Client L., 8 am.

As warned, she is in love and, certainly, she displayed all the physiological symptoms of that condition. Normally containing herself within a narrow range of feeling and self consoling, today she was wider eyed, alert, somewhat giddy.  The absence of her beloved was everywhere and within seconds I was exhausted watching her. I found my rug interesting. I wondered if I needed a pee. And yet what should have been the clearest road into her soul soon turned into something more concerning. As a materialist, an atheist, as a neuroscientist working for a pharmacuetical company, client L. has no use for the soul. She calls it a poetic construct. The only reality in town is her own, and its cellular.

I'm in love, she said. I met him at a Pharma conference and we sat together for a week. But Roger's gone back to Australia. So, not unrequited, but impossible.

Not impossible, no. We Skype all the time.

Then the most extraordinary thing. Her eyes dimmed, she narrowed into her shoulders, and began speaking.

Of course it is. How often will I see him? Once a year? It is impossible. But you see, that's what love is. It's a madness, a divine madness. We are supposed to try and make love into a concrete relationship, but maybe it has nothing to do with relationships. It's not about making a perfect life. Love is an event of the soul. It has one foot in this world and one foot in eternity. Love is an initiation into experience, that is all. It has nothing to do with a man called Roger. Do you know what Ficino said? What Novalis said? He said love was not made for this world. And Ficino, he said love was the desire for union with a beautiful object in order to make eternity available to mortal life.

And do you believe that, I asked? No answer, just a faint smile. I stretched my shoulders and yearned for the window. I imagined clambering out and sliding down a drainpipe. This was the most inauthentic shit I'd heard in two hundred years of therapy. Where was the anguish, the agony of her love? And her, quoting Ficino to me? What was my Renaissance master doing in her laboratory? Although every word she spoke was true, it's expression was entirely false. Our time was up. I lifted my eyes slowly from the floor and nodded goodbye to the back of her head. She was gone. I threw open the window, desperate not to breathe any of her air. It was then, on impulse, I went and sat in her chair. I looked around me, noting the books on the nearest shelf, and there it was: Care of The Soul by Thomas Moore, 1st edition. Client L. has been reading Thomas Moore. I opened the book and turned to the chapter on love. In fact, she had been quoting him almost verbatum. Ah, client L, the cleverest girl in the class. She had been doing her homework.

George called, saying he had waited thirty-five years for this phone call.

What, this one? My mind was racing with every misdemeanour, until I remembered I had only known him six years.

No, with my sister. She just called and said sorry, at last! After all these years.

The quiver in George's voice was something new, a fearful crack.

What's she sorry about?

The past, he said, the past. I should never have given up teaching. I could be Head of Department by now, I know I could! Why did I do that...? Why was I so stupid...?

Having answered his own question, he was silent. What could I say?

We soon hung up but the crack in his voice stayed with me, like the awful noise of an animal that does not know it is not dead.

I went to bed alone knowing, as ever, that while capable, I must have as much sex as possible. After a few moments that felt like nonsense, but I don't remember why.

I have been working with Thom on the itinerary for Poland and, in his excitement, he is at last talking about life with Serena and his mother. Apparently Serena has take over the kitchen which Thom doesn't mind because, actually, her cooking is a bit better than his mother's. What a heresay! As he lay flopped over my sofa, it felt as though he had, at last, crawled out from under their special love. And guess what? Serena has to pay exactly half of the phone bill. We paused in our laughter. It was a detail that didn't bode well for their relationship but we said nothing. He was staring at his shoes. But I can't wait to go to Austwichz, he said, you know why? Because I really want to see the art that the prisoners made.

Last winter I began saturday morning sessions. Weekends had previously been a sacred space for me but I received a referral from client L., a neuroscientist in her early forties and, partly to show Karen that I was capable of change, too, but also in an effort to accomodate client L, I decided to put her busy schedule ahead of my own. We have been meeting every saturday at 8 am since christmas. She was drawn to me, she said, because in my particulars I mentioned doing ' soul work' and that her entire working life was based on the certainty that the soul didn't exist, only the brain. I have grown weary of defending the soul. Even Gareth mocks me, seeing it as unprofessional, not to say a slur on my character. I tend to respond that noone will find soul on Facebook, but just because it's hard work doesn't mean it doesn't exist. At this point Gareth's eyes usually roll over to the rota on the wall, reminding me of my kitchen duties.

Client L. has taken a respectful interest in her own soul, but is not convinced. Of course, it is so deeply in shadow that her soul, when it appears, will knock her senseless. In accordance with her wishes we have generally done some luke warm, Gareth approved, person centred counselling. She is an elder sister and academic achievement was expected, whereas her younger sister was allowed to charm everyone and be herself. But this morning client L. rang me in distress. She wanted a session today. I said no. ' But I need help', she said. Why do you need help? 'I'm in love'. Her voice was wobbly, almost operatic. The range of her being was changing. She was in love but sounded as if she required emergency surgery. Enjoy it, I said, and put the phone down. I felt a hollow sense of vindication, for what is love if not the work of the soul? I scanned my shelves but could find nothing to read. I walked down the stairs and into the street, intent on buying a cigar and filling the kitchen with smoke.

'The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to ourselves'. Montaigne.

It's the postcard ( now pinned above my desk ) that Karen sent me on the day she knew I'd discover her relationship with Serena. In short, I have found myself. I'm a lesbian! And I am so happy! But how infinitely preferable is Montaigne's translation. But in even the Frenchman, is there not an air of so don't go thinking otherwise! Does she protest too much? Is she protesting at all? But I have a trove of sexual memories of Karen and nothing she does can eradicate them. I see her now, biting the frame of the oak bed seconds before she flooded us both with ejaculate. Clearly, I shall have to be the custodian of that history. I shall write it up, every single encounter, every last detail. I'll return to the very sheets where Thom was conceived- and bequeath the whole chronicle to him. What else is a father for?

' Dreams are the true interpreter of our inclinations'.

We can all do Montaigne.

Thom wants to visit Auschwitz. It is a measure of his cunning that he even half pulled a Holocaust project from his school bag. In fact, Thom wants to go to Poland to see the European football. In fact, I have some rather intense business with Axel in Hamburg so maybe Auschwitz will serve as a ruse for the both of us.Of course, his mother will agree to this. Delegating her conscience is something I have observed her doing since she hooked up with Serena. Ah, yes. How could I, a mere therapist, have not known of my ex wife's lesbianism? Yes, me, who used to prowl past her house at 4 am to check out for any male friends. Have I ever been so blind? Frankly, I'd rather talk about Auschwitz. Yes, she will agree to this. She has batted nary an eyelid over our trips in search of the finest international erotica. In fact, she would agree to a fortnight in Afghanistan, or a weekend break in Syria, anything at all. What she will not accept, however,is for my son to stay with me in my house, half a mile down the road. What is it with the lesbian imagination? Is that a delegation too close to home?

She came.

Have I not spoken of my maiesophilia? Well I have a nose for the early stages of pregnancy and, without a shadow, client R. is with child. Question:  why did she not tell me? I have spent several hours considering this, on and off. It arouses me every time.

So is she, finally, my nemesis? At last, after all the roads we have travelled? Certainly, in our early days sex was was always in the room. She took a keen delight in exploring the detail of her fantasies and I indulged this for a few weeks, always aware of her body, the shift of her hips as the story was told. It was to our mutual disappointment that we landed up discovering the trauma underlying those fantasies. From there we moved onto the unexplored grief over her mother. Since then, client R. and I have grown old together. I have suggested our work together is finished but she always unearths an old memory or an errant boyfriend, so on we stagger. More disturbingly, she will add a telling detail to past issues that, I assumed, we had dealt with. It was this last, most manipulative aspect of her behaviour that made me certain I would sleep with her. We haven't, as yet. But I can sense the honey scent of early pregnancy and, too, I remember the sexual insanity I once felt for pregnant women. Oh, years ago.

R, the things I could tell you.