I park my husband’s car outside my analyst’s house.  In my dream she lives alongside a wide curved road which is edged on either side with tea tree and rambling vines.  A thick wall of green separates the road from the beach.

I have come for my usual session but it seems different somehow.  My analyst is busy sorting through clothes and books and does not sit the whole time she talks to me, and she talks, talks and talks, more than I ever remember her talking.

She tells me a few ‘home truths’.  She is brutally honest, she says.  She needs to alert me to certain aspects of my personality, certain ways I behave that have to do with my tendency to present only half of the picture in my dealings with others.

I cover my face in my hands.  I take in every word she says and feel deeply ashamed, more so because I am aware that two of my colleagues are nearby in an adjoining room.  They can hear every word of our conversation through the open door.  Both colleagues have names that begin with J.  I shall call one J 'rage' and the other J 'prudishness'.

How can my analyst say these things to me within their earshot I wonder?  I say nothing and she does not let up until it is time for me to leave.

I am outside again on the street but now I cannot find my husband’s car.  I am convinced that I had parked it immediately across the road but it is nowhere to be seen.  Other cars line the street but none of them is mine.

I talk to people who go back to their cars, one or two of whom I recognise as other colleagues.  They do not know where the car has gone.  Eventually and reluctantly I revisit my analyst to ask if I might use her phone to call the police and to report the car as missing.  She lets me in although she is still busy sorting.  Her husband is more sympathetic than my analyst when he overhears talk about my missing car.

Through the front windows of my analyst’s house I see my husband’s car driving down the road as if the driver is about to park.  The back of the car is covered in scratches and is dinted on one side.  I rush out onto the street thinking to at least get a look at the thief who has presumably taken out my husband’s car for a joy ride.

Another of my colleagues has also recognised the car and I can see her from the front steps of my analyst’s house as she tries to get the driver to stop.  She hangs onto the side door handle as the driver swerves to get away.  I wish she had not done this as I do not want the thief/thieves to know we have seen them.

In trying to escape from my colleague the car swerves, hits another parked car, goes into a spin and crashes.  Through the force of the crash the entire roof peels off and the car comes to a stop, a pulverised piece of twisted metal, with its occupants still seated within the security of seat belts.

There is a group of five in the car and the driver is a young woman I do not recognise.  An older man in the back seat snarls at me as I move in to remonstrate with them for stealing my husband’s car. They seem too dazed to make a run for it, and I wake up.