Anxious People(64)

“Maybe next time.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“What is?”

“That there’s going to be a next time.”

Zara turned around at that and peered at Nadia to see if that was a joke or not. She didn’t quite succeed, so turned away again, rubbed more sanitizer into her hands, and looked out of the window behind Nadia, counting the windows in the building opposite. Then she said: “You haven’t suggested I start taking antidepressants. Most psychologists would have.”

“Have you met many other psychologists?”

“No.”

“So that’s your own analysis?”

Zara looked at the picture on the wall.

“I can understand you not wanting to give me sleeping pills, because you’re worried I’d kill myself. But surely if that’s the case, you should be giving me antidepressants instead?”

Nadia folded two unused paper napkins and tucked them away in her desk drawer. Then nodded.

“You’re right. I haven’t suggested medication. Because antidepressants are designed to smooth out the highs and lows of your mood, and if used properly they can stop you feeling so sad, but often they stop you feeling as happy.” She held one hand up, her palm horizontal. “You just end up… on a level. And you would expect that patients who take antidepressants mostly miss the highs, wouldn’t you? But that isn’t actually the case. The majority of people who want to stop medication say they want to be able to cry again. They watch a sad film with someone they love, and they want to be able to… feel the same thing.”

“I don’t like films,” Zara pointed out.

Nadia laughed out loud.

“No, of course you don’t. But I don’t think you need fewer feelings, Zara. I think you need to feel more. I don’t think you’re depressed. I think you’re lonely.”

“That sounds like an unprofessional analysis.”

“Maybe.”

“What if I leave here and kill myself.”

“I don’t think you’d do that.”

“No?”

“You said a little while ago that there’s going to be a next time.”

Zara focused her gaze on Nadia’s chin.

“And you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I can see that you don’t want to let people get close to you. It makes you feel weak. But I don’t think you’re afraid of being hurt, I think you’re afraid of hurting other people. You’re a more empathetic and moral person than you like to admit.”

Zara was deeply, deeply offended by this, and had difficulty working out if that was because Nadia had called her weak, or because she had said she was moral.

“Maybe I just don’t think it’s worth the effort to talk to people I’m only going to get fed up with.”

“How do you know that if you never try?”

“I’m here, aren’t I, and it didn’t take me long to get fed up with you!”

“Try to take the question seriously,” Nadia said, which of course was hopeless. Zara bounced away from the subject as usual.

“So why are you vegan?”

Nadia groaned wearily.

“Do we really have to talk about that again? Okay: I’m vegan because I care about the climate crisis. If everyone was vegan, we could…”

Zara interrupted scornfully: “Stop the ice caps melting?”

Nadia deployed the patience vegans have plenty of time to practice when they spend Christmas with older relatives.

“Not quite, no. But it’s part of a larger solution. And the fact that the ice caps are melting is—”

“But do we really need penguins?” Zara asked bluntly.

“I would say that the ice caps are a symptom, not the problem. Like the trouble you have sleeping.”

Zara counted the windows.

“There are frogs threatened with extinction that scientists say would leave us smothered with insects if they disappeared. But penguins? Who’d be affected if penguins disappeared, except maybe businesses that make padded jackets?”

Nadia lost the thread at that, which may have been Zara’s intention.

“You don’t make… what… do you think they make padded jackets out of penguins? They’re made of geese!”

“So geese aren’t as important as penguins? That doesn’t sound very vegan.”

“That’s not what I said!”

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“You’re making a habit of this, you know.”

“What?”

“Changing the subject as soon as you get close to talking about real feelings.”

Zara seemed to consider this. Then she said: “What about bears, then?”

“Sorry?”

“If you get attacked by a bear? Could you kill it then?”

“Why would I be attacked by a bear?”

“Maybe someone kidnaps you and drugs you and you wake up in a cage with a bear, and it’s a fight to the death.”

“You’re starting to get quite disconcerting now. And I’d like to point out that I’ve had an awful lot of training in psychology, so I have a fairly high threshold for what counts as disconcerting.”