to be drawn in. He looked up, to catch Graham's eye. The older man bore an unmistakable look of satisfaction.

'He's got them talking,' Max said quietly to himself, 'he's got them talking.'

Eventually the carnival sideshow atmosphere died down, and Graham resumed in his customary tone,

'So, Cara. Could you own to an envy of Simone having agency?'

'Can we have that again in English?' asked the Tall Thin Man, who Max was really beginning to like.

Momentarily disarmed, Graham repeated the question,

'Cara, might you be envious of Simone having power over her working affairs?'

'Yes.'

All observed the silence that this left, and something had been settled.

'Why do we like dramatic people, though?' asked the Tall Thin Man. 'We do, don't we? Look at the soaps, the movies. They're not full of nuns and monks meditating.'

'Remind me not to go to the movies with you,' laughed Pet the Quaker.

'I'd show you a night on the town.'

'Ooh, that sounds like a promise!'

'Try me and find out!'

Max looked up at the pair chatting, flirting, joking and was finally able to smile.
Chapter 34 – Max in the Fifth Dimension

The weeks were flying by, thought Cara to herself, chastened, sitting back in her chair as others talked. She wanted to keep the group new, fresh, original. But, like all things, it had already begun ageing, settling, becoming defined by recurrence and not originality.

She hadn't noticed that the current speaker had stopped. Now Graham was looking over at her,

'It's your turn around the circle, Cara, if you had anything more?'

'I'm good, thanks,' she answered automatically.

'You're sure? Very well,' he said, moving on. Though at judicious moments, Graham would turn an eye towards her, because he knew the signs.

The imaginary talking spoon went around to Max.

The way he had been feeling, he felt that nothing but a heartfelt confession would be enough to offer to this reduced group, what with Rhys being absent.

'My friend has been ill this week,' he began. 'I saw him in hospital.'

'And how did that make you feel?' asked Graham.

'Scared.'

'But he was safe,' said Cara, as if to reassure herself too.

'Yes, he was,' answered Max, 'but for one of us to end up in there shocked me. All he'd had was a tough day at work, and he ended up in care. I've always felt my body was invulnerable – that my mind could race on and on, think all kind of wild things, but it would never touch my body. Now I worry: all these nerves, for so long – could I have burnt my circuits out, done permanent damage?'

'If anything, you've probably built even stronger connections,' said someone. 'You've heard the saying, "Use it or lose it"?'

'Well, I know I've made my body tense. I've done damage there.'

'Nothing that a calmer life won't cure,' said another of the circle.

'I can do "calmer", I think. I'm calmer now. But with that comes sadness. Lose the manic, and all you have is the depression.'

'Max!' said Cara.

'Let him be,' said Graham.

'I don't mean to scare people, but I've had this for so long, I don't know how far I've gone.'

'Just over the next hill can be pretty far,' said Graham, and Max nodded.

'I think I've been there. In one way, I'm surrounded by people; in another, I'm a million miles away.'

'Unreachable,' said the Tall Thin Man.

'Amen to that,' said another.

'And yet...' said Max, 'I've never wanted it fixed. Not with drugs, anyway. Maybe others have it worse, but it sometimes feels to me like... I don't know... I mean, all the time in life, I see people gliding past me who don't seem to have the thoughts I have. I know they have their troubles, I don't know their lives; but they don't appear to be feeling the same way I do. They look so calm, in a way I wish I could be.

'But at the same time, I wouldn't give my mind up for that. I wouldn't limit it, or block its freedom to feel. I don't know. I don't mean to say I'm cleverer, I don't mean that...'

'We know,' said Graham.

'Maybe you're just thoughtful?' suggested Sophie. 'A lot of kind people suffer others' sadness terribly.'

'That might be it,' he considered. 'I might be too thoughtful. I only know that... I sometimes feel like I have an extra level of reality around me, like a fifth dimension. I know it sounds manic just saying it. But still, I wouldn't want to give that up. Just for calmness? Just for that? I'd feel like the guy in Neuromancer having his nerves burnt out.'

Graham looked at the young man, still in his business dress, scared of scaring people with a mind that worked on its own level. Not a higher level, not lower, but leaving him embarrassed with the words that came to him as naturally as water.

What was Graham to say to such a person? Anyway, it wasn't his job to give advice. They only offered a place for all to talk.

The meeting wound up soon after.

Cara grabbed her coat and was darting off, when Graham approached. If he didn't stand in her way exactly, he certainly used some rare technique to stop her in her tracks.

'You know, Cara, it's often when we're thinking the most that we want to talk the least...'

'I'm fine,' she said, tugging her coat around her neck, in the manner her nemesis had been doing earlier. Though Graham continued,

'...Because, if we get into a negative spiral, then we might be coming up with a dozen reasons why it's bad to talk, and why our thoughts should not be shared, and why others wouldn't want to hear what we have to say.'

'I'm fine,' she repeated.

'I'm just saying. Don't be a stranger.'

She trod a couple of steps, then paused, and turned.

'Can I ask you one thing?' she asked decisively, making sure that he knew that she wasn't giving anything away.

'Of course,' he answered.

'All these years helping students – why didn't you want to become a counsellor?'

'Because I already am one – I get them through their schooling, get their best results, set them on their course.'

'That sounds the best answer,' she concluded. 'Well, good night then.'
Week 5 – Growth

Chapter 35 – Rhys on his Breakdown

It was the next Friday when Rhys returned – and it had been a week in which they hadn't met outside of the sessions. Seeing him again was the high point of the night for Cara, for whom the spectacle of their night-time gatherings in Lecture Hall Three was wearing off – could even the most amazing thing become routine so quickly? Where previously she had got there early, watched the faces from the shadows, noted each arrival, overheard each snippet of conversation with fascination, now she sat around the circle playing with her phone, filing her nails, applying chapstick – whatever women did to pass the time.

And then her friend arrived, not seen since he left the hospital, and she jumped up to welcome him.

She noted, too, the old routine once the circle was formed: Graham's introductions, and the familiarity of the problems presented.

Rhys talked to Graham in the half time break, so she shared her thoughts with Max by the water cooler in the corridor,

'Nothing is resolved,' she concluded.

'Eh?'

'It's just the same as last week. Same people, same problems.'

'Were you thinking that an hour or two would be enough?' he asked.

'Don't you start getting all philosophical on me.'

'But think – how long had either of us been seeing Lawrence?'

She pondered, 'It's just a feeling I have that people should be getting better by now.'

'Well, I've had this my whole life.'

'There are times, Max, when I wonder how unhappy you have been.'

In the second half, the talking spoon at last came around to Rhys; who wasted no time,

'I had a breakdown last week. I ran out on my job, and ended up on the floor, then in hospital.'

There were murmurs and quiet gasps.

'What happened?' asked one of the newer members.

'It was complexity.' The words rang out in his Welsh accent. 'Just too much to think about all at once, like getting it all through a funnel.'

'A narrow-bandwidth processor,' said the Tall Thin Man, who generally gave little away. 'They become overloaded if you try and put too much through them.'

To which metaphor several of the group nodded.

'But you were so happy in the hospital,' said Cara. 'You were laughing and joking.'

Max concurred, 'You were like a man who'd taken off his concrete overcoat.'

'Yes, I did,' agreed Rhys 'But that was just relief, I think. I mean, it's been a disaster since then. I'm out of work, my name's in tatters, I'm ashamed, ashamed.'

'Why ashamed?' asked Graham.

'I ran off like a little kid!'

'Maybe that little kid is the wisest part of you?'

All took a moment to absorb the gnomic utterance, before Graham asked,

'But you felt good right after?'

'Yes!'

'So, let's explore that first feeling.'

'I told you, it was just relief.'

'And why is that "just" relief?'

'Eh?'

'Why dismiss it? Why is relief so bad?'

'Because it's not real, it's not the real issues!'

Rhys glared at Graham throughout the exchange, as though he was talking to an idiot; though Graham only looked on calmly, asking,

'So, what are the real issues?'

'Paying my way! Finding a new job!'

Cara chipped in, 'You said that selling your house would solve your money troubles.'

'But... but...' His arguments were exhausted. Rhys had nowhere else to go, penned in on all sides by caring faces.

Graham resumed control,

'Take a minute – no one will interrupt you – to tell us how you came to this point, Rhys.'

'I... I never used to be scared.'

'Good, good.'

'I've had work since I was a kid – I was laying block pavements in the school holidays! Paid weekly, cash in hand, new clothes, out with my mates on a Saturday night. This is the first job I've lost.'

'That office really went to town on you, didn't they?' said Max.

'I didn't even want the job! But I was terrified of losing it.' All waited as he paused – as Graham had promised – before continuing, 'Now I can't even go back on the vans – they all know what happened. Lads like that pounce on weakness, they'll joke about it, rip me to shreds...'

'You might be surprised,' said the Tall Thin Man. 'Blokes find it hard to talk, but they do what they can for you.'

'And what friends are they if they can't do that?' added Petula.

Though Rhys was caught in his thoughts and wasn't listening,

'...I can't apply for other jobs without a reference. They've got me into this system and I'm trapped.'

'Go self-employed,' said the Tall Thin Man, 'cards in windows, handy man, just to pay the bills.'

'I need someone to clean my pond,' said someone. 'You can do that?'

'Yes!' he called out.

'And I need my guttering done,' said Simone (who had at least let her coat go onto the back of the chair that week).

'I'm not taking people's charity,' he answered.

'It's not charity,' said Graham. 'It's two days of paid work, because you shared your need.'

'But, what do I do about how I'm feeling?'

'I'd say: get your house sold, rent somewhere, get a few jobs coming in and get back into your old mindset of life just flowing easily. Don't worry about the future, like you have been – I don't think it suits you, Rhys. I don't think it suits anyone, to be honest. Find what you love, and stick to it. And before you know it, you'll be looking at a great life.'

Graham paused and pondered, then added,

'You say your first thought was relief?'

Rhys nodded.

'Hold on to that,' said Graham decisively. 'You don't think that you're allowed that freedom; but everyone is. If you can feel it, then it's yours. Don't let the complexity build up again, don't over-think. And if it does, come here and release it.'

'"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,"' sang Petula.

'Glory Hallelujah!' said another.

'A Buddhist would call that a life free of attachment,' said one of the newer members, 'and that's the final stage before Nirvana.'

'And I think that that's a good point for us to break for a moment's silence.'
Chapter 36 – To Commit?

'You know, Rhys,' said Graham after the pause, 'you've reminded me of something.' He took a folded piece of paper from his wallet. 'There's a famous quote that a lot of us in this line of work carry around with us. It's from William Hutchison Murray. If you'll allow me...'

Graham read from the well-thumbed extract,

'"This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

'"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

'"Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"'

'Beautiful,' said someone.

'Lovely,' said another.

'Indeed. I love those words,' continued Graham. 'But I've always wondered what it means "to commit". I think it means to "go public" to "have others know". To live or die by the sword that terrifies us, that we dread, but which otherwise is always hanging over us. For how can we find "assistance" if people don't know that we need it?'

Max stuttered into life,

'But what if we expect a bad response and not a good one?'

Graham pondered, 'Well, maybe ask that question a different way: how can we know if the world will help us or reject us until we are seen as vulnerable and risking all?'

'That is terrifying,' said Max.

'Yes, I think life often is.' Graham mused on the topic, 'How would a company consider hiring us without seeing us state our abilities? How would a partner see our finest qualities if they don't see us standing tall? The only problem is that standing tall is the most terrifying thing of all. To drag your life into the light, Max, and let the world know you.'

Max hadn't said much that evening. Now he began in earnest,

'I used to have a fantasy of breaking down and being honest with the world. It was a dream – a sleeping dream, remembered when I woke up – I was with other teenagers, sat in the garden of a big house, looking down over a town. And it was some kind of institution, and we were all in it.'

Graham nodded, 'A lot of teenage fiction has an absence of family.'

'They were friends like I'd never had, a gang, all honest and open and pre-disastered. There was no need to try and cover things, be something we weren't – we were already exposed, known to all in our innermost state.'

'And what was that state?'

'That we were broken, but life had already revealed to everyone that we were broken. Because we were in this institution. So we were free to live like that.'

'And how do you live at the moment?' asked Graham.

'Like I have to be just another worker.'

'I think a lot of people feel like that.'
Chapter 37 – Case Studies

It had been a downcast meeting, considered Cara. However, as Max was taking tiny steps out of his shell, and Rhys recovered from his upsets, there were at least a couple of new members ready to share their stories.

One of them especially interested her – he was a physical man, of the kind the group hadn't seen too often. Rhys was a worker, and so (she guessed) was the Tall Thin Man; though neither were quite like this guy. He was squat, with greying designer stubble, and dressed in a blazer over polo shirt, that she imagined, from her experience of men, was as smart as he would ever want to get – he was making an effort for them that evening.

When he spoke, though, she was blown away,

'My dad was a drinker, and I've become one too. I didn't have much choice. My first day after work they got me slaughtered. He brought me home, laughing, my mum leaning me over the toilet bowl and rubbing my neck. He died twelve years ago; and I'm going the same way. I hear myself making the excuses he made. "I'm only going out for a bit, love." "I'll be back in time for dinner." "It's just a couple of cans to watch the football with." And almost anything that happens is a reason for a drink, good or bad. We win a line on the Lottery, "Let's celebrate." A bad day at work, "Lord, I need a drink after that."

'And any time out of the house, any time at all, becomes an excuse. "Let's pop in; we've got time for one; time for another; the table not booked for twenty minutes; a glass with the meal; stay, its only nine-thirty; let's have a nightcap."

'She sees me, my girl. She sees me, and I catch her looking. And the moment I wake up the next morning, it's the first thing I remember – that look, like she's worried for me and worried what I'll do. I... must be so bad for her.'

'She wouldn't be with you if you were bad,' said someone.

'Thank you,' he answered, visibly touched.

'Have you been to a specific drinking group?' asked Graham.

'I've thought about it,' he answered. 'But I'm not ready yet, I can't give it up.'

'Could you cut down?' asked a woman in the circle. To which he laughed,

'Love, I've tried that every night for fifteen years. But, if it's in the house, I'll drink it.'

'Then, don't have it in the house,' jumped in Cara, who was enjoying the story.

She couldn't have expected his response,

'I could do,' he quivered, 'but then I get upset like over nothing else. "How could I have done this to myself?" "How could I have robbed myself of this pleasure?" "I work so hard all week, a man's entitled to a drink!" "Why shouldn't I have one?" "Who's anyone to tell me I can't have one?"'

'Self-pity,' said Graham without sympathy, as he knew this man would want none.

'It's pathetic. I'm... I'm an inch away from crying like a little girl.'

Whether he meant crying when he couldn't have a drink, or with them in the circle that moment, Cara wasn't sure. Though then he said,

'I did know that I couldn't drink tonight though. God, I'd have killed for some Dutch courage – I've sweated right through my shirt just sitting here, I may as well tell you.'

'I think you have enough courage,' said the Tall Thin Man.

'And does your girl know you're here?' asked Petula.

'She knows I'm somewhere, and she knows it's not the normal places. I think she's hoping.'

'Tell her when you get home,' said Graham. 'She'll be glad.'

'Cheers. I'm Sean, by the way.'

'Hello, Sean,' the circle chorused.

Sean looked to a woman who'd been nodding along quite vigorously throughout his story. (Graham quickly remembered that this was the woman who'd been to previous sessions and had spoken of her drunken father.)

'You have experience?' Sean asked her.

'Well, I don't know if I should say to someone who's struggling.' She cast nervous looks back and forth to Sean.

'Please,' he gestured, 'if it's a story about drink, then it's not going to be a good story.'

And thus, a friendship was made that would live on outside the group.
Week 6 – Breaking-Point

Chapter 38 – Climax – Nadir

'Meet me in the pub,' texted Cara to Max before the next Friday. And so he did, half an hour before kick-off, in the Little Girl Lost.

'What's up?' he asked her.

'I don't want to go,' she said.

'Well, you're all dressed up now – where else will you go?'

'Thank you,' she smiled, taking 'dressed up' as a compliment for the outfit she had chosen with some care. 'But I haven't been feeling it recently, and Lawrence has definitely gone now, and... I think I'm just done with it all.'

Max despaired. 'But you haven't given it a chance,' he answered. 'You just argue with people, and then you think they hate you, when they still don't.'

When she didn't answer, he asked a different question, half to change the subject and half to get to the root of it,

'So, how's your dad?'

'We're not talking, so...'

'I thought you said he didn't talk anyway?'

'He doesn't.'

'So, is it your aunt?'

'God, when did you learn so much about my family?'

'Back when you used to share.'

'Ouch.'

'So, he doesn't share with you?'

'No,' she answered simply, and a little sadly.

'And what would you share with him, if you could?'

'I can't tell you.' Cara said this sharply, but Max only nodded, saying,

'I understand. But you'll tell Graham, one on one, one of the nights?'

She nodded the world's smallest nod.

'It's funny, isn't it,' he chuckled, 'we have these conversations, and we take nothing personally.'

'That's because we're being honest,' she replied. 'If the whole world was being honest then everyone would be fine.'

'When you put it like that, I think you're right.'

He gulped the last of his half pint, and gestured to her small glass,

'Come on then.'

And with a little chivvying, she sipped the last of her wine, and let him hold the door open for her.

The Little Girl Lost was the closest of their haunts to the Sixth Form College, and so it was a short walk through the night that was already getting dark.

When they got to the venue though, Cara held back, saying,

'You go in. I'm having a cigarette.'

'You don't smoke!' declared Max.

'I know, but I've gone back on them. They help with nerves.'

He gave her an abject stare.

'What?' she retorted.

'You know what's in those things?'

'It's not going kill me this instant. Get inside and wait for me.'

His look changed from one of concern to suspicion, asking,

'Is this another way of not going in?'

'If I don't want to, you can't make me,' she answered. He continued to look at her, so she added, 'But I will do. Now, get in!'

He did so; leaving Cara with a bad conscience. Alone, she fumbled with the box of cigarettes, and the plastic lighter which was already almost empty.

'Addiction catches us out,' she muttered to herself, remembering Sean's tale of alcoholism the week before. Just the odd one, she'd told herself at first; which had soon become working through the whole first packet she'd bought. And, God knows, the price of the things now! A second pack had followed, and she wondered: where had gone her sense of worth at having once quit? What value her months of abstinence? It felt like no value at all.

But Cara wasn't going to be given any peace to ponder this. She was shaken from her self-sabotage by a woman dashing over.

'I think I recognise you from the hospital.'

As opening lines went, it did pretty well to scare Cara half to death. Her mind struggled to catch up; but eventually she did recognise the woman, as the colleague at Rhys's bedside the other week. The woman continued,

'I'm worried for Rhys. I guessed you and that other guy knew him well. I hoped we could talk.'

'But how did you know he'd be...?'

'Rhys always mentioned a place he went to on Friday nights. I looked online and guessed this was it. Can I ask you what he's said about not going back to work?'

Cara held firm, 'Well, what he said in the group was...'

'...Private? I know, I don't like asking you to break a secret. But I'm worried for him. He isn't thinking straight.'

'Really?' Cara checked her watch, they only had a few minutes.

The woman went on,

'Is he telling you that they don't want him back? Because I think he thinks that, but it's isn't true! They're worried sick about him not coming back. They're under obligation. He hasn't even been in for a back-to-work meeting! He hasn't answered their calls!'

Cara, who was struggling with her own angst right then, tried her best to be reasonable,

'Trudy, isn't it?' she remembered the name from somewhere. 'I really don't know what he thinks. I wish I did! Though, from what I've heard, I guess he's just glad to be free of the place.'

'But he can't leave. He has an obligation too! They think he'll sue them in six months!'

'What is this about?' asked Cara.

'Just tell him. They'll bend over backwards. And if he doesn't come back, then I'm scared for him.'

Cara breathed, 'I think he's had a tough enough time already with these people.'

'But, just tell him. Won't you?'

'Are you coming in?' asked Cara

'You'll speak to him, you promise?'

'I promise.' And Trudy disappeared, like a will-o'-the-wisp, back into the warm night from which she had emerged.

By that point, there was little left of Cara's cigarette; nor the time to light a new one. With her craving unfulfilled, she cursed her night-time visitor and trudged on through the doors.
Chapter 39 – "The Over-Anxious Anonymous"

As she entered the foyer, the receptionist gave Cara the broadest grin.

'It looks like a busy night for you!' she said.

'Sorry?'

'At this rate the Dean of the College will be charging you commission!'

Though any threat of actual payment was offset by the woman's playful giggle.

Cara smiled, and pushed on. The corridors were indeed busy; but hadn't they been on other nights too? She struggled to remember.

It was when she entered Lecture Hall Three that it hit her – there must have been thirty people on the stage, filling the circle and dumping their personal belongings by the chairs.

She spun around, looking for Max, and found him,

'Where have they all come from?' she shouted across the din of voices.

'Didn't you see them as you came in?'

'Yes, but I didn't know they were all for us!'

At that moment, Max was taking a huge coat from the shoulders of a tiny woman, a thick woollen fluffy thing. Cara knew that coat; and as the owner turned, so she gave Cara the oddest look, a look of victory.

'I can take my own coat,' Cara muttered to herself. 'Where's Rhys?' she called out to Max, as she couldn't see him anywhere.

'What? Sorry?'

'Where's Rhys?' she repeated even louder. 'I need to find him! There's some mad woman outside, talking about people getting sued!'

'Who's getting sued?' asked Max. He said something more, but another visitor presented themselves before Cara could hear his answer. She looked at the scene around her, half in excitement and half in confusion. 'We've created this!' she said to herself.

She spotted Rhys then, who like Max was taking people's coats. He had just dropped one on the back of a spare chair. As he turned back, he found Cara's gaze. He raised his arms in amazement and shared that same wide-eyed look.

But it couldn't last for long. A woman's voice cut through,

'Hello, dear? So, someone was saying you're in charge here?'

Cara turned and saw a tall, middle-aged woman, broadly smiling, with a man on her arm of similar age but who... she didn't know the modern term for what he had. The best she could have summoned up was 'special needs', though that didn't feel right, and she would never have said it aloud. Cara smiled a full beam, as the woman continued talking to her brother or friend, 'You're so excited about being here, aren't you, Geoff?' She turned back to Cara, 'He doesn't get out of an evening much, just the coach trip to the panto. You enjoyed that, didn't you, Geoff, last Christmas? You're so looking forward to meeting people tonight, aren't you?' She faced Cara again, 'So, where do you want us?' Cara turned to the circle and smiled; and the lady, also beaming, took her companion to sit down. All had been entirely polite and helpful... though Cara hadn't said a word. And a wave of guilt hit her so hard that it nearly sent her over.

She looked across the room – who did she know? The Tall Thin Man was there... Pet the Quaker... Mythic Laura... Sean the Drinker and his new sympathetic friend. Her eyes searched again for Max, who was quite consumed, his hands were now full of plastic cups of water. Then to Rhys, who even as he looked in her direction, heard a noise outside. He broke eye-contact and went to the door. When he returned it was with two women. One was a face that Cara struggled to recognise. It was someone from Lawrence's waiting room! Someone seen weeks ago.

Cara made her way over to greet her, name entirely forgotten, if it had ever been known. 'Tammie!' she finally remembered.

'Hello!' she replied. 'Well, I made it in the end!' She was maybe mid-twenties with short black hair. 'And this is Leigh.'

Cara turned to the woman beside Tammie. She was round-faced and blonde.

'This is who you met with?' Leigh asked Tammie.

'Yes,' said Tammie. 'Cara told me about this place.'

'When we met at Lawrence's,' piped in Cara. 'How have you been?'

'Good, good,' said the dark-haired woman, which was encouraging.

'I thought it would be more like a social club,' said Leigh, looking around her. 'Who's this Lawrence?'

'He's our... life coach,' said Tammie, as if realising for the first time that this meant she'd have to explain another side of her life to her friend.

Leigh scanned the room with serious eyes, saying,

'You bring me to the most interesting places.'

If it was a joke, then it was only a half-joke.

Cara had always prided herself on being intuitive. 'You're part-Gypsy, you are,' her aunt would joke when Cara would proclaim a couple she had only just met were splitting up, or that a pair who barely knew each other would be set for life. Now, right before her eyes, Cara saw a friendship ending. But it didn't matter, because new ones would begin – she saw this just as clearly, as the two women were quickly lost among the masses.
Chapter 40 – Finding

Cara was suddenly alone in the crowd.

'Hey, hey,' whispered a tender voice, soft for a man's. It had become quite familiar and welcome to Cara over those recent weeks. It came with a hand on the shoulder, and she turned to Graham, standing close by her in the melée. However, for all the jollity of his greeting, the situation was not lost on him. He said, with a voice somewhere between weariness and wonder,

'I can't help thinking that some mass-need is being fulfilled here tonight.'

'They all want someone to talk to,' she decided.

'Don't we all?'

'You too?' she asked.

'Well, I came here as a guest the first time, didn't I?'

And indeed, he had.

'Maybe if you could talk to your wife you wouldn't need to come here?' she asked.

He surprised her by answering,

'Oh, actually this makes things easier. She has an evening free to do her own thing, and we have something to ask each other about after.'

However, the mood changed. Graham nudged Cara in the shoulder, and modified his tone,

'Have you had any training with the disabled?'

She looked to the door, as through it came two elderly men with walking frames and bright red foam bands around their heads.

'No,' she said with a shudder.

'Okay, don't worry.' He paused, then asked, 'Out of interest, what did you advertise this as again?'

'"The Life Support Group",' she answered. 'I knew we should have gone with "Over-Anxious Anonymous".'

'No, no. You were right to open it to anyone. Or else, what are we? Think, Cara: without you doing this, every one of these people would be home alone tonight.

'I'll look after these two,' he said of the men with their frames.

'Thanks.'

'Now look, there's Sean the alcoholic. You're okay with him?' asked Graham, issuing another classic line on a night that seemed destined to be filled with them. She answered with another,

'Oh, don't worry, drunk men are one thing I can handle.'

'Aye, pet,' said Sean in greeting as they met, giving Cara a wink that was entirely innocent, like an uncle to his niece. 'Good turn out.'

'Thanks for coming, Sean. How are you?'

'Great, just great. Last week was the best I've felt for ages.'

'I'm so glad. But I need to find my friend.'

'Then I'll take over the meeting and greeting: you go.'

'Thank you.' She smiled to Sean; and with one shoulder forward, made her way to where Rhys had last been seen.

She found him with another returnee: blonde and often tearful Sophie. The pair were talking, he was pulling some joke pose and she was giggling. A flirtation dance was going on, Cara could see it a mile off. Though she had to interrupt...

'Hi, both. Sorry, can I talk to Rhys a moment?'

'Of course. Catch you later,' said Sophie to Rhys, accompanied with a grin.

'Wow,' he said, looking around him, as everyone seemed to be doing.

'Forget them. That Trudy from the hospital. She needs to talk to you. She thinks there'll be legal...'

But Rhys only shook his head, still grinning,

'They're scared I'm going to sue them, not the other way around.'

'But that's good,' she reasoned. 'It means that you can get something out of them.'

'And I sign some letter saying they're blameless and it was all down to me?'

'But, wasn't it?' she asked bluntly, as the time for politeness was short.

'Yes, I chose to go. But that's me on my knees, Cara. I don't want a grovelling letter sitting on some file somewhere forever. I don't want to think about their smug faces when they see it signed.'

'You know,' she pondered, 'when I saw you with that Trudy at the hospital, your eyes lit up. I thought it might be her you liked.'

'What, were you getting jealous?' He grinned even more than he was already doing.

'Behave yourself,' she answered. 'I meant, seeing you with Sophie now, well, I can tell...'

'Yeah, Sophie's great,' he said, and left it at that. He looked around the busy room again, unable to stop himself, observing,

'It's like one of those parties where everyone's here.'

'Not everyone,' said Cara. 'Every party has someone missing.'

He didn't need to ask who she was referring to,

'He's gone, though, Cee. We've built this instead. Look at it!'

Another call for coats soon came. Rhys shook her shoulders sportingly, and left.
Chapter 41 – Eleni in the Circle

'Do you know what I think?'

Cara spun quickly to see Graham again. She realised he looked happier than she'd ever seen him, positively energised. He continued,

'I think, for all the cynicism you draw around you to protect yourself, Cara, you see all these people here tonight, and you want to burst with happiness.'

'I'll tell you what, love,' said the Tall Thin Man, approaching with Pet the Quaker, 'what you three kids have done here is amazing.'

'He's right,' said Petula.

'Not much quiet for contemplation though,' said Cara, remembering Petula's tales of Quaker silences. But the lady only laughed, as the familiar faces made their way to the circle.

Voices sounded, cut across each other, some known and some not:

'What kind of evening is this?'

'I'm not sure what I thought it would be like.'

'I hope I get a chance to speak, I'm bursting with it!'

'What on earth is going to happen here tonight?'

'Who's in charge around here?'

'Will the chip shop be open after?'

'There's a woman going around asking about Lawrence...'

Cara overheard this last line from someone passing as they went to join the main group.

'Lawrence? Who, where?' she asked with a jolt. This was like Sherlock hearing the whispered name 'Moriarty'. But as she looked around, the chairs were filling and it was time to begin. Events were hurrying her along, not for the first time that night. She rushed over, and just grabbed a seat in the circle on the stage – so many were attending that a second ring of chairs was being placed ad hoc among the gaps in the first, and the whole front row of the lecture hall was also filling up.

'This is crazy,' she whispered to herself. Thankfully Max and Rhys weren't far away.

'Hello, everyone,' began Graham. 'And what a gathering we have! I must admit, we hadn't planned for so many – though we should all be able to find a seat.'

He began the usual routine but quickly handed over,

'Before I go on, though, we have someone here tonight who'd like to say a few words.'

He turned to a woman sitting beside him. She was middle-aged with thick greying hair, wearing a loose black dress and cardigan, perhaps to blur the lines of her burgeoning figure.

'It comes to us all,' thought Cara.

'Hello,' she began, 'my name is Eleni – it's an interesting name, isn't it? My parents are Greek. I was born there, but I've lived in England all my life. It's nice to see so many people here for such an event. I'm not attending for myself as such, though I always find groups like this so interesting. I'm a counsellor, a therapist. I work with clients one-to-one, and with a mental health charity.'

She looked slowly around the group, avoiding sudden movements always.

'Now, I've had a chance to speak with some of you already. Without sharing anyone's confidence, I believe I can safely say that there are several people here tonight who were previously seeing a counsellor in town, named Lawrence...'

'Yes, yes,' said Cara in a rushed whisper, sitting forward on the edge of her seat to listen.

'...He shut up shop quite suddenly a few weeks ago.' Eleni suddenly beamed. 'Firstly, I must say that for that event to have triggered the creation of this group is tremendous. Such a positive response! Coming from what, I'm sure, must have been a confusing and difficult time.

'Some of you, I know, have been looking for answers. I've been allowed by Lawrence's family to share a few details.'

Cara looked aghast at the mention of family. She asked,

'You've spoken to them?'

'I have... but all in good time,' smiled Eleni. 'Now, as I say, I've been permitted to share some details. Lawrence suffered an aneurism. It was very sudden, and left him quite ill. I'm happy to report that he is now doing much better. However, for a number of weeks he was unable to speak and was confined to bed.'

Cara started crying – there was no shame in it, she'd longed for any word of Lawrence for a month! Now it was revealed that he had been so ill! And she wasn't the only one distraught: Mythic Laura bore an agitation that might also have broken into tears at any moment.

Eleni went on, 'Now, Lawrence wasn't linked to the charity I work for, he was self-employed, so we didn't know his situation. He couldn't speak at first, so couldn't contact the Local Health Authority – even while he lay in one of their hospital beds! He has a counselling supervisor, of course. But supervision only occurs every few weeks, and so even they weren't aware right away that there was a problem.

'His family knew the nature of his work; but he kept his records on a laptop which they couldn't unlock. His phone, too, was locked, so apologies to anyone who left him messages. It really was a perfect storm.

'Eventually we could access his computer. But then there were moral issues of what we or his family should have access to. After all, these were Lawrence's clients – they hadn't met us, or signed a contract with us. But we came to a decision to search only for names and numbers. And we began those calls this week.'

'I had a missed call today at work,' blurted Max.

'Then that might have been us. But... meanwhile, I saw this group had started up in the same town. I thought: "These might be Lawrence's people." And I was right!'

'So, will he be coming back?' This wasn't Cara asking, but Laura, whose frustration, expressed in the notes she had posted beneath his door, had been forgotten now she knew the story.

Eleni answered, 'I'm sorry to say that, if Lawrence were to return, it may be many months away. His doctor cannot sign him off right now. He is struggling with energy and concentration still, and the work of a counsellor is taxing on both.

'Which is really why I'm here,' she went on, 'To pass on that news, and to speak to those involved; and also to offer the services of our charity. But all these new faces! With so many potential clients, it may be weeks before we can give everyone the time they deserve. But I can make an introduction at least.

'Now, we're in a large enough room, I think. So, with the permission of the group, I might position myself up at the back of the auditorium there, and talk privately with people who want to?'

She looked to the key three or four of them around the circle, who all eagerly nodded agreement.

'Thank you. I also know a lot of you won't be Lawrence's people, and if so, apologies, and I'll leave you to your meeting. Thank you for your time.'

To smiles and thanks, she stood and made her way to the edge of the circle. On the way, she whispered to a woman, 'Hello again. Do you want to come up?' And together the pair of them left for the high back-corner of the tiered lecture hall.
Chapter 42 – Tea Break

Their greatest triumph, their largest crowd yet. Though dealing with such a large group had proven trying, and after an hour Graham had announced,

'Now, I suggest we take a break for drinks.'

Which had been half an hour ago...

'We're not regrouping?' asked Rhys, amid the extended break.

'Look at them, though,' said Graham, 'all chatting in their own groups and pairs. I think the work of our evening might be done.'

Cara agreed, 'We'd never have got around everyone in that circle.'

'It's a funny thing,' said Max, 'some weeks I barely say a word, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's like the addiction groups, you know? Alcoholics Anonymous, or Narcotics Anonymous. People don't get cured in the meetings, that might happen elsewhere. They come to talk, they know the mantras, know the drill. It's just a top up.'

'The Over-Anxious Anonymous', remembered Cara.

'Yes!' agreed Max. 'I don't need to bare my soul, or barely say a thing about myself. I'm acknowledging that I have a soul, that's it. That it's been hurt, that I feel, or just that I'm interested in myself and other people. Or even only that I'm lonely this evening! And just by being here I'm admitting that, and everyone else is too, and that's enough without us even hardly speaking.'

They hadn't noticed Eleni coming down from the high tiers,

'You don't mind if I join you?'

They were all glad to have her there.

'Well,' she said, 'look at all this going on around us. And all coming from Lawrence's disappearance. I remember you were crying, dear?' she asked of Cara. 'Do you want to talk alone?'

Cara shook her head, and so the others remained there with them. Only Graham felt the need to push on, and evaporated into the crowd, where there were a-hundred-and-one hosting duties to attend to.

Cara looked upward like a child being told off. Eleni spoke to her so tenderly,

'Look at how you gaze up at me now – like a little girl with a parent. Was Lawrence that to you?'

Cara didn't answer, only continued to look up with big eyes, as though Eleni was somehow standing on a higher step than her, and not on the same level. The older woman continued,

'Where once Lawrence's office was a portal to care, it became a locked door. An absence, with no explanation, no support, only rumour and conjecture surrounding his disappearance – occasional meetings in the waiting room, notes coming and going from beneath his door? Don't worry, Laura told me about that.

'You were like a child in myth, denied the parent figure, forced to grow up quickly, having to become your own adult, fated to either buckle or break beneath that demand.'

Eleni looked at all of them again,

'And look what you three have achieved! Three people all undergoing care, at difficult points in your lives; falling in and out of friendship, I imagine, as you worked through your troubles. And you did this. You didn't disappear, didn't dash away. I want to take my hat off to each one of you.

'But...' (They must have known there was going to be a 'but'.) '...it has grown too quickly; this room is chaotic. There are vulnerable people here who require a level of care that none of you are qualified to give – professionally qualified, I mean. In terms of heart and spirit and goodness, there could be no better hosts.'

'What do we do?' asked Max.

Eleni smiled,

'It hurt you to ask that, didn't it, Max. You don't like giving up control after working so hard to gain it.'

He smiled at the recognition. She answered,

'I think, that for tonight we've got away with it. I should go around and speak to those who need it, till their carers are back. And if you three keep doing what you're doing, making everyone in the room feel welcome, then I reckon we'll be fine.'

'You'll take it over?' asked Max. 'For future weeks?'

She smiled, 'We'll work something out.'

'And you'll take us over?' asked Rhys, in a flash of insight. 'Our counselling?'

'If you like; or I can help you find someone. Or,' she said with a certain import, 'you might feel you've reached a point in your journeys where you're confident to go it alone awhile, work on what you've learnt.'

'So,' asked Cara, going girlish again, 'no Lawrence?'

'Lawrence won't be back,' said Eleni with tenderness but also force. 'At least not soon enough to resume your weekly sessions. You've come this far, Cara.'

'But I always hoped I'd see him again.'

'Maybe you couldn't face the absence before. Now it's time.'

Eleni considered a moment, then said,

'Humans aren't very complicated – we take things in through our senses, then let them our through speaking, singing, art. And if not in those ways, then through drinking, shouting, fighting. But when we have more coming in than we can let out, we're like a bottle of fizzy pop that's been shaken up and the top could come off at any moment. We're not very easy to get on with, either with ourselves or other people.'

She gestured around the room with her arms, saying,

'These people here tonight, I feel no fear with. They know they need this. The ones to watch out for are those who reassure us that they're fine, because that means they're all too aware of the strength of their defences. The happiest are those through whom a stray thought may wander in and wander out again, with not a barricade in sight. They don't need defences, they don't need to tell themselves they're fine.'

'But isn't it dangerous,' asked Cara, 'not having a guard up?'

Eleni only smiled, 'The reward is better judgement.'

She patted her lap, surveying the night as a whole. 'It works out well – I'm new to the area, I need a client book.' And with that, she stretched her arms and went to tend to her new flock.
Chapter 43 – Lights Out

The goodbyes took forever. Taxis were needed and people were helped into cars. So many people's details were left or taken that it would have been impossible to remember them all when sifting through the notes and numbers afterwards.

'So, is that that then, Chief?' asked Graham afterwards.

'I guess so,' said Max, surveying the empty room. Some plastic cups were left, a scarf had been forgotten; but soon no evidence would remain of the scene of their triumph.

Max added, 'Though, why you're asking me, I don't know. For some odd reason people keep thinking I'm in charge!'

'Whatever makes them think that, Max?' asked Graham laughing, still high on the success of the night. 'The man who books the room, who greets everyone in and bids everyone farewell?'

'But you're the facilitator.'

Graham demurred, 'Oh, I only check that the talking spoon goes all around the circle.'

'Well,' said Max, having put Graham on the back foot, 'maybe you accept your role, and I'll accept mine?'

'You have leadership in you, Max,' said Eleni wearily, plonking herself down on one of the final chairs to still be put away. 'It runs through you like "BLACKPOOL" in a stick of rock. Why shy away from it? Did you once know someone bossy, stroppy, vain? Did they make you think that taking charge was something bad, even when people want you to?'

'You've read my notes?' he asked, suddenly alarmed.

She shook her head, smiling, 'No, I read it off you, in five seconds. Leadership is simple and organic. It happens in animals, so let it happen to you.'

'That's Max sorted,' decided Cara. 'So what should I do?' She asked in that peculiarly intense way she had sometimes, though which people just got used to in her so that they answered her quite calmly.

Eleni considered, saying seriously,

'I'd take you on. Though I sense it might challenge you having a female counsellor. You and Laura, you perhaps made Lawrence what you needed. And you'd have known it could never be sexual, which also meant you'd never have to dump him; because the two are intertwined for women sometimes, aren't they, I think. You're not going to get him back, love. You take a week over that.'

Rhys had been on his feet even more than the others that night. Now he sat listening to all this.

As eyes moved across to him, one of them said,

'Well, someone's put a smile on your face.'

'A man's got to take his happiness where he can,' he answered. 'And I'm always glad of a compliment.'

'As long as you give a few back,' chuckled Graham, making the others smile.

'Well,' said Rhys, in his rolling Welsh lilt, his smile broadening also, 'maybe I've found someone who appreciates them...'

'When you guys have quite finished fist-pumping...' said Cara. Though even her cold shower couldn't dampen the mood.

'So, Graham,' asked Rhys, 'compliments – is that how you keep it going?'

'You mean, my recipe for a happy marriage? I'll let you know when I've found it.'

'Oh, give over. Twenty-odd years, isn't it? You guys must be like peas in a pod.'

'Yes,' said Graham, with a flush in his cheeks. 'I think we are.'

'Good,' said Rhys, turning to the whole group. 'And I'll tell you something else I've figured out. I don't think I'm here permanently, so to speak. Not like some of those we met today. I've just had a bad run. A bit of trouble with my daughter, and a bit of grief at work. Though, look at me – some luck with the ladies and I'm brought right back around. I think, essentially, I'm sound.'

'That's my fear,' said Max. 'I don't think I am, entirely. But what if I don't have a thing? What if I don't have a syndrome, or a disorder, or a lack of this, or too much of that? What if there's nothing wrong with me, but I'm just going to be like this forever?'

'Then, we'll be here for you forever,' said Graham like a shot.

'That's what we are,' said Cara, 'The Over-Anxious Anonymous.'

'And nothing's going to break us,' said Rhys.

'Amen to that,' said Eleni.

After a pause, Graham added, 'But it is after ten; and though the old lady's glad to have me out of the house for a while, she'll worry if I disappear completely.'

He patted each on the shoulder as he left; which, from him, was a sure sign of affection.

'My good lady too,' said Eleni, as she rose to follow Graham out. 'It's been a pleasure to meet you all. Till next week, then. Cara, Rhys, Max.'

As the door swung shut, Rhys picked up the two freed chairs, and moved them the short distance to rest on the piles with the others. From there, someone from the College would trolley them away before Monday's first lecture.

'Max isn't my name, though,' said the man who bore that moniker.

'We gave it to you,' said Cara.

'And we can take it back,' said Rhys.

Rhys walked over to stand in front of his friend's chair, with his hand out to shake,

'Pleased to meet you, Christopher Minim.'

He rose to shake the offered hand,

'And you, Evan Rhys.'

Cara smiled, as they each picked up a chair and dropped them on the piles.

'I didn't know your name was Evan,' said Cara to Rhys as they passed through to the corridor.

'What, you thought my first name was The Rozzer?'

Though their conversation faded out for Christopher as he lingered by the heavy wooden doors.

'Till next week then,' he said to the room, and turned out the light.

The End

