My dog is my psychoanalyst. Well, Brian Wilson has a live-in shrink; why can’t I?

I pick the children up in Lucca every day at 4.15pm and it takes almost 50 minutes to get there in the car — the psychoanalytic hour. Marmite (the dog) sits in the back and I talk, free associating, trying not to ignore thoughts that flash, seemingly irrelevantly, into my mind. Marms is very Freudian. Freudian analysts don’t leap in with interpretations, but I can tell from the way that he shifts around how I am making him feel (the idea is that you make others feel how you feel even if you don’t consciously know how you feel — see?).

Very often some revelation will move me to tears and Marms waits calmly for the sobbing to pass, encouraging what will, hopefully, be cathartic mourning and not another defence against further self-awareness. Last week, driving past Devil’s Bridge, the swallows swooping at the glittering river, we reached an important point in our work. It was the last day of school here, so we knew we were facing a long break in our analysis when, instead of these private sessions, we would be driving the children to horse riding, swimming, the ferry to Sardinia (people keep inviting us to Sardinia).

I realise now that, during all those pitch-dark mornings on the way to and from the station in the driving rain, this is what we were waiting for. You just have to plough through to beautiful June and the three-month break.

I was telling Marms that I miss my sisters and am terrified of being more of a duty for them than a pleasure. My terror has infantile origins, Marms was sure (he snorted). For, as a child, one is a duty that must be performed, he suggested silently. Nappies have to be changed, feeds administered. I was an only child of hardworking parents, and my holidays had to be negotiated, carers paid, difficult babysitting deals struck. God knows how Italian parents manage. This is probably why Italians have a reputation for strong families, eating together, all the clichés. Because the women stay at home for the unpaid (and therefore status-free) slaving.

Anyway, given that historically someone had to cancel their exciting plans to traipse around some theme park, I’d better try to be chatty, funny and charming in order to lighten the burden on whoever gets lumbered. Perhaps I have always been someone’s obligation. Aaargh. Marms was quietly moved. And this, I realised as the hidden speed camera clocked me at Piaggione, forcing me to brake suddenly and send my analyst crashing into the back of the seat in front of him, is why my husband’s (albeit unsurprising) preference for drinks with friends to an evening with me has always been so stomach-hollowingly demoralising.

Everybody hopes to be somebody else’s treat. When you first meet someone you carry on seeing them because being with them is more fun than not being with them. At what point do you become a person they have to see, because otherwise they feel guilty? And it makes the ubiquitous “sorry” after the neglect a sad thing as well as a welcome acknowledgment. Because “sorry” means “I will perform this duty better in future”.

It’s the opposite of ignoring the duty, but it’s still a duty.

I could tell by the way that Marmite bounded out of the car in Lucca that he was pleased with the way the session went that day. I paid him later that evening with a melon rind. My analyst loves melon rind. I am hoping that, back in London one day, my two-legged analyst will be happy with the same.

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