I first met Dominic in August 2005.

An unusually cold summer were chasing me into my GCSE year and my friends were determined to cast one grenade before it snuffed us out — which, for teenagers, equalled a party. Tara Connelly had a rich uncle all the way up in Chapel Allerton who were s'posedly travelling across the Mediterranean and she picked up the mantle to invite the whole year to his three-storey house. Whether that were with permission, I've no clue.

Jacob arranged for his adult cousin to drive us and buy us alcohol as long as we paid, news which he announced with a smirk while our soaked football uniforms adhered to us like cellophane. Coach said we lost focus the second we stepped into the changing room and insisted on having his post-practice talks on the field regardless of weather since "a little rain ain't kill no one, you're s'posed to be men". Easy for him to say when he had an umbrella.

Though his lips were blue, Jacob's grin were wide. It weren't hard to understand the source of his smugness: this meant we owed him. And though Jacob were generally too nice to use it for owt bad, he'd definitely use it for summat annoying.

The evening of the party were just as cold but the sky were clear. The curtain of blue curled back to reveal the stars above and I tried to identify constellations I never learnt as I rubbed my arms for warmth. I didn't bring a coat because I didn't wanna get plastered and forget it at Tara Connelly's rich uncle's house. Jacob's cousin were meant to pick us up at the football field since we all lived within walking distance of it and our parents would ask questions if they saw us get into a stranger's car. We all told them we had extra practice.

But he were late. Freddie were beginning to question if this bloke were imaginary which got on Jacob's nerves. Irfan kept telling them to stop bickering; the wait would be worth it once we got there cause apparently Tara's step-sister were bringing her friends who were visiting for the summer and "European birds are mental".

'Maybe you can finally find a shag, Miles,' Freddie quipped, bored of taunting Jacob about his imaginary cousin and excited for a new target. 'Mate, you been sixteen for like two months and what've ya done with it? Nowt!'

'Unlike you, I've a job. Where am I s'posed to find the time for girls?'

He sniggered. 'Is your dick small or summat?'

'What? No.' I instinctively looked down and, when they all did the same, covered my crotch. 'It's normal.'

I thought it were normal. But I were also always careful not to look at anyone in locker rooms so I didn't actually know.

The little porn I'd managed to watch (which weren't much; between Má, Iris, and Ông Ngoại, I were rarely home alone) definitely weren't any help to my confidence. I couldn't tell if the boys were tiny or if the men really were that big but sometimes I'd compare the way their fingers wrapped around the girth to how well my own fingers reached around my wrist and all I could think were wouldn't that hurt? I had no idea then that the actors prepared off-stage so they wouldn't have to shatter the fantasy of ramming bareback into a stranger without foreplay.

'When I turn sixteen, Imma be loving Sasha Osborne every night.' Irfan mimed holding someone's hips and thrusting into her.

'Sasha Osbourne don't know you exist,' I bit. Sasha Osbourne were a year above us and there were about a 0.00001 per cent chance of her as much looking at Irfan.

Headlights seized us before he could retaliate. A blue Vauxhall slowed to a stop in front of us and Jacob smacked Freddie for doubting him though I hardly heard their bickering.

When I'd heard "Jacob's adult cousin", I hadn't bothered to visualise much but when Dominic rolled down the window and urged us in, his face struck me as a kind of beauty I would possess only when I held it in my hands. I were taken with the desire to do exactly that: to hold his face in my hands.

Maybe he were imaginary. He certainly looked like someone I would imagine. All fluffy brown hair and the kind of facial structure I thought only existed in Photoshopped ads. He probably had a dick like the men in porn. As soon as I had the thought, my face burned so hot, I still can't believe Freddie didn't start antagonising me for it. Maybe it were too dark for him to see.

Irfan were shortest so he had to sit in the middle whilst Jacob gloated in the passenger seat and none of them noticed how quiet I had gone. Everything I thought about saying suddenly sounded painfully immature and I didn't want to come across like some kid to Dominic. It became instantly vital that he liked me.

My hair were recovering from a hideous cut the month before and I couldn't fathom why I hadn't just shaved a buzzcut when I got home and saw how awful it looked. I thought it would hurt the barber's feelings — as if he'd ever find out. As subtly as I could, I tried to untie the friendship bracelets Iris made me from my wrist. They all had glitter thread and attempted flower patterns.

We kept making awkward eye contact through the rear-view mirror. I had never seen such blue eyes so close before and I were fascinated by the way the pupil were so small, a dot pierced by ice on all sides. It must be lonely, I remember thinking, all alone in the centre of summat so cold. Or maybe it were happy there where it could be at peace, unlike my own pupils that were always melting into the irises which surround them like lava, just as black. His pupils were so sharp that if I looked at them without the mirror, I were sure they'd cut me open.

I probably imagined the darting of his eyes to the ring in my right ear. I'd got the piercing impulsively and regretted it the moment Freddie saw it the next morning — You're a bender now? I hadn't taken a second to think through the fact that the earring would be as much of a beacon to straight people as it would to queer people and I were several decades late if I wanted to be subtle.

I played dumb and, within two days, had convinced everyone that I thought left were the gay ear. It wouldn't be particularly out of character; I'm exactly the type of person dense enough to accidentally brand myself as gay. But that meant that I had to listen to even more jokes about how stupid I were for four months. I considered taking the piercing out but that would make it a waste of money.

The twenty-minute drive passed far too quickly. Irfan shoved Freddie out of the car the moment it stopped, crying over the ache in his body from being crushed between us and the pair disappeared before I could get my seatbelt. Jacob collected all the alcohol from the boot. When it slammed shut, the impact reverberated all the way to my fingers.

I slid out of my seat, careful not to kick the back of Dominic's chair, and pinned summat like a smile onto my lips. 'Ta for the ride.'

He told me not to worry about it and I stepped toward Tara Connelly's uncle's house which towered against the inky sky.

'Hold up.'

I spun around far too quickly. So much for playing it cool.

Dominic hung out of the rolled-down window with his flip phone open in hand. 'You seem like the most responsible of the lot. Give me your number so if Jacob gets pissed and chucks his phone in the duckpond or summat, you won't get all stranded, like.'

My heart were in my throat, hard as an apple swallowed whole.

The phone number I'd had since I were nine jumped around in my brain; I dialled it wrong several times. My face were on fire by the time I handed Dominic his cell back. He rang me so I could save his number too which I did with shaking fingers: Dominic. I considered calling him Jacob's adult cousin as I tended to do with people I didn't come into enough contact with to remember without context, but I didn't. I wouldn't need context to remember him.

'Ta, love,' he said and the apple in my throat crushed with a burn of bitter juice. He spoke to me like sweet old Mrs Flannery when I helped her carry her shopping. I wondered what he named me in his phone. Jacob's responsible mate? I hadn't told him my name. He hadn't asked. 'Enjoy the party.'

The party. I'd already forgotten about the party. 'Aye. Ta... In a bit, then.'

It were well after three in the morning when Dominic picked us up. What had he been doing in between? The awful thought that maybe he were on a date occurred to me and somehow it drove a knife right through my chest. What the fuck? I didn't even know him.

Freddie fell asleep the moment he squeezed into the car whilst Jacob and Irfan whined about feeling shit the whole way. Despite my plans to get absolutely plastered, I barely drank. Dominic had thought me the responsible friend.

Because I lived furthest south, and because I were the least drunk and Dominic didn't have to worry I'd chuck up in his car, he dropped me off last. I said several times that he could leave me at the football field where he picked us up but he said he'd be a bad adult if he let a kid walk home alone at three in the morning.

'What's your name again?' he asked when we were alone and I had moved to the passenger seat.

'Miles. Though my family calls me rabbit but that's a Vietnamese thing.' Ears burning, I snapped my focus to the curb. Why did I tell him that?

He examined the side of my face. 'You remind me a little of a rabbit.'

Forgetting my embarrassment, I turned to him, eyebrows raised. 'How?'

'You're cute.'

Maybe the possibility of me being sick in his car weren't as low as I'd thought.

The orange spheres of streetlights slammed into us at the rhythm of my heartbeat and I wished they'd seize me with them. I had no idea how to respond to such an unexpected compliment (were it a compliment?) and were thankful when Dominic moved on. 'What're your folks gonna say with you coming home in't middle of the night?'

'Nowt probably,' I answered, knowing it were either that or half an hour of yelling which would wake Iris up and she'd add to the screaming. 'They only notice me when they need me for summat, don't they? Besides, I'm sixteen. I'm too old to have a curfew.' I said this because it's what I heard other sixteen-year-olds say, ignoring the fact that they were English.

Dominic's brow twitched at this. His mouth parted and for the first time, I allowed myself to drink him in. The streetlights carved out his features, even the tiny indents in the skin of his lips.

'You're sixteen?'

'Aye...' I grimaced. He thinks I'm dense now. 'I were held back a year after me dad died.'

'Fuck. Sorry. I'm so sorry. Fuck–'

'Don't worry about it. It's fine. It were a long time ago...' Pause. 'This is a nice song,' I said though I barely heard it.

Dominic dropped me off at the maw of my street, thinking, I assumed, that if my mother weren't asleep, I'd have a much harder time lying about where I'd been if she saw a stranger drop me off.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and went to thank him but he presses the eject button on the car radio and the CD fed into his spread fingers. He returned it to the case and handed it to me. I took it uncertainly. It were called Funeral by Arcade Fire, who I'd never heard of it. I mostly listened to Fiona Apple and Suzanne Vega, though, of course, I didn't tell anyone that. Might as well paint GAY in rainbow letters on the back of my school blazer.

Dominic smiled, teeth glinting in the orange glow of the streetlights. 'You can listen to the rest of it and text me when you're done to return it.'

            Dr Qureshi scribbles several pages in his notebook as I recite the memory to him. When I finish, he looks at me with a mask of neutrality I'm slowly starting to hate. I understand exactly what Ziri meant all those times he told me how frustrating it is to never get a human reaction. It's excruciating to not have an audience — and even worse, to have one that refuses to participate.

'What are your thoughts on that?'

I start to weave together summat semi-coherent from what I can remember of Ziri's rambles about the inherent nature of life as a performance. Then I realise Dr Qureshi means what I've just shared with him, and he can't, in fact, read my thoughts.

'Don't got many.' I iron my joggers with my palms. 'It weren't exactly special.'

He hangs a pause between us like a full stop pinned to a laundry line that we have to watch dry before speaking.

'What if I tell you what I heard and we discuss that? Would that be okay?'

I know this is a trap. Despite his neutral and sonorous voice, I know Dr Qureshi will open a pit under me where words are fashioned into spikes. I don't know why he wants to talk about this anyway but maybe he'll finally understand that I ain't a victim of owt other than my own stupidity.

This is our third meeting. I keep reminding myself of this. I don't have to come back anymore.

I shrug. 'Okay.'

Dr Qureshi places his notebook and pen on his lap in an attempt to come across more sincere. 'I hear someone who found a reason to give you his number and a way to make sure you contact him. I hear someone who discovered that you were sixteen and therefore just above the age of consent and instantly showed interest. I hear someone who found that you were vulnerable, that your family didn't keep much track of your comings and goings, and that you had lost your father giving him an easy way to segment himself as a masculine figure in your life. It's quite alarming to me how he managed all of that in a few minutes.'

My skin has an eighth layer of steel under it. His words fail to pierce deeper than a paper cut.

'That's not what happened. It were just a conversation. He were a nice bloke who wanted to help his kid cousin.'

'Groomers are excellent at being subtle, at making everything they do feel like nothing but casual and kind. In this way, when their victims start to feel that something is wrong, they are easy to manipulate into believing that they're just imagining it.'

I can't help but gawk at him. 'Dominic is not a groomer.'

'Why do you say that?'

A laugh scrapes through my throat. 'He were just some bloke, not an evil mastermind. When you call it grooming, you're saying that were his intention the whole time, that he planned it, like. He didn't. It just happened. Sure, it were weird but it's not like he were intending to get with a sixteen-year-old, and even if he were, he weren't thinking of it like that.'

When Dr Qureshi leaves another full stop, soaking wet, hanging between us, I rush on. I can't stand his inspective silence. 'Sure, he probably lent me all those CDs so I'd have a reason to keep coming over, but that's not grooming. I asked my boyfriend to tutor me in maths just so I'd have an excuse to hang out with him — and also cause I'm rubbish at maths and my mum made me take further maths even though I'm rubbish at it. Am I groomer now? Everyone does that. Don't make em a bad person.'

And if it does, then so am I... Though maybe I am. Maybe I did manipulate Ziri into being with me. If he had a choice, he'd probably be with someone evolved enough for complex thought. If he were with someone else, his life probably wouldn't be so boring. He'd be with someone with parents who treat him the way his treat me.

I press my fingernail into the scab on my thumb, cut the scar open again.

Dr Qureshi flips to the first page of his notebook to check summat and don't notice. 'You said your sister is sixteen, didn't you?'

Irritation starts to simmer under my skin. I don't want to sit in this stupid retro armchair with Dr Qureshi tangling me into loops I never see coming. Ziri is much better at this. He's able to identify patterns and predict most things people say before they say them whilst everything catches me off guard.

But I confirm.

'So what if you "got with"–' Dr Qureshi draws quotation marks in the air with his fingers '–one of her friends?'

I can't help but curl my lip. 'I wouldn't do that, would I?'

'But what if you met one of them and there was a connection?'

'I'd ignore it, obviously,' I say, even though I hear the double standard perfectly well. I understand what he's getting at now. I turn twenty-four in July... 'It's different.'

'How is it different?'

'Because... When you're gay in Leeds in 2005, the dating pool isn't exactly large so you can't force the same standards on us. And her friends are women and... patriarchy and power structures and summat like that. I'm too stupid to explain it.'

'Just because a form of violence is often gender-based, doesn't mean it's no longer violence when the gender factor is removed from it.' His voice is so calm that some beast inside me wants to tear into him. 'As far as power, there was certainly a power imbalance between you due to the age difference, and not only the difference but the specific ages you were which put you in two completely different groups in terms of autonomy.'

I shake my head. The house inside me is quickly filling with smoke. Soon I won't be able to see out the windows. 'It's not like I at any point tried to get out of it. I were the one that went after him — I kissed him, not the other way around. I wanted to have sex with him. Course, I did, he were fit as hell — especially to a sixteen-year-old who's around other sixteen-year-olds all day. And I didn't wanna be the weird virgin friend. Obviously, in hindsight, ninety per cent of the boys in my year or in football who said they'd had sex, were lying about it, but I didn't realise that then. Then I thought I were the weird virgin friend, better hurry up, like.'

Dr Qureshi waits a moment to ensure I'm finished before speaking. 'Wanting to do something in an abstract "one day in the indefinite future, I'd like to do this" sense doesn't equate to consenting to it at a particular time. If you want to try skydiving "one day", doesn't mean someone can hand you a parachute and chuck you out of a plane, then justify it with "you told me you wanted to try skydiving".'

'I wanted to.' He continues to stare at me with no reaction of any kind. There's sand under my skin. 'I did.'

'How much time passed since that meeting before you had sex?'

It takes me a moment to process the question, my anger unprepared for the shift in conversation. 'I mean, after I met him, I went over to his place a lot but it weren't like that. Like two months after, I kissed him and he ignored me for a while until I showed up and kissed him again, so then we... other stuff. Actual sex were a week later or summat.'

'Did you want to have sex with him at that specific moment?'

'Sure.' I clamp my hands on my thighs until it hurts or my legs might take off and run, leaving my brain here forever to be prodded. 'I mean, I were scared– nervous, I mean. But everyone is.'

'What made you scared?'

'Nervous.'

'Nervous,' he corrects.

'It's— It is, like, a big deal...' Everyone is nervous. Ziri told me he were nervous when we tried and we've been dating for five years so clearly that's normal. It's perfectly normal to be nervous. 'I'm the one who kept going over. He didn't know where I lived. I could've stopped at any time.'

Dr Qureshi lays his notes on his lap and allows the neutrality to slide off to reveal a stubborn kindness. 'It's not your fault, Miles. If you had resisted, he would simply have gone for someone else. He is the only person to blame here.'

            The click of the door is muted as I shut it. Channel Orange booms in the bathroom and though Ziri cuts the volume in half to call his hi baby over it, my greeting is hooked somewhere in my stomach. I slide off my jacket but can't find it in me to bend down to undo my shoelaces. I stare at them as though they'll unravel with willpower.

Ziri cracks the bathroom door open so he don't accidentally hit me with it, which happened several times when we first moved here and were unused to the small space. He's in his underwear and his hair is sleek with conditioner. By the looks of it, he's in the middle of detangling it, the wet coils clipped into sections. The dark skin of his chest gleams where water drips.

He has to take only a single step over the threshold to stand in front of me. 'Kiss?'

I'm too zoned out to lift my eyes from my Nikes. 'Hug?'

His arms wrap around me, cool from the water on his palms. Ziri never hugs half-heartedly, a hug is never a greeting but always a love confession. He cradles me, builds a pillow fort with his arms for me to hide in, and never evicts me before I'm ready to leave.

But it don't work today. My mind needs to be in my body to be held.

He slides away just enough to look at me. 'How was it?'

I shrug. How was it? I feel as though I've been hit by a truck in the middle of a marathon and expected to keep running. The only silver lining is that it were the third session; I don't have to go back.

A laugh croons in Ziri's mouth. 'I know,' he says as if I've expressed this thought out loud, and maybe I have. 'Therapy's frickin weird. I go for years to be dissected and then some random Tuesday they go "okay, you're done" like I've graduated.'

I pin my lips into a smile but there's summat rotten on my tongue I can't swallow. I can't swallow it so I try to spit it out.

'He called it rape.'

Silence.

Ziri's jaw rolls and I know he's running his tongue along his teeth the way he does when he's uncomfortable. He's uncomfortable but there's no sign of shock to be found. 'I mean... I thought... that was obvious.'

I yank back. Smoke fills my mind again. 'What, so this whole time you've thought of me as some rape victim?'

His arms hover for a moment as if holding my ghost before they drop to his sides. 'No. I think of you as my boyfriend.' Ziri clasps the hamsa pendant on his chocker to pull it back and forth on the velvet ribbon. 'I think of him as a rapist, though...'

'You've never even met him!'

As I yell, Ziri's voice sinks. 'I don't need to meet him.' His eyes flit around the entrance a moment before they settle back on mine, the black shining even brighter behind a glaze of tears. 'Miles, you said you didn't want to have sex with him. That makes it rape.'

My ribs creak from the pressure pressing against them. Every kiss were a cherry seed I naively swallowed and now a tree is growing inside me. My skin might tear at the seams. There's no space for my lungs to expand.

'When've I said that?'

'Every time you talk about it. Every time you talk about it.'

I shift my weight from foot to foot. Pins and needles poke at my calves. 'You always jump to the worst possible conclusion.'

'The very first thing you ever told me about it was "I didn't wanna do it, I just went along with it". What other conclusion could I possibly have jumped to?'

'Yeah, you always know fucking everything, don't ya?' I glare at him. The rot is going to make my teeth fall out if I don't wash it out. 'I'm going for a run.'

'What? Miles–!'

I slam the door shut. I left my jacket inside and the rain is so harsh that it's hard to see more than a few yards ahead but I bolt out into the street without checking for cars.

The steady beat of my footfalls creates a faux heart that feels more real than my own. Like hypnotism, it draws me further out of my body until I can't feel the bullets of rain or the cling of my wet clothes. My eyes are dull on the back of the person running in front of me to the same beat. His yellow trainers swallow ovals of tarmac on every step. Someone bumps into him, snaps to watch where he's going, and I wonder how he didn't see the other man headed right for him.

The back of his neck tickles. He snaps his head around and sees no one. There's no one else running through Queen's Park in pouring rain, rain which must have seeped through his shoes because, in addition to the scrape against gravel, each rhythmic footfall is now accompanied by a squelch. How long has he been doing this? It's impossible to tell the time in this weather. Or maybe it's just impossible in this body. His mind has fled so far into the attic, he can't even visualise the rest of the house.

The sensation of being watched creeps up his spine like ants but, at the same time, it jams his skeleton so that he can't look back.

Someone's watching him. I know someone's watching him. Following him. There's someone following him. They're right on his heels, he knows, though they make no sound. He runs faster. His wet socks rub blisters into his ankles. He throws stares into the shadows between trees as if there are glowing eyes peering at him between them, as if the trunks will turn into people, as if their branches will stretch out, morphed into vine-like hands that will slip into his clothes.

The man stops running and I slam into him. Literally. I run right through his spine until my eyes are right behind his sockets and I look down at the yellow Nikes I vaguely recognise as my own. He's crying. I'm crying.

I dig out the phone from his pocket– from my pocket. Rain smears over the glass and the device spasms, opening the clock app and, when I press the home button, the music player. I wipe it on my hoodie but with it soaked through, it makes no difference. Fuck. Why the fuck did we start using touch screens? Useless bastards.

It don't help that I regularly look up and peer through the rain for silhouettes waiting to pounce on me. Panic is rooted deep into my spine. I almost drop the phone with the way my hands shake but I manage to wipe the screen on the side of my boxers — because it's the only dry fabric left on me — and get it to respond to my fingers enough to ring Ziri.

He answers before a single dial tone. 'Miles?'

Breathe. I struggle to command the body I'm in. I'm not sure these lungs are connected to the same brain that thinks. Breathe. My breathing only accelerates. I spin in circles to squint at the darkness between the trees which hardly helps solidify the ground under me.

'It's happening again.'

'Where are you?'

'Queen's Park. Just up from the pond.'

'I'm on my way.'

I expect him to hang up but there's rattling on the other end and then he speaks again, his voice coming with an echo that suggests he put the call on speaker. 'You remember when we went to the beach last summer and that man stopped a seagull from eatin your chips?'

My brain struggles to process his words, then to dig the memory from the sludge my thoughts have melded into but eventually, I confirm, struggling to understand why he's bringing it up now.

'That bird took a dive and he just caught the thing in his bare hand, goes, "I don't think so, you little fucker," and throws him back into the wind. Bare mental, innit. And then he turned around to us and I swear, I was terrified, I thought we were next. I mean he was the size of both of us put together — he could throw me into the wind just as easily as that seagull. I mean, he looked homophobic but maybe that was just me bein judgemental cause apparently I'm a judgemental person. He said somethin, what did he say again?'

'Don't let the seagulls steal your chips.'

'Right, and it was hilarious cause it was just like Baba's GPS.' He's out of breath and the anecdote is accompanied by gasps for air, the hammering of rain constant in the background. 'I don't understand why he has it on the New Zealand accent but every time you get home, it goes, "You have arrived at your destination. Roll your windows up and don't let the seagulls steal your chips".'

His imitation of a New Zealand accent is awful and a laugh bubbles in my stomach though it's too weak to wrestle its way to my mouth.

'I still think it's the same bloke. And don't tell me the one on the beach had a British accent; he could've just faked it.'

'But why would he fake it?'

'He didn't want people comin up to him for selfies and autographs when he was on holiday, did he?'

'Why would anyone want a selfie with some random GPS voice?'

'Cause he's frickin hilarious.'

Ziri's exaggerated exasperation is accompanied by an echo and I turn around to see him speed toward me on his bike, the bag hanging from the handlebar swinging so that it smacks against the wheel regularly. When our eyes meet, he hangs up and pockets his phone. Grabbing the bag, he jumps off the bike and don't even look behind him when it falls.

His hair is still parted, still sleek with conditioner though most of it is probably seeping down his back by now. He hasn't even bothered to wrap it in a scarf so that people won't stare.

His eyes brim with pity. 'Oh, mon lapin.'

I barely manage to turn to the grass that lines the path before my stomach turns inside out. Even as I'm shivering, I sweat. Ziri grounded me but now I'm close to the basement again, close enough to hear the whispers through the crack under the door. Bunny, bunny, bunny.

Thỏ: rabbit. Lapin: rabbit. What is it about me that makes everyone call me that? Do I look so easy to hunt?

I wipe my mouth on my sleeve just as the rain abruptly stops. Ziri has reached my side and retrieved an umbrella from his bag. He rubs my back.

'Sorry.'

'It's calm, baby.' He turns me so I face him, takes my phone, slips it into his pocket, and lifts the hem of my hoodie. 'Take this off,' he says though I'm too numb to do owt but bend so he can peel it over my head. He takes off my t-shirt too, adhered to my chest like a second skin, before he finds a hand towel from his bag and dries me. Ziri dresses me in a jumper, tucks a bobble hat on my head, wraps a scarf around me and finally, shoves my hands into mittens. Only when he balls my hoodie and t-shirt into his bag do I realise that I'm not just shivering, but shacking.

And then I'm crying again.

Ziri dries my cheeks and takes my mittened hand, adjusting the umbrella in his other to ensure it covers me wholly even if it means he gets soaked. 'Let's get you in a warm bath. I'll make you chorba.'

AN: I wanted to mention that in real life, a therapist would certainly spend more time building rapport before having a conversation like this and would also change the subject if it was visibly causing that much distress to their client. However, this is a novel and pacing is a thing I have to consider, so... hopefully y'all can suspend your disbelief in this aspect.