‘No. In the moment, I forgot. I told you. Blank panic.’
‘Okay. We need to figure out a way to have you remember to do that in the middle of these moments, so that you can stay and work them through.’
‘What if I don’t want to stay and work them through?’ He hears himself asking this in a small voice. The voice, almost, of a child.
‘Well, that’s a bigger problem.’
‘Why?’
‘You tellmewhy.’
This is the part where Alex always wants to roll his eyes. He’s paying a not insubstantial sum to an expert to fix him. If the answer was deep within himself all along, isn’t this a giant waste of time and money?
He shrugs.
His therapist waits. The clock ticks, each tick a not insubstantial portion of that not insubstantial sum. If Alex wasn’t writing this book, he wouldn’t be able to afford any of these ticks. But then, if Alex wasn’t writing this book, maybe he wouldn’tneedto afford any of them.
‘Let’s assume I don’t know,’ he says eventually, when a respectable number of ticks have gone by. Fifty-one, to be precise.
‘If you keep walking away in the middle of conflict, how will that conflict get resolved?’
‘It … won’t?’
‘Bingo.’
Another silence. Another opportunity for Alex to, presumably, look deep within himself. And this time, he does find something there.
‘Unresolved conflict is a source of anxiety.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And we’re trying to reduce anxiety in my life, so that means being able to deal with sources of stress, like conflict.’
‘Yes. Also, it makes for better relationships.’
‘Ah.’
He can’t fault this argument. Walking away when things get tough has not pleased Jess, and he can’t say he blames her. It’s a new thing, this anxiety that makes him unable to think straight. Before he’d uncovered it all in therapy – when he was just internalising it with stomach aches and sweaty palms – it was easier to manage. But now, it’s like a scab he’s started to scratch, and it’s bleeding, and Jess is somehow getting caught in the crosshairs. Maybe having therapy wasn’t such a good idea after all. Expensiveanddangerous seems like an unhelpful combination.
Still, he’s here now. He might as well get his money’s worth.
‘So can you help me figure out why I was so anxious?’
‘Why doyouthink you were so anxious?’
Alex looks around for a pillow to scream into. Sadly, there isn’t one. He digs a nail into a palm instead, and that seems to help.
‘I don’t know. I was enjoying hanging out with Ivy. I like kids. I love being an uncle, and I feel like I’m good at it. I let her win at chess and she didn’t even realise that I had. Not to brag, but that’s a special kind of skill.’
‘But you didn’t know you were signing up to look after a child when you went into this relationship.’
Alex’s breath catches. Yes, this is it. The bait and switch.
‘And you’re not ready for that kind of commitment?’
That doesn’t feel like it’s what it is. Once he’s in with Jess, he’ll be all in. He’s always wanted children of his own. Some nights, and some days too, he’s even dreamed of it, dreamed of a baby with Jess’s freckles and honey blonde hair. ‘I don’t think that’s what it is.’
‘Well, tell me this. How did it feel when Jess dropped your writing session so she could look after Ivy?’
