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far out at sea. My heart hurts. No, it aches. So someone died a horrible death . . . You never got to know him properly . Two hearts and one was gone . Then the rage comes in, a big ugly slub of it. She has hurt me, seen things and said things she shouldn't have, and more than anything I want to damage her. Badly. I palm the stone and consider its decisive heft. It's aching to be thrown. Then I realise that if I don't get away from her right now, I'll do it. Or try to. And miss, of course, and fall out of the chair in a ridiculous lunge. And then it will be me who Rafik is restraining, and I'll lose my job.
    At last the door bursts open and six psychiatric nurses pour in: four men and two women, all built like tanks. They swarm on to her and pin her to the floor while Rafik stands back, rubbing his wrist in pain.
    'Little bitch bit me,' he mutters, wiping at the blood.
    'I think we'll call it a day now, Bethany,' I breathe, trying to make sure the sob that's hatching in my throat doesn't make it to the surface. 'I'll see you next time.'
    She seems to find this, or something else, unaccountably funny. In any case as I leave the room she laughs and laughs, like the horrible, crazy little girl she is.
    Suppression is easily done. It's a simple matter of choice. My decision to forget what Bethany said - about things she can't possibly know - is a judgment call. I'm fully aware of what I am doing. In the time it takes to hurtle up the corridor to the lift, I have flung the moment from my mind and from my life, like toxic waste down a chute.

Chapter Two
    My new home is minimalist. Things like nice cushions once mattered to me. Cushions that match your sofa, and perhaps also your curtains, cushions that end up on the floor when you and a certain poker player are doing the deed, with abandon, in front of a winter fire. But since my world got recalibrated overnight, I've stopped caring about interior decoration, and my only cushion-related concern is the quality of the gel pad I sit on to prevent pressure sores. Domestically speaking, my issues are ramps and wheel-in showers and worktops at the right level, and how to apply to the council to get further innovations installed at no cost. Thanks to someone else's misfortune, I have managed to acquire, at short notice, a self-contained ground-floor flat in Hadport that is already wheelchair-adapted. I'm aware that this represents a kind of jackpot in the disability world, and feel duly grateful. I feel other, less comfortable things too. The previous occupant, a young tetraplegic called Mikey, succumbed, suddenly, to 'complications'. His family's loss has become my gain. The flat was advertised by the owner, Mrs Zarnac, on a spinal injury website. I'm not superstitious. But I've made a point of not enquiring further about Mikey's complications, or asking in which room he died, or how many hours passed before his carer found him.
    It's a ground-floor flat in the old part of Hadport. I don't see much of Mrs Zarnac, who lives upstairs. Lonely-looking older men visit her, and when she cooks for them, vinegar smells waft down. It crosses my mind she might be pickling them alive, one after another, for some dark embalming project. In a spirit of defiance and also as a perverse comfort, I have acquired a Frida Kahlo print which leans against one wall because I can't reach to hang it up. Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas : Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns. Against a backdrop of jungle leaves, Kahlo gazes blankly out from beneath the single eyebrow which, for aesthetically unfathomable reasons, she refused to pluck into a conventional twosome. It's a head-and-shoulders portrait, so you don't see her wheelchair. At her left shoulder is a black cat, eyes wild, ears cocked back, positioning itself to pounce on a dead hummingbird which hangs, wings outstretched, from a mesh of thorns around her neck. In Mexican folklore, the bird is meant to bring good luck or love. To her right, preoccupied