Neither of us wanted to go to bed but exhaustion gnawed at our bones and we dragged ourselves up the stairs a little after 1 a.m. I slept fitfully, waking on the hour, every hour, just as I had when Billy was little. Only it wasn’t his tiny face, turned towards me in his cot, mewing for milk that jolted me awake. He was in my dreams, crying, screaming, reaching for me, begging for me to save him. When I woke up on Saturday morning I went straight from the warmth of my bed to the cold keys of the laptop. I Googled ‘psychotherapist Bristol qualifications’, as Dr Evans had suggested and Sonia’s name came up first. Somehow I made it through the rest of the weekend. It’s all a blur now. I rang Sonia yesterday morning, the second the clock in the living room chimed 9 a.m.

Sonia leans back in her chair and knits her fingers together in her lap. She gives me an appraising look but it’s warm and sympathetic rather than cold and detached. I sobbed on the phone earlier, when I told her why I needed an urgent appointment, so she has some idea what she’s let herself in for.

She’s a few years older than me, late forties I’d guess, but she has the tight, gaunt face of someone older. Her multicoloured kaftan-like dress is diaphanous but her impossibly tiny wrists poke out from the sleeves and her collarbones are so prominent I could pour water into the triangular hollows either side of her neck and it wouldn’t dribble out. Her vivid red hair is piled on top of her head and secured with two wooden sticks. Chunky beaded earrings swing from her ears.

‘Tell me how you’re feeling, Claire.’

I have been asked how I am a thousand times since Billy disappeared and I still don’t know the answer. I feel overwhelmed yet empty, frantic yet numb.

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Okay. That’s fine. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened instead. Take your time.’

It’s a quarter past eleven when I finally stop speaking and take a sip of water. I’ve been talking, and Sonia has been listening and nodding, her eyes never once leaving my face, for over half an hour.

‘Thank you, Claire,’ she says as I place the glass on the coffee table in front of me. ‘It must have been very difficult for you to relive that experience.’

I nod mutely.

‘You’ve been through a lot recently, haven’t you?’

My heart splinters. I don’t want her pity. I want hope. But she can’t give me that. No one can.