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funny thing is that I did believe in The Riddle. I suppose a cynic would say that anyone would believe in something that brought in enough income to buy a four-bedroom house in Redington Road.’
    ‘Even shrinks have to have somewhere to live,’ said Jane Bowen. The two of them smiled wryly over this comment – a little more wryly than it strictly merited.
    ‘Well, we’re not helping anybody sitting here, are we?’ said Busner. Once again this was a key motif. It had been his catchphrase on all those discussion and interview programmes – always delivered with falsetto emphasis on the ‘helping’. The catch-phrase, like The Riddle, outlived Busner’s own popularity. I remember seeing him towards the very end of his TV sojourn, when he was reduced to going on one of those ‘celebrity’ gameshows where the celebrities sit in a rack of cubicles. Zack trotted out his obligatory line and the contestant dutifully pushed the button on the tape machine – as I recall, she ended up winning a suite of patio furniture. It was really quite a long way from the spirit of radical psychology. Now Busner was using the phrase again, clearly with a sense of irony – but somehow not altogether; there was also something else there, a strange kind of pride almost.
    ‘I want you to shadow me while I do the ward round.’ Busner guided me by placing his palm on my shoulder. We both nodded to Jane Bowen, who had forgotten us already and fallen into conversation with a nurse. Busner stashed his bursting briefcase behind the nurses’ station, after extracting from it with difficulty a clipboard and some sheets of blankpaper. We walked side by side down the short corridor that led to the entrance to the two wards. For some reason Busner and I were unwilling to precede one another, and as a result people coming in the other direction had to crush up against the walls to get around us. We were like a teenage couple – desperate to avoid any break in contact that might let in indifference.
    The dormitories were laid out in a series of bays, four beds in each bay and four bays to the dormitory. Each bay was about the size of an average room, the beds laid out so as to provide the maximum surrounding space for each occupant to turn into their own private space. Some of the patients had stuck photographs and posters up on the walls with masking tape, some had placed knick-knacks on the shelves, and others had done nothing and lay on their beds, motionless, like ascetics or prisoners.
    Busner kept up a commentary for my benefit as we stopped and consulted with each patient. The first one we came to was a pop-eyed man in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a decrepit Burton suit which was worn to a shine at knee and elbow. He was sitting on the easy chair by his bed and staring straight ahead. His shoulder-length hair was scraped down from a severe central parting. His eyes weren’t just popping, they were half out of their sockets, resembling ping-pong balls with the pupils painted on to them like black spots.
    ‘Clive is prone to bouts of mania, aren’t you, Clive?’
    ‘Good morning, Dr Busner.’
    ‘How are you feeling, Clive?’
    ‘Fine, thank you, Doctor.’
    ‘Any problems with your medication? You’ll be leaving us soon, won’t you?’
    ‘In answer to your first question, no. In answer to your second, yes.’
    ‘Clive likes everything to be stated clearly, don’t you, Clive?’
    At the time I thought Busner was being sarcastic. In fact – as I realised later – this wasn’t the case. If anything, Busner was being solicitous. He knew that Clive liked to expatiate on his attitudes and methods; Busner was providing him with the opportunity.
    ‘You’re staring very fixedly at the opposite wall, Clive, would you like to tell Misha why this is?’
    I followed his line of sight; he was looking at a poster which showed two furry little kittens both dangling by their paws from the handle of a straw basket. The slogan underneath in