‘Might as well get it over and done with.’ One eye blazing black, the other cold.

Moore smiled warmly. ‘I’m delighted that you’re willing to put in the psychological work, Andy. It’s sometimes painful work but ultimately it’s healthier to get it done, and then usually we can move on.’

Silence.

‘What I’m saying is you should be proud of yourself for coming to therapy and embracing challenge and change.’

‘Aye right, whatever. Let’s get on.’

‘Okay, so last time we talked about your need for people to be loyal.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Can you give me an example?’

Doyle thought about it. ‘The guys who work for me, I need to know they won’t join the opposition. I need to know that they’ll be loyal.’

‘You need to be able to trust them?’

‘Trust is mibbe taking it too far; I need to know that they’ll be loyal. End of.’

‘Has anyone ever let you down?’

‘A couple of guys in the early days.’

‘And how did you react?’

‘Don’t get your drift.’

‘What happened?’

Doyle clapped his hands together and made a sharp noise. ‘Whoosh . . . Gone.’

Moore waited.

Doyle stared at her. ‘Nothing sinister, just that they decided to . . . relocate.’

‘So you demand complete loyalty?’

Doyle nodded.

‘There’s no room for people to make mistakes? After all, we’re all human, we all mess up.’

‘You mess up, you move on; that’s my motto.’

‘Does this include Stella?’

‘Aye.’

‘So, what if Stella was to be disloyal?’

‘If she was fucking around behind my back?’

‘I didn’t mean specifically in a sexual way but okay, what if she was to have an affair?’

Doyle sat back in the chair, considered it. ‘If she had an affair then that would be it. Game over.’

‘You wouldn’t want to try to work through it? Perhaps go for couple counselling?’

‘I told you, it’d be game over. Done. She’d be dead meat.’

Moore stared at him.

He corrected himself. ‘I mean she’d be history.’

‘You wouldn’t give her a second chance?’

‘Fuck no.’

‘Okay.’ Moore waited.

Silence.

Eventually she spoke. ‘You look angry.’

‘The thought of Stella fucking around with somebody else makes me bloody angry.’

‘Okay, so we’ve established that you have a need for people around you to be loyal.’

‘Aye,’ said Doyle.

‘This was one need you identified quite quickly. Can you remember when this idea of loyalty began, when the need for it became so important?’ Moore waited, saw conflicting emotions flit across his face. Saw him struggle to find answers. Finally he spoke. ‘At the home.’ His voice small, embarrassed.

‘Stobwent-Hill Children’s Home where you grew up?’

‘Aye.’

‘Go on.’

‘What?’

‘Loyalty, what did it mean to you at the home?’

‘Like a foundation, like it was a stable thing when my life was . . .’

‘Unstable?’ she offered.

He nodded.

‘Go on.’

The anger was back. ‘Shite, it’s textbook psychobabble isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘I didn’t have a family, so I felt like I had no foundation. You know how family is always there as a kind of a foundation or an anchor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even if they’re a shite family?’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I wanted to have this foundation but I didn’t have it, so I needed to create it. I needed to create a family.’

‘And how did you do this?’.

Doyle shifted uncomfortably in his seat, stared at the wall. Moore watched the anger dissipate. Eventually he answered, ‘I made them up.’

‘Okay, how did you do this?’ she repeated.

‘There were boxes of old photographs in the TV lounge at the home, a load of shite mainly, but I liked looking through them.’

‘Because?’

‘Because there were loads of pictures of families, and in the pictures they were all standing together, arms linked and smiling into the camera. Rubbish stuff, but I liked it.’

‘Why did you like it? What was it that appealed to you?’

‘Fuckssake, you’re the therapist, is it not bloody obvious?’ Anger again. Knuckles beating against leather and chrome.

Moore blinked, watched Doyle, finally asked, ‘So why don’t you tell me then?’

‘I used to look at the photographs and fantasise that those families were my family and that they’d had to go away for different reasons, but they would come back to collect me. Loads of stories, one to fit every photograph. Over the years I made up a million stories about families who all wanted me as their son.’

‘What kind of families did you create?’

Doyle drummed his hand on the side of the chair.

Moore waited.

‘Christ, this was Glasgow in the eighties and I was in a fucking children’s home. I made up a family that were so far away from the dysfunctional cunts that I saw around me. All the fucked-up shit on offer, I didn’t want. I wanted smooth, clean, powerful people to be in my family.’ He peered at her. ‘I suppose you think I’m nuts. Do you even get this?’

‘I get it. So who was your favourite fictional family?’

‘Fuck knows.’

‘You know.’

Silence.

Finally he answered, ‘A mismatch of characters from the telly.’

‘Okay, but who? A mismatch of which characters from the television?’

Doyle stared out of the window, eyes calm. ‘They were outsiders mainly, kind of like me. Folk who didn’t fit in but didn’t give a shit. Folk who did it their way.’

‘Who?’

‘I feel stupid saying.’

‘You were a child in a home – why would you be stupid to imagine a family? That’s what you’re here for, to sort things out before you decide about having a family yourself.’

‘Okay,’ he sighed, ‘I watched a lot of telly – it was the eighties, remember?’

‘Go on.’

‘I imagined my family would be kind of like the A-team. Folk with the balls to change things.’

She noted the grey pallor, the hopelessness in his voice as he revisited his childhood. ‘Why was that so important?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Because you couldn’t change things?’

‘Not then.’

‘But you can now?’

‘I used to sit in the stinking TV lounge and watch the A-team and plan what I would do when I was an adult. I’d make a list of people who’d pissed me off and figure out ways of getting revenge on them.’

‘Do you still have the list?’

Doyle nodded. ‘I’ve managed to . . .’ he paused, ‘delete a few names over the years. Then again I’ve added a few.’

‘Recently?’

‘It’s an ongoing process.’

‘And do you still want revenge on these people?’

‘It’s pretty much what makes life worth living.’ Doyle glanced at his watch. ‘Time up, I’m out of here,’ his voice suddenly energised, his eyes sparkling, one darker than the other. He stood, straightened his jacket and strolled towards the door.

‘Time up,’ agreed Moore, but the door had closed behind him. She sat for a few moments. She noted that Doyle’s body language had confirmed what she had suspected, that he felt most alive when he was engaged with the idea of exacting revenge. Moore knew for certain that she had found Doyle’s passion and understood that it was this that had propelled him from a children’s home into adulthood and the semblance of a successful career. She was in no doubt that Doyle was withholding information about his business and that he had the demeanour of a man of violence, but, she reasoned with herself, that wasn’t why he was in therapy. He had come to confront his demons, to let go, to move on. He was ambitious and wanted to enter into what he called ‘acceptable society’ and maybe have a family, knowing that at present, in his own words, he ‘stuck out a mile’. Part of Andy Doyle craved acceptance and wanted to fit into a society he mistrusted. He wanted to leave the poor, orphaned boy behind, but that would be difficult. At their initial meeting Moore had been clear about the boundaries of the client/therapist relationship and he understood that if he told her anything that compromised either himself or another individual she may have to contact the police. So far this hadn’t happened, but Moore wondered about the spaces between the words and what had been left unsaid.