Edge by Thomas Blackthorne

clients – using behavioural repatterning and hypnosis – who needed to get thin.
        "If they look at me funny," she would tell her colleagues, "I say I'm fat cause I don't give a shit, and I don't mean constipation."
        Her clothes were expensive, her presence imposing, every word and gesture a masterclass in effectiveness.
        "You look terrific," Suzanne told her. "On the phone you said you needed cheering up."
        "I lied, sugar. Just wanted your company. Plus… you know I'm on the Council complaint committee, right?"
        " Merde ."
        "Exactly. We had some lawyers asking us about complaint procedures. A big City firm with an outlying office in Guildford. Philip Broomhall's solicitors, or I'll eat my Stetson."
        "You don't have a Stetson. And you used to think solicitors were door-to-door salesfolk."
        "And that barristers worked in coffee shops, not law courts, cause I'm a simple cowgirl."
        Suzanne first saw her at a conference in York. Carol's voluminous pink sweatshirt had borne the slogan Keep Austin Weird. Surrounding her, a group of male therapists had been rocking with laughter. The next morning, the slimmest, best-looking of their number had shared a breakfast table with Carol, looking dazed.
        "I played the mother figure," she'd said. "For someone with naughty Freudian desires."
        Now, Suzanne squeezed the bridge of her nose. Tears were beginning to form, and there was no point in masking her expression, because Carol noticed everything.
        "Maybe I don't deserve to hold a licence. A fourteen year-old has run away."
        "You've not talked to Broomhall, the father?"
        "I listened to him shout at me, then ended the call. It didn't help anyone, and I didn't handle it well."
        "What do you know that he doesn't?"
        "I don't understand."
        "Come on, Suzanne. You spend a few minutes with anyone, you find out things they've kept to themselves for life. So what did you learn about young Richard?"
        "Nothing besides…"
        "Uh-huh?"
        "Bullying at school. There was something specific there. We had four sessions booked, you see. I thought I could address it later."
        "Shit."
        "So maybe I did exactly what Philip Broomhall thinks I did. Gave the boy confidence enough to look at his situation and make a desperate move to change everything. Just enough of a boost to drop him into deep, deep trouble. Think how scared he must be."
        "At least you gave him some confidence," said Carol. "Maybe more than you think."
        "Which means you accept it's my fault?"
        "Would it help you if I did?"
        "Oh, sod off."
        "You've lived in London too long, girlfriend. You and me both."
        Suzanne rubbed her face, using her imagination to push troubling mental images – a frowning disciplinary board, a terse letter revoking her licence – off into the distance: in view but tractable.
        "You ever going back?" she asked Carol.
        "Not likely. You seen Brand's antics in Geneva?"
        "Uh, no." Suzanne had not browsed the news. "What's he done now?"
        "Refused to sit near the other two prime ministers. Least he didn't call 'em godless Commies this time."
        Brand and the others were supposed to be a triumvirate, three prime ministers, one serving as president for the tripartite commonwealth of the US. But Brand was the voice of mid-America, his worldview myopic and threatening, so that Left and Right Coast commentators now called their country the Theoretically United States or worse.
        "He's such a – oh." Suzanne's phone was sounding dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit . "Oh, no."
        Other customers were glancing over, because this was the police ringtone, sounding only on receipt of an official call.
        "Answer it, hon."
        "Yes." She thumbed the phone. "Dr Suzanne Duchesne. Can I help you, officer?"
        A lean-faced