Today she comes to me. Early, when the moon is blending into lighter sky. She doesn't look me in the eye when I open the door but side to side instead. I don't know if she sees the bicycles or milk bottles when she does it, or whether the view is taken up entirely by not seeing me.

"Is everything - " She cuts me off there.

"I want to talk to you." There is a hesitation - she flushes.

I don't say anything but let her gather herself.

"It's - there's a - this thing called a smiling self, it - can I come in?" Her sleeve is deforming as she clutches the cuff in her fingers and pushes out her elbow.

We go in. There's tea.

"Because - when you are ... bad. You don't feel your emotions properly." She talks up and down, and her words constantly threaten to run out of breath, "So smiling, putting the smiling self in ... because you perform feeling, the performance, the smiling separates you even further from the emotions underlying the depression. You forget that some part of you is angry or hurt, in a dislocated, under appreciated way, and then you begin to become confused. You think that if you are smiling, and you cannot feel the grief, then you are not depressed. Or if you win some real laughter then this invalidates your baseline. It's confusing, and damaging."