Oh what am I for? No, really.

When we were shopping and dancing, watching and waving, therapy seemed a radical, almost subversive thing to do. When all of life seduced you outward, into the shops, to go inward was the highest refusal. And yet now, with the world entering a depression that will hang over the best years of my son's life, I cannot help but see therapy as becoming the shameful preserve of the upper middle classes. And yet, are they not interesting, too? Certainly, I have found much to savour in these women. They tend towards their mid-forties, teenage children, a travelling husband and a general sense of losing purchase on their attachments. And into this aporia they fill memories of childhood, the angry nanny, the abusive uncle, the desolation of wealthy parenting and so, partly vengeful, they come to see me, in my room , once, maybe twice a week. Who's complaining? And yet, is this what I am for? Inevitably, I am dependent on the state of the ecomony. I hawk my wares as much as anyone and yet, in truth, I will heed a lesson I learnt from Axel: when times are hard, put your prices up.

I really must buy a ticket to Rome. And yet, the loneliness of groping Pauline again, on my own. Would Thom come?

Would he ever recover?