Each time we meet, it is on the hill, walking. It was his idea. I could not face coming to the clinic. I could not face opening my home, I certainly didn’t want to meet for coffee. The hill has worked well. I can look straight ahead. I can throw Daisy her ball. The hill is empty and becoming bleak as the bracken fades from golden to dead. Dead suits my mood. I can shout and nobody gets a fright.

This time I have more control of myself. I am still hurting so much that I cry a lot. Again he does not interrupt. Again he tries to guide me away from venom at the vet and towards grieving. Again I am irritated by this. I say so. The conversations have a surreal dimension. Walking for 90 minutes with nothing but the sky and the horizon somehow we also talk about the suicide rate in vets, how it is to have euthanasia as part of your job, …..”people say I couldn’t do your job….but I do it”. He tells me how he thinks he copes…… his strategy for being able to kill and stay okay with himself. Oddly this is something I have often wondered about and never asked. He initiated the topic. Part of me wonders why we are talking about this. In a way it’s a relief from going round and round the hurting place in my chest.

When we return to Murphy the impasse is the same. He wants me to grieve and remember the good times. I want to know what actually happened. He still doesn’t know. He has thoughts about it. None of them add up for me. What is so difficult about providing an account ? He will ask the vet the specific questions I am homing in on.

The business about grieving as a journey is becoming a flash point inside me. I feel like I am hearing phrases from a bereavement course (not that I have ever been on one but they sound like second hand phrases that are supposed to help). Suddenly I feel I am not being heard, I am being managed. I am also weary with being angry. I just want someone to make this all unhappen.

How are you with forgiveness? he asks me as we say goodbye. I’m not Mother fucking Theresa I reply. “Fair enough”, he says. I know I will have to meet this woman sometime and ask my questions directly, but not yet. Absolutely not yet. I do not hate this man. I comprehensively hate the vet who killed Murphy.