She let go of the handles and the bars went crashing upwards as she massaged her sore muscles gently, aware that being away from Tina made her think more than she would do normally. She pulled out her cell phone and sent a text message to Angie’s cell, presuming her to already be at school with it ‘switched off and in her locker’. She grinned, knowing full well it would be in her bag, and sent: When you see mama give her a big hug and a kiss from me, I miss you both, call you later, mom xx

Angie pulled the phone out of her pocket and looked to see who it was, Tina grimaced. “You aren’t supposed to have that in school, you know. It was meant to be for emergencies only!”

“It’s from mom!” she said, excitedly, and as she scrolled down the message reading as she went she leant across to Tina sat beneath her on the step below and placed her arms around her neck, kissing her noisily.

Tina grinned, “Thank-you baby” Angie smiled, and showed her the phone message, “It’s from mom.”

When Tina finally showed up at her office an hour later her first patient had already gone in a ‘movie star strop’ and Lisa was obviously on the phone with someone’s agent trying to pacify them.

“Meg, I understand that,” Lisa said, sighing into the receiver, “but she has to understand I won’t just prescribe her the pills because she thinks she needs them, I don’t really care if they ‘make her more artistic’”

Tina rolled her eyes and mouthed “who is it?”

Lisa shook her head and covered the mouthpiece, pulling it away from her ear as Meg continued to rant down the phone at her. “Meg Andrews, she thinks just because her client is a Hollywood teen-starlet she has the right to dictate her therapy.”

Tina shook her head and walked away, there were enough crazy people in Hollywood to keep her and Lisa in business for the next 20 years. When they’d set up in private practice there were times when they’d wondered if it would work, wondered if people would really pay to see them for their advice, for their listening ear, their help. But Tina knew from her own experience that there were enough ‘bad’ therapists out there and word seemed to travel fast. At the end of their first year they moved to bigger offices, hired an assistant and began to get referrals coming in from all over the place. Now Tina regretted the fact that so many times she had to say “no” to initial consultations because her workload was so huge. It had spurred her into saying yes when she’d been contacted about the summer placement, a pre-med student interested in psych. It was worth a shot, she could handle some of the ever growing paperwork, maybe even handle some of the group work and free up some of her time. She hoped. Of course it could also be a disaster and she could end up with just one more thing to ‘see to’ over the summer. She sighed, and wandered into her office to start the morning.