Going Loco by Lynne Truss

the fact that you see a resemblance? I could recognize you and respond to you, and make you feel better. Sometimes I wouldn’t recognize you, and you could hit me. Although only under the strictest ethical doo-dahs and whatsits, et cetera. What do you think?’
    ‘I don’t know. To be honest, I was thinking of leaving therapy altogether.’
    Noel and Julia both gasped.
    ‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘I spend so much time talking about my life, I feel I’m not actually living it.’
    The therapists swapped glances.
    ‘All the more reason to continue with therapy, but step it up, add another dimension,’ Julia advised, quickly.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    They watched her as she wavered. Noel coughed. ‘I’ll come clean with you, Margaret. I think you have a very serious problem.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yes. Ignoring this problem is simply not a choice you have. No, you can either solve this problem through years of analysing it, or you can confront it and blow it out of the water. Tease it out slowly, or blitz it. Well, I think I know you well enough to know which course you’d prefer.’
    ‘You don’t know me at all,’ Maggie pointed out, reasonably.
    ‘Margaret, your hostility and defensiveness are all part of your problem.’
    ‘That’s true,’ said Julia. ‘You resist intimacy, even with me.’
    Maggie wanted to hit her. She wanted to hit him, too. The café would be closing at half past two, and she still hadn’t had her bacon sandwich.
    ‘Look. I’m sorry. But the point is, you’re the lady I pay to help me sort out a problem, and you’re a man who just happens tolook exactly like the man I slept with last night. I didn’t like him, and to be honest, I’m not warming much to you, either.’
    Julia shook her head and sighed.
    ‘No, it’s OK,’ Noel told her. ‘I can work with that. Let’s say I’m the man you slept with last night, Margaret. See? I’m Leon.
Nyow-nyow,
and here comes Michael Schumacher in the Renault. First things first. Was I any good in bed?’
    ‘You were terrible.’
    ‘OK,’ he said again, with slightly less enthusiasm. ‘I can work with that, too.’
    ‘No,’ she relented. ‘You were nice. I’m a bitch. I mean,
he
was nice. What am I saying?’
    A man came to collect their cups. ‘Michael Schumacher drives a Ferrari,’ he observed. ‘As a point of fact.’
    ‘I didn’t say this was going to be easy,’ snapped Noel. ‘I just said it was the best way to stop this lovely young woman spiralling into madness.’
    At which the man pronounced the Gemini closed.
    Sitting here in the dark now, Maggie realized Miranda and Ariel were practising that special cat alarmed expression, which says, ‘Who the hell are you? Am I in the wrong house? My God, I’m getting out of here.’ It didn’t help. She got up and brushed them off her lap.
    This is all bloody Leon’s fault, she thought. Bloody, bloody Leon.
    When Jago returned from the office at nine that evening, he said nothing about Stefan being a clone. He just brought home with him five books by Laurie Spink, four by Steve Jones and two by Richard Dawkins. It was clear that his efforts to absorb and enjoy these books had defeated him. He looked tired and miserable, as though he’d been wrestling feebly witha muscular opponent who’d not only held him by the wrists but had laughed at him. The minute he was indoors he made a tall pile of the books in the hall and kicked them against a door. Viv heard the noise and rushed in. ‘Special supplement on genetics,’ he explained, waving a hand at the scattered, broken-backed volumes. He wore a wounded expression. ‘Do you think Melvyn Bragg really understands any of this?’ he cried. ‘Because I’m fucked if I do.’
    Viv watched sympathetically as he retrieved the books and showed them to her, one by one. He was almost in tears. ‘Look at this. “Winner of the Easy-peasy Book Prize”,’ he pretended to read from the cover of one. ‘“Best popular