He was also confident that Sebastian was not a source of danger. Schizophrenia’s reputation for violence was exaggerated, except in the case of suicide, which about half of the schizophrenic population attempted, with one in twenty succeeding. Martin had worked with psychotic patients throughout his career and was certain that Sebastian was not criminally insane. He hadn’t just emerged from Broadmoor Hospital; he was an ambulatory schizophrenic who might have been frightening or repellent to some people, but to Martin, who was not easily frightened, he was a patient with a reasonable chance of recovery, who it would be unreasonable and unkind not to help.

He settled back into his armchair, realising that although he had needed to get up to make a cup of coffee, he didn’t especially need to drink it. He had caught himself being a little buffeted by these unexpected developments, but now he was returning to his professional centre of gravity: his basic conviction that it didn’t matter what conundrums arose in an analysis, as long as the practitioner was stable and had internalised his own analysis enough to continue reflecting and not to act out under pressure – at least, not more than he had just done by making an unnecessary cup of coffee, moving between the professional armchair in which he saw all his patients and the private cupboard that he never opened when his patients were present. This tiny enactment of his dilemma was forgivable. What would not be forgivable would be to betray either his family or his patient, but both those outcomes could be avoided. Sebastian was only in the house for a hundred and fifty minutes a week, his analysis was progressing well, and Martin only had to tell Lizzie and Olivia the times of his sessions, explaining that he had an especially vulnerable patient who might be confused or perturbed if he saw or heard the baby. The truth was that in practical terms, it was quite manageable; the intensity of his initial response had come from imagining the potential impact of a collision between Sebastian and Olivia. The birth of her child was bound to resurrect Olivia’s deepest feelings about her own rejection at birth, but if she met her psychotic twin at the moment that she was standing squarely against the contagion of trauma, then any sense she might have that she could not prevent the shadow of her history from falling on another innocent generation would become that much more daunting.