‘They’ve just put a tree up in the reception area although Christmas isn’t for ages. It’s really tacky; it’s from Poundland by the look of it but we’re all staring at it like it’s the Taj fucking Mahal. I can stare for hours at the lights. They have all sorts of different settings, flash flash gap flash flash gap, which they have to change because one of them sets off the epileptics. But this is not a normal Christmas, is it . . .’

‘Do you still feel like dying?’

‘No.’

‘What’s changed?’

‘It’s not right.’

‘What’s not right? What’s not right, Connie?’

‘Her in my house with my babies. I need to get home where I belong . . . that’s what my mother says.’

‘But your mother is dead.’

‘She speaks to me . . . I can hear her.’

‘What does she tell you?’

‘The first thing I have to do is think straight and I can’t do that on my meds. I know I have to stop taking them. So at med-time I queue up with all the others, swallow them then regurgitate them in the toilet. Lin says Clonazepam is twenty times the strength of diazepam. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘She used to be a doctor in China.’

‘What’s the withdrawal like?’

Connie shook her head and paused. ‘Not good . . .’

‘Tell me.’

Connie continued to shake her head back and forth. She was getting agitated and Emma leant forward. ‘Observe yourself, Connie. Stay calm and focused on the question in hand . . .’

‘OK,’ she said, nodding. ‘It’s frightening . . .’

‘Why is it frightening?’

‘He comes to me. No one else can see him.’

‘Who comes to you?’

‘Him . . .’ She was shaking.

‘Who is he, Connie?’

She whispers, ‘The Devil.’

‘The Devil? But the Devil’s not real.’

‘He’s real to me. He’s been waiting for me, he says. Waiting in the darkness; he appears on the wall in the shadows.’

‘And what about your mother?’

Connie shook her head as if she didn’t have an explanation.

‘Why’s he come to you, Connie?’

‘He’s come to get me,’ she said, as if it was obvious. ‘I’ve been bad.’

‘What does he look like, the Devil?’

‘Like in the picture books. Exactly the same: red eyes, horns, a goatee, cloven hooves.’

‘But he’s not real, is he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What does he do?’

She was still whispering. ‘He moves about the room at lightning pace. I never know where he’s going. He wants to get into my bed with me . . .’

‘What does he want from you?’

She crumpled up her face, as if about to cry. ‘He wants to drag me to hell . . .’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘Because I’m evil, because my children are scared of me, because I’m rotten to the core.’

‘Does he come only at night?’