(published 'XIB' 1994)

“I’m afraid because I’ve never been afraid before.”

I was accustomed to hearing someone so confused that they believed they were talking sense. I gazed down upon her as she lay flat on my consulting couch. There was not a flicker upon her staring eyes -- the coolest of customers.

“What exactly do you mean?” I pitched my voice within the range of informality. “Well, my whole life has been so uneventful, untroubled and pleasant, I spend most of my time worrying about what would happen if something really worrying did crop up. I’m scared stiff of being scared stiff of things I’ve not yet experienced. I’m a nervous wreck without really being a nervous wreck...”

I had no need to calm her down, since she was already as calm as anybody could hope to be. No tell-tale perspiration. No short breaths. No shifty glances around the consulting room. No untoward twitch of a hidden muscle. A picture of peace and, indeed, human beauty.

I was convinced that she might constitute a famous psychological case-study. Whilst trying to restrain any professional excitement. I contin¬ued to probe her mental condition.

And, indeed, her skirt having inadvertently ridden to her thighs, I was given ample opportunity to relegate my academic concerns to the hinterland of my mind.

“What makes you so sure that you won’t continue on an even keel for the rest of your life?” I eventually asked.

I expected her to cite the old chestnut regarding “uncertainty of death” as the only blot on the landscape. I was leading her to such a predictable response but, at the same time, desperately hoping that she would take a tangent into unknown territories of the human condition.

I poised my fountain-pen to take notes -- which was simply my way of relaxing. I was tape recording the whole interview, in any event.

“It’s the uncertainty of death, you see.” Her voice was confident.

As she looked up to see me coming closer to her face, I was able to diagnose the beginnings of blind panic in her eyes.