He quickly sought to redress the balance.

‘Now I’m just going to give you a little injection, but you’d know all about them, wouldn’t you?’ he chortled nastily. ‘I love getting you drug addicts here, most people are terrified of needles! Ha, ha, ha.

‘Here, do you want to do it yourself? Ha, ha, ha.

‘Did you bring your tourniquet? Ha, ha, ha.

‘At least you won’t have to share your needle with anyone else, ahahahahaha!’

I sweated with dreadful fear because he was wrong, I was terrified of needles. And terrified of the horrors that lay ahead.

My whole body went rigid as he lifted up my lip and pricked the sharp point of the needle into the tender skin of my gum. As the cold liquid flooded into my flesh my hair stood on end in revulsion. The pain from the needle puncture intensified the longer he held it in my gum. I thought it would never end.

I’ll wait five more seconds, I willed. But if he hasn’t finished by then, I’ll have to make him.

Just as the pain reaching screaming point, he stopped.

But by then I had realized I was too much of a coward to have any more dental interference in my mouth, that I’d rather take my chances with the toothache.

However, just as I was about to push past him and run out, a gorgeous tingly numbness crept through my lip and one side of my face, radiating outwards with soothing fingers.

I had a rush of elation. I loved that feeling. Relaxing back into the chair, I savoured it. What a wonderful thing novocaine was. I only wished it could be applied to my entire body. And my emotions.

The rush didn’t last long, though. I couldn’t help remembering all kinds of awful stories I’d been told about dentists. How Fidelma Higgins went into hospital to have her four wisdom teeth taken out under general anaesthetic. Not only did they not take out the four offending teeth, but they removed her perfectly healthy spleen instead. Or once, when Claire had to have an extraction, the roots of the tooth were so strong she swore the dentist had the sole of his shoe resting on her chest before he got good enough leverage to wrest it out. And of course, every dentist phobic’s favourite – the scene from Marathon Man. I hadn’t even seen Marathon Man, but it didn’t matter. I’d heard enough about it to feel sick to the stomach at my vulnerability to excruciating pain at the hands and drill of this very scary man.

‘Right, that mouth should be frozen by now.’ Dentist O’Dowd interrupted the horror film playing in my head. ‘We might as well get going.’

‘Wh… what exactly is a root canal?’ I’d rather know what was happening to me.

‘We take the inside of the tooth out. Nerve, tissue, lock, stock and barrel!’ he said cheerily. And with that he started drilling with the gusto of a man putting up shelves.

Knowing what he was about to do made my shoulders clench to my temples with horror. It would hurt something ferocious. And there would be a hole right through to my brain, I thought with a pit-of-my-stomach kick of queasiness.

A short time later the nerves in all my other teeth began singing and jumping. I forced myself to wait until I couldn’t bear it any longer – about four seconds – before waving my hand to flag him down.

‘All my other teeth are hurting now,’ I managed to mumble.

‘Already?’ he asked. ‘It’s amazing how fast you drug addicts metabolize painkillers.’

‘Do they?’ I was surprised.

‘You do.’

He gave me another injection. Which hurt more than the first one, the tender skin already bruised and broken. Then he revved up his drill as if it was a chainsaw and off he went again.

It took hours.

Twice I had to ask him to stop because the pain was so awful. But twice I squared my shoulders, looked him in the eye and said ‘I’m OK now, carry on.’

When I finally stumbled back into the waiting-room to Margot, my mouth felt as if it had been run over by a truck, but the toothache had gone and I was triumphant.

I had done it, I had survived and I thought I was great.

‘I wonder why my teeth flared up now?’ I mumbled thoughtfully on the drive back.

Margot looked at me carefully. ‘I’m sure it’s no coincidence,’ she said.

‘Isn’t it?’ I said in surprise.

‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘I believe you had a bit of a breakthrough in group yesterday…’

Had I?

‘… but your body is trying to divert you from facing your emotional pain by giving you physical pain instead. Physical pain, being, of course, far easier to deal with.’

‘Are you saying I’m putting this on?’ I demanded hotly. ‘You go back and just ask that dentist and he’ll tell you…’

‘I’m not saying you’re faking it.’

‘But then wha…?’

‘I’m saying that your desire to avoid looking at yourself and your past is so powerful that your body is colluding with you by giving you something else to worry about.’

For the love of Jayzis.

‘I’m sick of so much being read into everything,’ I said viciously. ‘I had a toothache, that’s all, no big banana.’

‘You were the one who questioned the timing in the first place,’ Margot reminded me mildly.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

On our return to the Cloisters I was greeted as if I’d been away for several years. Nearly everyone jumped up from their lunch, although Eamonn and Angela weren’t among their number, and shouted things like ‘She’s BACK’ and ‘Nice one, Rachel, we’ve missed you.’

In honour of my mutilated mouth, Clarence absolved me from my team pot-washing duties. Which felt as wonderful as the time we were all sent home from school because the pipes had burst. But even not having to scrub pots didn’t compare with the rush I got when Chris threw his arms around me.

‘Welcome home,’ he croaked. ‘We’d given you up for dead.’

A little warm bubble of happiness went ‘pop!’ in my stomach. He must have forgiven me for rolling my eyes at his advice yesterday.

I was inundated with questions.

‘What’s the world like out there?’ Stalin wanted to know.

‘Is Richard Nixon still president?’ Chris asked.

‘Richard Nixon is president?’ Mike demanded. ‘That young whippersnapper? When I arrived here he was still only a senator.’