The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill

it was time to walk up the hill to catch her bus home.
    She woke a little after eight o’clock the following morning, and lay trying to make sense of where she was and how she felt. The first thing she realised was that she had indeed slept deeply, peacefully and without dreaming. She waited, lying in her cocoon as calm as a baby. Fifteen minutes later, she was still lying, wide awake andblissful in the realisation that the black fog had not crept over her to blot out the rest of the day. She felt slightly detached, slightly odd, but not depressed. Not anything.
    She got up tentatively, as if she might feel a sudden shooting pain or that movement might trigger the sudden descent of the blackness. But she showered and dressed and it did not happen.
    Sandy was in the kitchen, puttingclothes into the washing machine.
    ‘You look different,’ she said at once.
    Debbie put the kettle on and reached for mugs and milk. She did not yet know how much she wanted to talk about Dava, partly because she had not yet sorted out what had happened and the things he had said, partly from some deep sense that the consultation was meant to be private. She ought to have asked his permission totalk about it. She realised she needed more guidance from him about a great many things.
    ‘You all right?’
    ‘A bit blotto. I slept too long. Come on, tell me about your holiday.’
    For ten minutes or so, Sandy did. The kitchen was pleasant with the winter sun coming through the window. Debbie kept testing herself to see how she felt, as if she were touching a tooth the dentist had drilled to seeif it were still sore.
    ‘OK, that’s enough about me,’ Sandy said.
    They sat in silence at the wobbly Formica-topped kitchen table and even the pattern, like a grey rash all over its surface, looked beautiful to Debbie, just as the peeling wall and the front of the washing machine and the chipped mug hanging on the peg looked beautiful. Dava. It was all because of Dava.
    ‘Well, something’s happened,’Debbie said.
    The first few sentences came slowly as Debbie tried to find the right words to describe everything and toconvey the power and the impact and the beauty of Dava, but then the words poured out in a stream like water over rocks, rushing together, what he had told her about her childhood, her future, her character, what he would do for her inner self, her hopelessness, her whole being.Sandy listened intently without interrupting once, occasionally looking carefully at Debbie, but mainly staring down into her mug.
    The sun moved up the wall behind them.
    Debbie’s words dried up and stopped flowing and the kitchen was quiet. She was damp with sweat round her neck, between her breasts, down her back; the effort of concentrating and of trying to convey everything, as well as relivingthe emotions, had drained her and left her limp.
    ‘What happens next?’
    ‘My life turns around.’
    ‘Right …’
    ‘Starting now.’
    ‘Are you going again?’
    ‘He’ll send me an appointment … that’s what happens. You can’t make one, he sends it for exactly the right day and time … when it’s auspicious.’
    ‘Right.’ Sandy’s voice conveyed nothing, neither approval and enthusiasm nor suspicion.
    ‘He’s sendingme some tablets … herbal things for the headaches and some skin ointment.’
    ‘Is it expensive?’
    ‘I don’t think it can be, not very.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because he isn’t someone who would take a lot of money off you, you can tell, he isn’t into getting rich … and he knows I’m on benefits anyway.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘He said to see if the headaches got better with the tablets and walking a lot in the fresh air andthe new diet, but if they don’t, he could send me to someone else, he said sometimes things like that aren’t easy … they need other sorts of treatment.’
    ‘Where would he send you?’
    ‘He didn’t say. Someone he knows, I expect.’
    ‘Oh, I expect so, yes.’
    Debbie looked at her