Free Bethany by Anita Mason

tell us exactly what had happened, but Coral was almost incoherent. Pete tried ineffectually to comfort her.
    Simon said, ‘Shall we try an experiment?’
    He made us sit down: we had been standing in a tense huddle by the door. Coral knelt on the floor, sitting back on her heels.
    Simon said to her, ‘Close your eyes. Now, go back to the beginning of the incident.’
    Coral shut her eyes and concentrated.
    Simon said, ‘Are you there?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Coral.
    â€˜Where are you?’ asked Simon.
    â€˜I’m … lying on my bed,’ said Coral. ‘I’ve just woken up. I’ve been woken up by the phone ringing.’
    â€˜Go through the incident until you come to the end,’ said Simon.
    Hesitantly at first, she did. At one point, when she had completely misinterpreted the meaning of something Maurice had said, I opened my mouth to interrupt, but Simon instantly silenced me with a movement of his hand.
    None of us spoke or moved as Coral finished recounting the incident. She looked strained and distressed. Simon told her to go back to the beginning and go through it again. The second version was different: she remembered much more. She remembered,for a start, that she had been anxious about something – the baby – even before she’d answered the phone. In the third telling her tension rose to a peak and she covered her face with her hands and shuddered violently. The fourth time the tension had gone out of it: she seemed rather bored by the whole thing, and as she got to the end she laughed.
    â€˜Well, that’s it,’ she said, and spread her hands in humorous apology for making such a fuss. She was clear-eyed.
    Simon observed her. ‘Good,’ he said calmly.
    After Pete and Coral had gone to bed, Simon said to me, ‘I’m sorry I had to stop you when Coral was talking, but I had no choice. You must never try to change someone else’s data. Never. It is very dangerous. Do you understand?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said, rather blankly but at any rate glad that I had not incurred his displeasure. It wasn’t true, though. I did not understand. I never did understand why one must not try to change another person’s data, if the data are wrong.
    We sat in the parlour, Simon, Alex, Pete and I. It was late, past ten o’clock. Dao and Coral had gone to bed. We were all usually in bed before this, because we got up well before seven. We four had not gone to bed because something important was happening. Pete and Alex were talking, and Simon and I were listening to them.
    It was important because Pete and Alex did not talk to each other much, and there had been a time, a year ago, when there was something like open hostility between them. That of course had long since been resolved, but there remained a certain reserve between them which, while it could quite easily be breached, usually was not. This evening they were both trying very hard to communicate. It was difficult because of their residual resistance to each other, because of the abstract nature of the ideas they were discussing, and because Pete was so inarticulate.
    I could not understand what he was saying. Not only could I not follow his thought, but every time he said anything I wasassailed afresh by doubt as to what subject they were talking about. Sometimes it appeared to be the nature of happiness, sometimes it appeared to be the nature of the mind, sometimes it appeared to be a Buddhist idea which was not familiar to me, and sometimes it appeared to be a familiar and very elementary question of moral philosophy. I was quite prepared to agree that all these things might be related, might even turn out to be the same thing, but Pete was not making any order out of them that I could recognise. He was presenting us merely with a chaotic series of mental pictures. I felt a stirring of the panic that always afflicted me when confronted with mental chaos, but controlled