I am in the business of listening. Two days a week I settle into my chair in an act of mundane surrender. For the most part I am here to listen. But sitting like a slowly softening pat of butter will not do nicely. Like trying to meditate, listening is fraught with trivial and pressing distractions. I get carried off by my own concerns, the day-to-day detritus, things I’ve forgotten to do, mistakes it’s too late to repair, my knee that’s hurting again, the flash of the iPad on the desk with a message from my daughter.

Today as you talk, I feel your desperate need for an answer. Can you really leave your ageing mother, your autistic sister, and finally live on your own? I leave you as I weigh up the options on your behalf. Moving into territory that can be none of my business, waylaid from paying you attention by my own fear of your seemingly impossible situation. I must come back to you, to what you’re saying, come back to hearing you. And just as I do, your tongue slips, and instead of saying you’ll finally be able to leave when it’s your wedding day, a tired old family story, you say funeral. And we’re jolted awake, conscious, our eyes meeting, yours large and dark, mine smaller and light, that you’re dying there in that crumbling house caring for ingrates. And your decision comes closer to taking care of itself, finally fuelled by fires that have so far been hidden, unheard.