36

21 October

‘WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR PARENTS WANTED YOU TO see me, Tom?’ asked the doctor with sleek dark hair and thick black eyelashes. Evi, he’d been told to call her. She looked like one of his sister’s Russian dolls, with her pale, heart-shaped face and big blue eyes. She was even wearing the same colours as Millie’s dolls: a red blouse with a violet scarf.

Tom shrugged. Evi seemed nice, that was the worst thing, nice in a way that made him want to trust her. Trust her was something he really couldn’t do.

‘Has something been worrying you?’ she was asking him now. ‘Is anything making you anxious in any way?’

Tom shook his head.

Evi smiled at him. He waited for her to ask him another question. She didn’t, just kept looking and smiling at him. Behind her head, a large window showed a sky so dark it was almost black in places. Any minute now it was going to tip it down.

‘How are you getting on at your new school?’ she asked.

‘OK.’

‘Can you tell me the names of some of your new friends?’

She’d tricked him, she’d asked him the sort of question he couldn’t answer with a yes, no, OK or a shrug. Friends were OK, though, he could talk about friends. He could talk about Josh Cooper, he was OK.

‘Are any boys at school not your friends?’ she asked, when they’d talked about boys in Tom’s class for a few minutes.

‘Jake Knowles,’ Tom answered, without hesitation. Jake Knowles, his arch enemy, who had somehow found out that Tom was seeing a special doctor and had made his life extra miserable about it for days now. According to Jake, Tom was destined for the madhouse, where they tied you up and kept you in a padded cell and sent electric shocks through your brain. The special doctor would see he was nuts and send him away and he’d never see his mum and dad again. Worst of all, he wouldn’t be able to look after Millie. He wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Joe.

‘Do you want to talk to me about what happened a week ago last Saturday?’ Evi was asking him now. ‘When something frightened you and you ran into the churchyard?’

‘It was a dream,’ said Tom. ‘Just a bad dream.’