Medical professionals are reluctant to diagnose a child as a psychopath, even if they’ve just strangled the family cat. They tiptoe around the elephant in the room with labels like callous and unemotional traits.

Because our ‘condition’ is considered untreatable. Tell a parent their kid is a sociopath, and it’s like giving them a terminal diagnosis.

My own parents did a magnificent job of burying their heads in the sand. They ignored my awkward early attempts to manipulate those around me. They wilfully neglected to notice my lack of friends at nursery school.

I was left to sink or swim on my own. And to begin with, I sank. I lied all the time.

I broke things. I burned things.

I bruised people.

I stole from my classmates. I gave the little girl who sat next to me a wrist burn because she used the red crayon when I wanted it. Sociopathic kids don’t ‘grow out’ of who they are. It’s not just a ‘phase’. But we live in a society where survival is dependent on fitting in. Better grades, better chances for college, better jobs, a better life: it’s all better when you’re part of a tribe.

So eventually we learn to swim. We figure out how to conceal our behaviour, and censor what we really think. At least the smart ones among us do. We hide in plain sight, though we never truly make friends. We endure relationships with people who don’t really know us. We get jobs at places where we’re tolerated, but never understood.

We learn the words, but we never feel the music.

We have no control over how we feel, but we know it bothers you. So we figure out how to blend in.

But full immersion in a foreign language is tough.

And it’s lonely.

It might surprise you to know this, but sociopaths have an inbuilt longing to be loved and cared for, just like everyone else. It’s a desire that often goes unfulfilled, because our natures make it so hard for us to get close to people, and that’s where we tend to go off the rails.

The human brain wasn’t designed to function without access to emotion – even in people like us. And the constant effort required to act like a ‘normal’ person and survive in your world is exhausting.

Overload the system, and eventually it short-circuits.

When I was three years old, Mrs Evans, one of the teachers at my nursery, brought in a papier-mâché model of her house that her teenaged son had made her for Mother’s Day. It’d taken him a month to build it in secret, and Mrs Evans couldn’t stop smiling with pride as she showed it off to us.

That day was my day to have the class mascot on my table, a privilege that was shared out among the class on a strict rota system.