‘I don’t love my friends.’
‘What does love feel like?’
‘It feels like … it feels like need.’
‘Like need?’
‘Yeah, like you love someone because they give you what you need.’
‘And if they stop giving you what you need?’
‘Then that’s not love. That’s something else.’
‘And the owl?’
I stopped. ‘What?’
‘The owl. You said it felt like you loved the owl.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t need the owl.’
‘No. I just loved him.’
‘Did it feel the same as the way you love your granddad?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It felt … pure.’ I realised that sounded wrong and corrected myself. ‘Not that there’s anything not pure about the way I love my granddad. But I worry about him. I worry that he’ll die. I worry that he won’t be able to give me what I need. And that makes me feel bad. I didn’t feel bad about the owl. I only felt good.’
‘Do you think both types of love are equal?’
‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’
He stopped then and looked up at me and he smiled. I hadn’t been expecting him to smile. I thought that it was in his contract not to smile during therapy. But he did. And maybe it was because we’d just been talking about it, I don’t know, but I got that feeling again, the soft, velvet owl feeling.
So yeah, maybe I needed Roan Fours already, even before I knew it.
The first time I saw Roan outside of a therapy session at the Portman was about a year or so after our first session. I was walking home from school and he was just leaving an appointment at the school opposite my flat where one of his patients was a student. He was all smart and briefcasey, wearing a blue shirt, and he was talking to another man, also smart and briefcasey. Then they separated and he turned to cross the street and he saw me looking at him.
I thought he might just wave and walk on. But he didn’t. He crossed the road and came to stand with me.
‘Well, hello,’ he said. He had his hands in his pockets and kind of rocked backwards on his heels. It made him look like a teacher for some reason and I had that reallyewwfeeling you get when you see a teacher out of school, like they’re naked or something. But at the same time I felt really pleased to see him.
I said, ‘Hi,’ and wondered what I looked like to him. I was wearing false eyelashes that day; this was early 2016 – everyone was wearing false eyelashes. I didn’t think I looked stupid at the time but I probably did.
‘Finished school?’ he said.
‘Yeah. Just heading home.’ As I said this, I looked up at the tower, to the eighth floor. I always recognised my floor from the ground because of the ugly red and green striped curtains in the window of flat thirty-five next door. It was like a marker.
‘Up there?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Up there.’
‘Nice views, I bet?’
I shrugged. I’d happily forsake the views for a home with more rooms in it.
‘So, our next appointment …?’