‘That she cannot face them. She cannot face her problem. She has hidden them so that she doesn’t have to look at them. They are there, but they don’t have faces.’ Matt pulled out a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. ‘I made some notes, listen. In the case of the fiend digging the grave, she is trying to bury the problem. The monster climbing the stairs with the child bundled under its arm is her trying to take the problem away without looking at it. The child hiding in the shadows from the darker figure with the evil eyes doesn’t quite exist, which means Kate doesn’t have to acknowledge it. There are apparently a dozen other indicators in her paintings. Fear, anger, hurt and loss, all those feelings exacerbated by moving to Holland House, a place where other women have had their children taken from them. Her grief has deepened to a point where she is taking on the loss and heartbreak of all the past Holland women. Kate isn’t strong enough to cope with her own grief, let alone theirs.’ Matt looked up. ‘That does makes sense, doesn’t it?’

It did. Oh God, Kate was obviously sicker than he had imagined, and that meant her suffering was far greater than he had believed. Poor, poor Kate. He wanted to do his best by her, but without professional help, Will had no idea how. ‘Should we force her to face her demons? Make her talk about Emma?’

‘I asked Laura exactly the same question, but she said no. Doing so could send her further inside herself, into a dark and tangled place where we can’t follow her. I don’t want to frighten you, Will, but Sam and Laura have done a kind of assessment based on both the paintings and everything Liz and I have told them, and they’ve said that you really do have to tiptoe around her. Kate is very poorly, quite unstable in fact, and somehow we need to support her and return some sort of balance to her life. Only she can face the cause of her illness. You can gently guide her, but you cannot make her do anything.’

‘I really don’t understand.’ Will felt close to tears. ‘Sometimes she is the old Kate — except for the awful weight loss. She can still be loving and funny, and she is still working! How can she do that if she is so ill?’

‘How often do you see the woman you married, Will? Be honest.’

The tears began to well. In truth, he hadn’t really seen that vibrant, witty and beautiful woman for months, maybe much longer. A hint of her humour, a trace of her sparkle maybe, but that was all. He was silent.