Miss Jacobs, you thought I was safely off your hands. You thought I would never return to lie like an idiot with my feet towards your window, my head towards your chair, at fifty pounds an hour, and think myself lucky. Have you changed the couch since I last lay here? I’ll swear it’s harder. It used to feel like an operating table on which I lay stretched while an operation was performed upon my brain without anaesthetic. But there was at least some padding beneath me. Now it’s more like a coffin: I lie on bare planks, unseasoned, roughly nailed together, as I suppose the coffins of the homeless, of criminals, of derelicts, to be. Those who have nobody. I am a corpse, a talking corpse. Is that what you had in mind for your patients, Miss Jacobs? What you meant when you changed the couch (not before time, I may say: the drumming heels of the desperate, the dying, had quite worn the green velveteen down the far end)? To move us yet further out of comfort into discomfort? Like one of those mean and judgemental parents who say to the child, ‘You’ve got to learn what the world is like – start now!’

No, before you say anything, my parents were neither mean nor judgemental: on the contrary, they veered towards the over-generous and the careless. They could give nothing its proper attention. They were too busy.

A corpse which talks. Very well, I accept my own definition. That is what it feels like. The mouth continues for a time after death to open and shut, open and shut, and a thin stream of words flows out like liquid forced up by convulsing lungs. When even that fails, I will finally be quiet.

No, I did not kill myself. What happened was that my sister finally killed me. I always knew she would. She made me come home from Minneapolis. She didn’t have to fire a gun into the wedding marquee, or spike my champagne with cyanide; she didn’t have to utter a word of reproach; all she had to do was exist. I don’t blame her. I just hate her.

I cross my hands on my chest as if I were the corpse she made me. My breasts stick up too high for comfort and convenience. She always envied me my breasts. They are too large for corpsely grace, for true refinement. But she won’t accept that: she would rather envy me. Envy is her stock in trade. When we were thirteen we measured ourselves and compared notes. My chest was definitely half an inch larger than hers, yet we were supposed to be identical in every way. Minnie took it as yet another sign of my privilege, the unfair blessing which fate kept heaping upon my poor bowed shoulders. Personally, I longed to be flat-chested, then as now. Clothes hang better. But try telling Minnie that.

Minnie my murderer. Miss Jacobs, I swear I did not know that Tom came from Minneapolis. The Midwest, he said. A city of lakes, of spires, of flour mills old and new, of grace and contemporary art; well, sixties art – a Rauchenberg, a Lichtenstein or so in the Walker, a splatter-burst of mess contained in the cleanest white shapes available to the architectural imagination.

What, you haven’t been to the Walker, Miss Jacobs? Of course you haven’t. You have sat here in this room for ever, you will be here for ever: you are the dustbin into which we scrape all our left-overs; we, me and my siblings, your other clients. The ones you so carefully don’t let me see. Come in this door, go out that! Once I stood in the shadows of the trees on the other side of the road for a whole Tuesday and watched your back door. They came out at hourly intervals but there was no one amongst them I knew, or anyone who was of any interest to me. Such a dull collection of others, denatured because they had left so much of themselves with you, the analyst. You are going out of fashion, I hope you know that? Freud is debunked – a Viennese neurotic: Klein neglected – what is this good breast bad breast junk? Adler exposed – family order, tests tell us, has no effect whatsoever upon personality. Only Jung is in fashion, with his yin and yang, his animus and anima, all that dreamy let’s-love-one-another touchy-feely stuff. Are you listening to me? Are you asleep? Or are you knitting again? Click, click, click! You told me you were taking notes, that was what the sound was, but I think you were lying. Knitting needles click; pens don’t. Or perhaps you’re chewing gum and your dentures are loose? I would push myself up and turn my head and look but I daren’t: I might see the devil’s face, I might see you weren’t there at all, just a black cat sitting in your chair, the Dark Thing, and anyway I can’t move, I’m dead. Minnie killed me. I can see my clasped hands in front of me. White dead hands. Tom loved my hands. The polish on my right little fingernail is chipped. Fancy lying in a coffin with a chipped nail. I thought they were supposed to see to that sort of thing.

Yes. I believe there is always a They about to clean up and explain, even as they persecute. Silly old me.

I know you believe I chose Tom because he came from Minneapolis, in order to upset Minnie more. But I didn’t choose. He just happened along. A millionaire from the Midwest, a transatlantic knight in shining armour to pluck me out of the muddy swamp, detect my beauty through my tangled hair and carry me off to happiness and prosperity. His City of Exit didn’t seem too important to me. Look, there aren’t so many knights in shining armour around. Had one come along from Milwaukee, I’d have gone for him. Honest.

Minnie was a stupid name anyway. Neither of us liked it. They called me Rosamund because that was the name Frank and Tillie had chosen for their first-born. Frank and Tillie are my parents. What was that you murmured? Christ, she actually spoke. Miss Jacobs, who gets a pound a minute, actually spoke! ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ That’s what you say. How am I supposed to know when you’re listening or when you’re asleep? Whether you’ve absorbed everything, or nothing? Whether you’ve forgotten what once you knew, or whether you never knew to begin with? The permutations of your not knowing are endless. And it has been a year since I was last here. More time than you’d need to forget.

Nothing is making me angry. What makes you think I’m angry? I’m upset, that’s all, lying here again, having to push and shove amongst your other patients, waiting for a cancellation. What do you think that feels like? Do you understand my humiliation? I thought I could cope and I can’t. I’m unhappy. I loved Tom. Where am I ever going to find another man like him again? He’ll never speak to me again. Everything was organized: a wedding ceremony in a chapel of love with the kind of service Americans love: bits and pieces of poetry and flute solos, and his parents, and his grandparents, and his friends and their friends and apple pie; and I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I said I wouldn’t. It was the moon. Oh Christ. Can I go to the loo? I suppose I’m allowed?

Where was I? Oh yes, Minnie being Minnie and me Rosamund. How could Frank and Tillie have done it to her? To me? Something else for her to moan about. The first and final straw. Minnie the afterthought. Well, she was, wasn’t she? Out she popped after me, completely unexpected, two pounds lighter, two inches shorter, for all we were meant to be identical. People in the States seem to think there are degrees of identical: but how can that be? Monozygotic is what it says. One cell split. Same genes exactly. Except it isn’t like that, is it? I reckon between us Minnie and I have a hundred per cent of various qualities and we share them out, not necessarily evenly. Niceness, for example. I have seventy per cent. Minnie has thirty per cent. Envy. I have twenty per cent. Minnie got the eighty per cent. Minnie’s envy has killed me.

Other children spend their lives saying, ‘It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.’ I have to spend mine saying, ‘I can’t help it.’ I can’t help being prettier than her (I reckon that’s another kind of quality, nothing to do with actual looks: a lot to do with self-image: I had sixty per cent, she had forty per cent), cleverer than her, fifty-five: forty-five (but enough to get me to college, her not), luckier than her (well, look at her children!), funnier than her (eighty: twenty), more sociable than her (sixty-five: thirty-five). The friends came to see me: she tagged along, sulking. But I loved her, Miss Jacobs. That made it worse. She knew I loved her, and she couldn’t even do that: love me back. She resented me too much. Capacity for love: Rosamund ninety per cent, Minnie ten per cent. She made my life miserable. If I passed an exam, fell in love, had a baby, bought a house, I couldn’t rejoice. All I could think was, oh my God, will it upset Minnie? How can I hide it?

When Peter and I discovered our first house had dry rot and it was going to cost thousands to repair, the first thing I thought was, thank God, that’ll make Minnie feel better. When Peter was killed in his car accident I remember thinking, at least now I’m a widow, that’s something. But all she said was, ‘My, you do look good in black. Is that why you’re wearing it?’

Going over old ground? You actually remember the ground we trod? Good Lord! I left suddenly, didn’t I? I didn’t think you’d notice. You sent me a massive bill and a kind of note. It registered pathetic, the way notes from former lovers do; all the energy drained away. What was once important no longer is. You ought to come back, you said; you left too soon. Finish your treatment. It sounded like Minnie-talk to me. The reproach there, even if others don’t hear it. Ought, ought, ought: never enjoy, love, live! Minnie, murderer of my life. Sharer of my womb. I never complain that she took my nourishment from me: she’s always going on about how greedy I was, pushing past her at the post. They said I was lying further back than her: by rights I was the one who should have been born second. She would have been first, would have been given ‘Rosamund’, the great prize: I would have been Minnie. And I’d still have been me, and now would be living in Minneapolis. Minnie of Minneapolis. Why in God’s name didn’t she have the guts to elbow me out of the way? Because she’s so feeble, that’s why.

Minneapolis is a twin city. Did you know that? I didn’t, till we were on this aircraft and the captain said, ‘Fifty thousand feet and on our way to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul,’ and I said to Tom, ‘What does he mean, what does he mean?’ We were flying First Class. Have you ever flown First Class? I shouldn’t suppose so. It’s so comfortable. You feel better than anyone else in the world. I was surprised Minnie hadn’t somehow got herself on to the flight, Economy Class, of course, pushing her head through the curtains with the snarl she uses for a smile, saying, ‘Hi, Rossie.’ She’d never call me Rosamund. Since she didn’t have a Minnimund equivalent, she wouldn’t. Whenever I really wanted to wind her up I’d call her Minnimund. And Frank and Tillie would be there in Club Class looking uneasy and doing nothing to stop her except saying, ‘We love you too, Minnie; you’re very dear to us. All the dearer because you were unexpected.’ Lies, lies. Rearing twins is hell. They never had any more children after us: they couldn’t face it. I reckon Minnie, by being born, deprived another two or three putative children of life, I really do.

Anyway Tom said, ‘Why, they’re twin cities. The Mississippi divides them. They’re rivals. Minneapolis is the modern, go-getting, thrusting city. St Paul is the older, ramshackle one. It kind of limps along behind, but always feels superior.’

‘But that means,’ I said, ‘they’re only half a city each.’ He pretended not to hear. Anything he didn’t understand he pretended not to hear. It was his one big fault. I could have lived with it.

St Paul, limping along behind. Minnie’s first child, Andrew, was born with a dislocated hip and her husband Horace didn’t believe in doctors so he grew up dragging a leg behind him. And Lois, Minnie’s little girl, wasn’t the greatest beauty ever born, and Minnie made it worse by calling her Uglymug and saying, ‘Just my luck!’ As if it was her misfortune, not poor little Lois’s. And of course Minnie’s kids didn’t get to good schools, because Horace was a socialist; and Andrew has personality problems and Lois is just hopeless: and I got all Peter’s insurance money, and my two got a proper education, and now they’re on their way to college. They were both born bright and beautiful. I couldn’t help it. And I am a widow. Minnie sees that as more of my good luck. I think she hates Horace, really. I loved Peter. That’s why I could love Tom. I had a good experience.

To those that hath shall be given; difficult to hand it back, saying I don’t deserve this. But that’s what I did, Miss Jacobs. That’s why I lie here: a corpse in mourning for itself.

Minnie and Horace live in this horrible little house and don’t drink, and Tillie’s had a stroke and Frank has cancer, and Minnie looks after everyone – and me, I flew First Class out of it all, with Tom. But you can’t escape, can you? God stretches out his skinny hand. Minneapolis, the twin city. Minneapolis and St Paul, divided by the river Mississippi, overlapping, interlinked. Tillie and Frank need me to slip them a drink when Minnie’s not looking. Lois needs me to keep her on a diet. Andrew needs me to take him to target practice when Horace isn’t looking. The only people who don’t need me are my kids. They do just fine without me.

I don’t know what you think, Miss Jacobs. I don’t know which way you want me to be. Where does moral and mental health lie? In looking after yourself, casting off the past, saying I’m well and truly grown-up now; I have a mature, adult, un-neurotic relationship with a totally suitable person: goodbye, family: Minneapolis here I come! Or in saying, well, I’m a person who likes to be liked, who hungers for approval, I’m that kind of person. I accept it, and it’s mature and grown-up to say, ‘Minnie, count on me. Goodbye, Minneapolis.’ Minnie being part of me, however much I rage and scream.

Was what I did an advance into health, or a retreat into unhealthy habit? I have no idea.

I met Tom’s family. I played tennis with his brother, bridge with his mother, met the friends, chose the marquee, made out wedding lists. I was the bride from Europe, a little more mature than expected, but okay. I tried not to think of Minnie. They asked me if I had brothers and sisters. I denied her. I said I was an only child. It was my new view of myself. Sooner or later the lie would catch up with me. I didn’t care. It was worth it: a holiday, however short, from being twinned, divided, cheated, chained. Rosamund, I said, only daughter of Frank and Tillie, retired general medical practitioners, a couple now living in perfect health and harmony, buoyed up by the respect of the community. They couldn’t come over: air travel made Tillie’s legs swell up, I said, and Frank wouldn’t be separated from his wife. Well, that was true enough. Eternal lovers. The children of lovers are orphans. What did I owe Frank and Tillie? The truth? Why? Who wants women around bringing tales of dissidence and trouble?

You don’t approve of this, do you, Miss Jacobs? You don’t think people should live by lies. You believe in truth, dignity, self-knowledge, pride. Well, you won. Minnie won. Here I am. The night before the wedding Tom and I walked down by the Mississippi. To the left rose the elegant new towers of Minneapolis outlined in blocks and spires of light: symbols of wealth, aspiration and progress. To the right, across the river, huddled the brooding clutter of St Paul. Unequal twins, growing more unequal day by day. St Paul has the problems: race riots, poverty, squalor. Minneapolis makes sure of that – just heaves them all across the water. If there’s a block where the addicts hang out, it bulldozes it flat and builds a shopping mall or a parking lot. A half-moon hung over the river, oddly unsatisfactory as half-moons are. You can’t tell if they’re waxing or waning. I said as much. Tom pretended not to hear. He liked me to be fanciful, but not too fanciful.

‘I’m not going to marry you,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he asked, when he could find the words.

‘Because the moon’s not full,’ I said. ‘If this were a film the moon would be full; not that stupid thing hung up there neither one thing nor the other. I expect it’s always like this round here – just plain halved. Minneapolis gets one half, St Paul the other. It will never be right!’

He tried very hard not to hear, but finally he had to. I was not going to marry him. He wept. His parents kept a stiffer upper lip than Frank and Tillie ever managed. He flew me back Club Class. He did not kiss me goodbye. That was the end of it.

Minnie just said, ‘Oh, you’re back. Made a mess of it for once, did you!’ but this I registered as a kind of acknowledgement. And I do the hospital run with Frank and Andrew, and Lois has moved in with me, and we both go round to Minnie’s and try to make Horace laugh, and – Miss Jacobs, am I just a fool? Or was this what you wanted for me?

I believe you are asleep: the clicking has stopped. I can hear you snoring; little snores or little sniffs. You might even be crying, for all I know. In pity, or pleasure, or just because there was a half-moon over Minneapolis, catching its skyscrapers in miraculous light, while St Paul lay low, dark and brooding. And it wasn’t fair. God makes nothing fair. It is up to us to render it fair.

My fifty-minute hour is up. Your fifty pounds is earned. Thank you for giving me this cancellation. I wonder whom I replaced. And why? Do they have flu? Did they die, or take themselves off unexpectedly to someone more talkative? I have suggested to Minnie that she come along to see you: serve as my replacement on this couch. She says she’ll think about it. No. I’m not going out the back door as if you were ashamed of me. I’m going out the front. I don’t care whom I meet. I am fed up with etiquette I do not understand. I came in dead, I go out living. As I say, thank you.