Dear Doctor,

I want to answer your questions properly, even if what's done is done. I can't ever take back what happened or change the look that came over your face, how it opened up a trapdoor to this place I'm in now. But I will answer at least, in hope, and so you know that I am not holding anything back on purpose.

You said last year that the anniversary of your son's death was just before Easter. And when we first started working together you told me that it had been fifteen years since you had lived in the Canterbury Plains, so with those starting points it was very easy to find the rest of the details. You have to understand this when you give information about yourself. Anyone can just pay a fee to the newspaper to search through their files, it doesn't even cost very much.

The newspaper report mentioned the type of airplane your son died in, and it showed a photo of a piece of the wreck but the photo was black and white. It was easy to get the model itself, it's not rare, but it took me a while to make sure I had the right colour scheme. I began shortly after Easter, so research, purchase, assembly and painting have taken me eight months. I'm not totally sure what I thought would happen when I showed you the model but I didn't expect you not to recognise what it was. I thought you would know and understand straight away. I wish you had, so that I didn't have to go on to spell out what I have been doing.

When you finally understood the look on your face was awful. It sounds stupid now but I wasn't expecting it. I  have never felt so abandoned. You looked tiny and crumpled, and you picked up the model like you might have been able to see something in there. But there wasn't anything. I didn't put anything in there because I wouldn't have known what to put, and because although the body is hollow, it is just one piece, and the windows and the doors are sealed.

I think it will be a long time before you are willing to work with me again and this is very difficult to accept. But if I have to accept it I want you to understand too. You told me things to help me know you and trust you, but you weren't ready. Perhaps you still need to process some things about the death. I think it will be easier between us once you have.

We were both upset, so I'm not sure this was clear, but I made the model for you. If you would like me to keep it for now, I will.