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being allowed to see her.
    Sometimes, Claire used to make her own hospital in the hall in front of her mum’s surgery door. She’d line her dolls up and cover them with toilet-paper sheets. Her mum had given her an old stethoscope to play with and she used to press the silver disc against the door, trying to hear her mother’s voice. Once her dad came in from the garden and found her there. He squatted down till he was at her level. ‘You know what private means, don’t you?’ he asked her quietly. ‘It means you’re not allowed to disturb your mother when she’s busy.’
    â€˜I know.’ As Claire tugged the stethoscope off it caught in her hair. ‘But I miss her.’
    He untangled the stethoscope, carefully. ‘I’m planting sweet peas and I need someone to talk to them nicely so they’ll grow.’
    â€˜I’m too busy,’ Claire explained, ‘with my patients.’
    He looked at her dolls. ‘I think they’re asleep. Maybe you could leave them just for a minute.’
    â€˜Maybe.’
    Her dad took her hand and they went out into the garden. She remembered how tall he had seemed then. The scratchy feel of his gardening glove. The way the bright sunshine made her eyes squinty. A robin flew down and perched on the lowest branch of the chestnut tree.
    â€˜You know what he’s thinking about?’ her dad asked her.
    â€˜Worms?’
    â€˜He’s thinking that your finger is just the right size to make a hole for a sweet pea seed.’
    He took her finger and showed her how push it into the damp earth. When she pulled it out, there were little black crumbs of soil stuck to her skin. He shook a seed into her hand and she dropped it into the hole. ‘Now we have to think of the right thing to say to make it grow.’
    Her dad had gone up to his room when Claire came out of the bathroom. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she called as she passed his closed door.
    â€˜Safe home now,’ he said. It was what he used to say to Ray, when he was going back across the road to his house. ‘Say foam!’ Ray still said to her sometimes, and it always made her smile.
    She went downstairs and found her jacket in the kitchen. Her dad had slipped an envelope with a hundred euros into the pocket. ‘For your birthday,’ he’d scribbled on the flap. She went back out to the car and switched on her phone before she started the engine.
    Five texts from Ray, two missed calls from her agent, one voice message.
    â€˜Lorcan here. I was putting together some headshots for a hair care ad and I stuck in one of you and you’ve been picked as a featured extra. Somebody up there seems to be looking after you.’
    â€˜I’m not a machine.’
    The man sitting in the cream armchair opposite Nick had shredded a Kleenex tissue into a hundred little pieces. ‘I can’t spend eight hours with the kids every day and just flick on the adult switch when you walk in the door. I don’t work like that.’
    â€˜You don’t work at all!’ his wife shouted. ‘I’m the one who’s chained to a desk for ten hours a day while you’re at home fucking finger-painting.’
    Nick held a hand up. ‘I don’t think either of you can hear one another right now. If you can’t seem to listen , what you have to do is Two Listen . One of you talks for two minutes. One of you listens and repeats, word for word, what’s been said. Then you swap over.’
    By the end of the session, it had all come out. All the littleresentments first and then the underlying pain. His shame that he wasn’t the breadwinner. Her fear that she was going to miss seeing her kids grow up.
    Nick could tell they were afraid that the ceasefire would disappear as soon as they left the room. It happened. So he gave them three We-Fit assignments. Affirmations to say alone and together. A massage exercise. A questionnaire to fill out