38

23 October

‘SCHIZOPHRENIA IS QUITE RARE,’ SAID EVI. ‘ONLY AROUND 1 per cent of the population develop it, and it’s only in a very few of those cases that we see an onset of symptoms before the age of ten. Most importantly, neither you nor your husband have any family history of the illness.’

It was Evi’s first meeting alone with Alice Fletcher, in the family’s large, colourful sitting room. The two boys, both of whom she’d already met individually, were at school, Millie upstairs napping. So far, it was proving to be an unusual meeting. From the outset, Alice had almost seemed determined to charm her son’s psychiatrist. She’d shown an interest in Evi personally, which patients, normally rather self-obsessed, rarely did. She’d tried to make her laugh, had even succeeded a couple of times. And yet it was so clearly a facade, and a fragile one at that. Alice’s hands had shaken too much, her laughter had seemed forced and before the meeting was twenty minutes old she’d broken down and confided her fear that Tom was suffering from COS, or child-onset schizophrenia.

‘But these voices …’ she was saying.

‘Hearing voices is just one symptom of schizophrenia,’ said Evi firmly. ‘There are quite a few others, none of which Tom appears to have.’

‘Like what?’ demanded Alice.

‘Well, for one thing, his emotional reactions seem quite normal. I’ve seen no evidence of what we call thought disorder. And other than his insistence on this little girl – who he still hasn’t mentioned to me, by the way – there’s no sign of any delusional behaviour.’

Alice Fletcher interested her, Evi decided. A long way from her own home, she, more than the rest of the family, might be expected to find it hard to settle in Heptonclough. The question was, how much of the children’s problems were the result of their picking up on the mother’s anxieties?

‘Even when schizophrenia is diagnosed in childhood,’ Evi continued quickly, ‘it’s nearly always preceded by other diagnoses.’ She started ticking them off on her fingers. ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Mood Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you know what any of these conditions—’

‘Yes,’ interrupted Alice. ‘And the OCD, the obsessive compulsive thing, that fits too. Tom goes round the house every night, checking and re-checking the locks on all the doors and windows. He has a list. He ticks things off one by one and he won’t go to bed until he’s gone through it. Sometimes he gets up in the night and starts running through the list again. What’s that all about?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Evi. ‘But I have noticed Tom’s anxiety about his little sister. Joe shares it too, incidentally, although he may just be picking up on Tom’s fears. Have they seen something on the news, do you know, something to make them especially anxious about her right now?’

Alice thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘They only watch children’s television. Several times I’ve found him asleep on Millie’s bedroom floor.’

Evi glanced down at her notes. ‘Just to come back to this little girl, for a while,’ she said. ‘Because from what you’ve told me, most of what’s bothering Tom seems to centre around her. Is it possible that there is someone in town who just looks a bit odd, maybe behaves in a strange way? Have you thought about that?’

Alice nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘And I have asked a couple of people. Not many, I don’t want everyone to know what we’re going through, but I did have a quiet word with Jenny Pickup. And with her grandfather, Tobias. They’ve lived here all their lives. They’d never heard of anyone remotely fitting the description Tom gives.’

Alice paused for a moment.

‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Tom talks about this little girl as though she’s barely human, the sort of thing we see in nightmares. This is a strange town, Evi, but harbouring monsters? How likely is that?’