‘Don’t tell me you’ve been looking at ideas for diversification again? What is it this time – rock festivals? You’ve got the fields, and the mud.’

‘That’ll be the day, when I let thousands of hippies camp on my land.’

‘It worked for Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.’

‘No, it didn’t. He had riots between gangs of rival jazz fans.’

Ben laughed. ‘What is it, then?’

‘It isn’t about the farm at all,’ said Matt gloomily, still staring at the screen.

Realizing that he wasn’t even denting his brother’s morose mood, Ben leaned forward to see what he was looking at. He’d brought up a website that must have been bookmarked in his favourites, because he hadn’t used the keyboard to type out a URL. Ben was surprised that Matt even knew how to do that.

‘It’s an article I found about schizophrenia,’ said Matt. ‘Well, to be more exact, about its inheritability.’

For a moment, Ben was thrown by the word ‘inheritability’. It was an expression he was accustomed to hearing from Matt, but strictly in relation to livestock breeding. Was a high-yielding cow likely to produce offspring that were also good milk producers? What percentage of lambs sired by a Texel ram would have the same muscle ratio? That was inheritability. Genetics played a big part in breeding animals for desirable characteristics. But schizophrenia? It didn’t make sense.

‘What on earth are you trying to tell me, Matt?’

‘It was something I heard one of the nursing home staff say, before Mum died. It hadn’t occurred to me before, and nobody ever mentioned the possibility. Not to me, anyway. I don’t know if they mentioned it to you, but you never said anything.’

‘Matt, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It occurred to me that it might be like other conditions. Do you remember that family of Jerseys that were prone to laminitis? It was passed on from one generation to the next, and we never could breed it out. We had to get rid of them all in the end.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well, according to this, schizophrenia is hereditary, too.’

‘What?’

‘Ben, it’s for the sake of the girls as much as anything. I need to know what the odds are – the chances of schizophrenia being hereditary. Will you read it?’

Almost against his will, Ben ran his eyes over the text on the screen. It has been verified that schizophrenia runs in a family. People with a close relative suffering from schizophrenia have an increased chance of developing the disease. Parents with schizophrenia also increase the chances of passing the disease to their child.

He straightened up again. ‘I don’t want to know this, Matt.’

‘There’s more. Read the rest of it.’

‘No. This is ridiculous.’

‘I’ll print it out for you. You can read it later.’