'Counselling? What d'you mean, counselling?'

'Don't push me, mate. Given you a tip. Don't push me more.'

Mossy does try, though, just a bit more, tries to convince BM to give him something, just a little something. But BM's determined and digs in his heels, and in the end the only avenue for Mossy is to slouch away, half thinking about killing BM and half thinking about what he's said about counselling. He surprises himself to find that by the afternoon he's in the West of the City, going into a counselling session in a weird little clinic with an old woman receptionist who is honestly totally scary. One day this action alone, the action of walking into that clinic, will be enough for Mossy to blame everything on BM.

The session's weird. Everyone dotted around the room — not meeting each other's eyes. One of them's got a two-litre bottle of spring water and keeps sucking it like it'll save his life. Mossy sits there with his elbows on his knees and pretends to be interested in them, talking in their monotones about how life isn't fair, because that's what he's noticed about people on H. They always feel self-pity and he hopes he doesn't sound like that. But all the time he's looking at them, what he's really wondering is whether one has some gear and which one'll feel sorry enough for him to share a bit. So he wheels out the story — like how he was abused by his uncle, how he learned to jack up when he was thirteen, and all the stuff with the drug treatment and testing orders he's served and the prostitution and how that came really early, when he wasn't even fifteen, and he rambles on, even though he can feel the moderator, a workedout guy who got clean years ago and owes something to society, staring at him, staring into his eyes, and Mossy thinks he's getting sympathy here, thinks he's maybe the only one here who has a really good reason to be this hooked. But then, when he's finished, the moderator goes: 'Mossy? Mossy? Where'd you get a name like that?'