Sarah now realised that the trouble was the mismatch between her inner and her outer life. The outer life - her social carapace - was reasonably conventional: a chubby professional  with Received Pronunciation that only slipped occasionally, some expensive jewellery, a culturally competent  repertoire.  Her inner life was jaggedly askew from the outer appearance: the intensity of her self-regard spoke uncomfortably loudly sometimes, she had a riotously surreal imagination that she was afraid of, she was sharply critical of the foibles of others, she was emotionally grandiloquent, she was acutely insecure, she rejoiced at chaos and discomfiture.

The only person who seemed to know her inner life was her dog. Intuitively he sensed her true misgivings, and just occasionally he was able to articulate them. He said, sotto voce,  “She really doesn’t like not to be liked. So she doesn’t often tell the truth, for fear of alienating people. I am the only person who is privy to her real feelings, because I am a dog. She loves me. She feels emotionally uncomfortable a lot of the time. She has come to see desire as a source of pain and disappointment. I am the only one she touches without regret.” Sarah turned to him and said, “Yes. Yes. That’s how it is. You are the keeper of my soul. For now.”

One day, the dishwasher broke. So now Sarah stood at the sink washing up. She swirled the soapy water round, mopping and scrubbing the plates and the saucepans, noticing with dismay that her fingers were becoming wrinkled. She tried to be mindful, to become the brush, to think about whether the dishes were grateful or not. But it didn’t work. 

Hang on. There was something odd in the water. Some object. It seemed squishy and mobile, and wherever she pressed it and made an indentation, it bulged out somewhere else. It seemed impossibly mobile and malleable. It got bigger by the minute, until it filled the whole sink. The soapy water was pushed out onto the kitchen floor (probably the first time it had been clean for years) and the  displaced dishes  clattered onto the draining board, breaking as they went.  Besides the splashing and the splintering, she heard a roar as an enormous creature rather like an octopus reared up against the wall. As Sarah watched aghast, the creature developed eyes and a mouth. It spoke in a high-decibel yell: “Sarah! Sarah! Hear me now! You’ve got to be more like me! Dissolve the boundaries! They’re doing you no good!” Then the creature flopped out of the sink and slithered across the floor and out into the garden, making for the sea a hundred yards away. As it reached the garden fence, it turned round and, with a winsome expression, sang a little song:

Formlessness need not cause fear

Certainty will make you weep

Leave behind your sharp lines here

Accept the things you cannot keep

Inner and outer are the same

Be whole, and live without the blame

Sarah was initially irritated (after all, being instructed by an octopus was a bit infra dig), but she gradually came to see that its song made sense. She began to try: to let her outer appearance fade away, and to encourage her secret self to come forward and give utterance. She realised that she had perceived her identity like a Rouault painting, all harsh lines. It would be better to be fuzzy, to be inchoate, to be less sure, to be less defensive, to be more open. It was a risk. But one she had to take.