The red light of the ansaphone pulses in the corner. It's Axel. I am getting older here, he drawls, as if he has nothing else in life but to wait in a dressing gown for me to write his books. What chapter are you on? If nothing else, at least he would negotiate. I would insist on the Chorier. Truth is, my problem with writing a book about Walter's Secret Life was that I didn't care if the book was fact or fiction. It's painful to associate myself with a rather modern malaise but the truth or otherwise of events, the objective realities of existence,  held no interest for me. In fact, I find history, like his pale cousin, truth, I find them somewhat retarded relatives. They tend to have dull, reedy voices, a somewhat tragic dress sense and they rarely ever look you in the eye. Sure, I am happy to shake hands with them now and again, at quarterly gatherings or in administrative buildings, but I don't want to live with them. I care only for the phenomenological working of life on consciousness, and consciousness upon life, and very often I don't care for that, either. Only soul. When we are with soul then we require no refuge. So what did I care if My Secret Life was God's honest sexual truth or if it was eleven volumes of unbridled fantasy from the demented Victorian brain of , most likely, Sir Henry Spencer Ashbee? I did not care. It's a ripping yarn, I said to myself, like life. And with that, I put the phone down, his message still pulsing. Axel could wait a while longer.

Helen is back!

So, having thrashed around in the bath to one of the more ferocious quartets, I combed my hair and tried to compose a suitable face with which to greet her. I wanted to convey several things at once. First, a measure of sorrow at her failed romance. However, the sorrow should co-mingle with an eyebrow of real surprise that Ross could ever have treated her thus. All of which should be underpinned with a lusty pleasure at seeing her again but with an overriding awareness that these things take time. In truth, driving to work the long way, I wasn't sure my face was up to all this. On entering the house I could hear Helen in the kitchen with Gareth- was he lowering his voice?- so I decided to go straight to my room, and flew up the stairs.

In fact, it allowed Helen to play a solicitous role. Within minutes she was knocking at my door with two cups of coffee. She smiled, settling into the client chair. Could I ever love her? Certainly, one of the disasters of my marriage was Karen's failure to make me hot drinks.

What a fool I am.

We are all fools for love, I said, imagining the wide expanse of my own stupidity.

Yes, but you said this would happen.

What do you mean?

She looked at me evenly. You knew what Ross was like.

I never knew a thing, Helen.  I'd never met him, until you introduced us. As far as I was aware this was absolutely true. And anyway, whatever I happened to think of him I would have kept to myself. Hah, Gareth, his lowered voice. I made a mental note to break his spine. Helen smiled faintly, as if also understanding that her charge was trying to get me in trouble. Gareth's meddling was, as ever, born of his overweening need for Helen's approval. How could she not warm to it? But in the quiet of this moment, she allowed me to understand that if I were to indulge him, like a father to our difficult child, then there would be rewards for me later, in her room, possibly at the days end.

I love her grey hair. She often wears it up, allowing a few loose, stray hairs to beguile me.

At lunchtime from my window, I saw her leave.

Halfday, clearly.

8 am, client L.

One of the disadvatages of saturday morning sessions is that I never see client L. in her work clothes. She arrived in jeans and a blouse. I couldn't begin to describe the blouse but her purple coat was of interest- is that not the colour of mourning? Nevertheless, I find that clients who arrive in their work attire will also bring their essential self image, and that is the most revealing of masks. I made a mental note to arrange our next session for the friday.

So, how can I access soul, then?

She sounded interested, genuinely curious, and I sensed why she was good at her job and, clearly, was capable of bringing out the best in her team of male scientists. But I wasn't having any of it. The phrase itself annoyed me. Access soul? One downloads it? Like many people, she has the impatience of someone who spends hours on a computer. But she was trying to enter my world so I took a breath, smiled, and grabbed my Dante.

I am going to read some poetry. Canto XIII. Now, I will read this to myself, for my pleasure, for about fifteen minutes. You will do something else entirely. I gave her a pen and piece of paper. You are right handed so I want you to write a letter to yourself as you were when you were eight years old. And you write it with your left hand. Now, I will be sitting here, immersed in the poetry. You may flicker across my mind once or twice, I may even glance at you, but you will not be in my thoughts.

Always the good student, client L. began writing. And true to my word, I was soon in the seventh circle of hell with Dante and, apart from glancing at her ankles, I never gave her a thought. After fifteen minutes I looked over and saw her blouse was soaked in tears.

We arrived at Auschwitz at lunchtime. Luckily, we had made sandwiches.

Past the coaches and the car parks, we soon found the iron gates. We preferred to go alone rather than hire a guide. That meant buying a brochure and we were both happy to stand awhile and do that. I had read in a sunday magazine that in the grounds of Auschwitz, such is the reverence for the horror, that even the birds don't sing in the camp. It's not true. As we stood in the queue, Thom, ever the keen orinthologist, managed to discern the sound of several bitterns, a sandpiper, a ruddy turnstone, as well as a whiskered, an artic, and even a common tern. I demurred over the turnstone, but Thom insisted. Eventually he leaned into me and, finding his sense of occassion said, maybe you're right.

We saw the pile of spectacles, the mountain of human hair, the gas chambers, crematoria and finally, after taking the bus, Birkenau. There was nothing to say then, or now. We were bearing witness, and that was good. But if anything can be said it was that the horror was, actually, imaginable. It was there, in the monumental will it took for a prisoner to carve a picture on the execution wall. But still, for most of the day I had no idea why we were here. We had no family ties, no friends, nothing connecting us to the horror. We may have invented- for Thom's teacher- an Uncle Ben who may or may not have died in Auschwitz, but it was a lie. I didn't know yet what the lie would reveal of us.

As he had foretold, Thom found the prisoner art a solace. He stared rather too long at picture entitled ' Father & Son', but no matter. He made pertinent comments on various others. But I wasn't satisfied with the art. Sometimes it is hard to apprehend even a piece of toast, let alone historical genocide. But I was hankering for more, a deeper horror than the set pieces. Sensing that was technological, or logistical, I spent a long time in the huge gas chambers and in the tiny spaces of Block 11. I was vying for perspective, seeking out windows, calibrating numbers, barracks, cattle trucks.   Finally, I stopped, closed my eyes and understood that, possibly, I was seeking a co-relative to some other, more personal horror. I accepted this, my apparent and monstrous egotism. But if I did so without shame it was knowing that acceptance was the moment we bear witness, and in the only way possible.

Later at the hotel, Thom rang his mother. He said he'd had a super day.

5 am. Woke up sweating. Outside the window, the hotel car park, some municipal flowers, a few trees. I stared hard, as if something were missing.

Hamburg to Kiev.

We arrived at the hotel early and so, with time to spare, I packed Thom off to the balcony with his dictionaries while I lay down and tried to remember my night on the Reeperbahn. There had been brandy, I knew that. Lager, whisky. One show, two, three.  The third show, yes, that's interesting. Was that actually a show? .

Thom ordered a taxi to the stadium. Since he now considers himself European, it was easy for us to fall in with some Spanish fans and pretend we weren't English. Frankly, football bores me. For Thom, it was the most beautiful game he had ever seen. While he claims to discern algebraic forms in the Spanish passing, all I see is a snowstorm of galumphing spermatozoa. But I was happy enough to sit with him, even though he did keep saying, somewhat loudly, maravilloso!

Halftime, I rang Helen. Last summer she met a man, Ross, at a therapy workshop. After a couple of months of tentative dating she decided, quite reasonably, that I should stop my afternoon- and sometimes very early morning- visits to her room. I minded, a bit. Rather than missing her body I found, unaccountably, that I missed talking to her, which we'd never really done. Initially, Gareth was euphoric. Ross had come between me and Helen and so for a few weeks Gareth came into work beaming. He even looked younger. It was as if he'd grown a couple of inches. However, even his enthusiasm fell when it became clear that Ross was an insufferable prick.

It's not uncommon in therapy circles. Sometimes you meet them, therapists who have no other interest in life other than therapy. They care for nothing but optimizing their emotional and physical wellbeing. They have no sense of humour, no hinterland. They will never admit to their previous, unsuccessful career. And then they seduce vulnerable women, like Helen. She should have known better.

Ross invited her to a therapy retreat on a Greek island. With his beard and pony tail, Ross runs the course as an eclectic mix of meditation, group work and optional naturism. Within days of her arrival Helen suspected that half of the women on the retreat were previous or future lovers of Ross and so, furious with him and herself, she fled back to England. She retuns to work next week.

And so it was, with images from last night on the Reeperbahn eliding into familiar, but equally sexy, images of Helen, I was relieved from it all by the roar of the crowd. We were hauled into a  mass hug by the fans next to us. Spain had won. We had won.

I found Thom sat writing at a desk in one of the drawing rooms. Renoir nude over the fireplace, possibly the one Axel mentioned, the one the Russians were pleading to have back. Thom shot out of his seat and directed me over to a wall of pictures. It was a collection of 1920's photographs of women in flapper poses. Now I think, said Thom. I was quite clear he wasn't thinking anything. What had happened to my son? He scratched his chin. I think that a photograph must have a title. You cant just take a picture and not give it a name. Can you, really? His eyes softened a little. Clearly, he didnt want me to know what he was writing at the desk. Well, probably these pictures are anonymous, so we if we don't know the photographer, then. I sounded rather lame but looked him hard in the eyes. Where had my son gone?

Gertrude entered carrying a cheeseburger and chips.

Dankschoen, said Thom, without turning round.

Bitte, said Gertrude, quietly leaving the plate on his desk.

I was angry with her, but I'm not now. She kept correcting my pronunciation, he said. For a moment, we looked at the pictures. I was reminded of a photo of my mother. I felt a yearning to be out of Hamburg, to be hurtling on down to Auschwitz. The memory of my mother, dead when I was nine, had also softened Thom. He looked down at the floor. I am writing a diary, he said. He looked up quickly and said, to be certain there was no misunderstanding, but it's not secret.

Of course it's secret, Thom. If your diary is any good, you will never show a soul. Now, I am going to sit over here, you go back to your diary and write. Just write! And so we passed the time. My son on the other side of the drawing room, hiding his words with his cupped hand, the light fading on the Rumanian rug, the last of the brandy on my lips while, on and off, looking up at the Renoir. For a moment, like a dying man, I lacked for nothing.

3 am. I woke up in the chair. Thom had gone, and his diary. He was in bed, a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the table. Quietly, I let myself out the side entrance, onto the Reeperbahnn. I heard my voice saying, research, research. Another voice, also my own, did not reply.