Golders Green is the home setting Janet offers for therapy and the destination Queenie later travels to for counseling. Its significance is modest but concrete: recovery takes place not only through difficult conversations, but in a setting Janet presents as a possible safe alternative and Queenie must reach for regular treatment.

A proposed setting for therapy

In a letter to Queenie, Janet says that if the office does not feel right, they can meet somewhere Queenie finds safe, including a coffee shop or Janet’s registered studio at her house in Golders Green. The offer makes the location one possible adjustment to the conditions of treatment, rather than requiring Queenie to accept the office as the only available setting.

Counseling in Janet’s flat

Queenie later describes attending sessions in Janet’s small flat in Golders Green, after what she considers a difficult journey there. At her fifth session, she reflects that her recovery is not progressing as miraculously as she had expected. The sessions are supported by the National Health Service; Queenie notes that paying for them herself would make recovery financially inaccessible.

Part of the work of recovery

The Golders Green sessions address several connected aspects of Queenie’s life, including her dependence on friends for validation, casual sex as a source of validation and control, her relationship with Tom, and her fear that tenderness will be taken away and leave her feeling abandoned. The location is therefore associated with sustained counseling rather than a single breakthrough: Janet and Queenie work through these subjects over successive visits, including Queenie’s relationship with her mother.