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There’s this bit in The Exorcist where the mum is fighting with the doctors, the psychiatrists, about what’s happening to her daughter Regan. They tell her Regan has had a complete personality change because of a rare lesion on her brain.

But Regan’s mum is convinced it’s nothing to do with that because her daughter has got a green face and is acting all possessed and stuff. There’s this great moment where Ellen Burstyn, who plays the mum, looks like she’s about to go full-on nuts because she suddenly understands that no one really has a clue. That moment makes me realise that so much of the brain is unknown. Often people are just grasping for answers when it comes to the brain. Guessing about this thing that is so important and complex, delicate and extraordinary. People just … make shit up.

That scene is probably my favourite bit in the whole film. Well, that or the bit where Regan scuttles backwards down the stairs on all fours then vomits blood everywhere while upside down.

I like that bit too.

It’s three minutes to eight, which means Melinda is due to arrive in approximately two hours. I still have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get through it.

Eli ’ s Trauma Processing Day .

Melinda coined that term. She likes doing that – naming things. I’d think it was quite a cool name for a day if I wasn’t so directly involved. Anyway, it seems to have caught on because Mum wrote it in big fat marker pen on the Lake District calendar pinned to the fridge.

ELI’S TRAUMA PROCESSING DAY!

10 a.m.

At 10 a.m. the Incident will be recounted and processed just in time for lunch. Trauma then a tuna baguette.

Mum put a bright orange Post-it on the calendar, just in case we missed it, with the words all family members must attend underlined twice.

First I need to remember what it feels like to be completely and utterly terrified. I need to experience a potent injection of fear in order to convincingly re-enact my trauma in front of my whole family. Because if I’m unable to convince the attendees of today’s festivities that I understand what happened to me – that I can move through it step by step, experiencing the feelings in real time, then leave them behind with love and kindness – then I’m screwed. More therapy, more family meetings, more concern, more lying.

And I don’t want that any more.

So, I’ve concocted a plan. I’d thought about smashing my face into the wall a few times, or stepping into moving traffic (not fatally, just enough to know how bad it could be) in order to evoke the Terror. But sadly they’d notice the bruises and blood, and I can’t have that. They need to think I’m not being sneaky when it comes to my trauma-processing journey. That I’m the opposite of sneaky: open, honest and willing.

I’ve spent the night hyper-fixating. Everything is a bit fuzzy at the edges and I have a strange, sleepless metallic taste in my mouth. But the hyper-fixation has served me well and now I know exactly what to do. I’d be excited, if I could be.

Maybe I am excited because my fingers are tingling. But that might be from where I’ve been twisting a rubber band around them for the past ten minutes while waiting for Mum and Dad to leave the house for their morning run (which they do every day, together, willingly ). They turned purple. My fingers, not my parents. I was interested to see if they would burst. They didn’t.

Something keeps pulling my thoughts back to the image of that hell bunny on the website. TraumaLand . Why is it so appealing? So seductive ? Is it the mystery? Is it the rabbit?

I think it’s the rabbit.

I hear the front door slam and look at the digits on my phone.

08:00

Like clockwork.

I peer up through my grid window to see my parents’ running shoes trotting down the path, completely in sync. They turn left out of the gate, their matching fluorescent hi-vis running jackets flashing as they speed off.

They’ll be half an hour exactly. They’re very exact about these things.

It’s go time.

I creep up the little flight of steps and unbolt the door. As I creep out on to the ground floor (I don’t know why I’m creeping, but I like it), I glance back down the steps into my bedroom. My Dark Underground Abode. I’ve painted a raven on the stone floor so that it’s the first thing you see when you look down. Edgar Allen Poe would be proud.

I make a point of showing it to Mum’s friends when I give them the grand tour. Of my cell. Not the rest of the house. The rest of the house looks like something from an interior design magazine.

Oh, I forgot to say. I’m dressed as the Joker.

I found an old waistcoat, made a tie out of paper and stuck it on to a paisley shirt. I then coloured my hair green with a marker pen (took ages) and used some old face paints to make the smile. I’m the Joaquin Phoenix version. It was a toss-up between his and Heath Ledger’s, but I don’t own a purple coat. The costume isn’t an intrinsic part of the plan. I just thought it would be fun – and appropriate. What with me being like him now. You know, a psychopath.

I’m also carrying two wire clothes hangers. These are relevant to the plan. You’ll see.

I go up the stairs to the first-floor landing where the walls change colour from beige to light green (smoke-sage, apparently). I can hear Lucas in his bedroom talking on FaceTime to Intense Ingrid, which is useful. They like to talk intensely for a very long time so he’ll be tied up. Not literally. Although Ingrid is a little dark-sided so maybe she’s corrupted him.

I creep along the hallway (still creeping, still fun), past Dad’s study and Mum’s ‘closet’ where she keeps about six hundred versions of the same outfit – the silk shirt and trouser set she loves – towards the next flight of stairs. The house is three-storeys tall. Four, if you count the attic. Five, if you count my cellar.

As I make my way up the second flight of stairs, I’m suddenly hit, mid-ascent, by the smell of what can only be described as My Parents. It’s not gross – it’s just them . Their clothes. Their auras. It should make me feel at home and safe , but all I get is lavender hand soap and hard work, which is just a bit… Actually, yeah. Gross.

I tiptoe along the landing towards their bedroom, the colour of the walls changing to a chalky pink – calming, apparently. I don’t often come up here. The last time was maybe half a year ago, in the dead of night. I was screaming in agony and could hardly breathe, so Mum made a bed up in the hallway so she could keep an eye on me. She said the calming pink might help. Sweet of her, but also wrong.

I look up at the ceiling – at the hatch to the attic. Mum’s study. I know how to open it because I stared at it the whole time I was up here screaming, but it’s going to take a little skill, which is why I’m carrying the hangers.

I don’t know where Mum and Dad keep the long pole thing to open it. I assume their bedroom, but no way am I going in there. They seem to spend a little while in the bedroom after their joint run (no, please, just no) and Mum is a complete order freak, so she’d know if it had been so much as breathed on.

Hence the hangers. Sneaky. Shh.

I start untwisting them, which is actually really hard as I don’t want them to snap. I then twist them round each other to make a long, thin wire with a hook at the end. I’m quite proud of myself. I lift it up and manage to hook the end on to the latch.

I pull, but the latch doesn’t budge. I can feel myself sweating. In part because of the too-tight trousers I’m wearing for my Joker costume, but also because the clock on the wall says ten past, which means my parents will be back in twenty minutes.

When I pull again, the wires nearly come apart under the strain, but then I hear a click as the hatch opens. A wooden ladder drops down to the floor with a thud, about an inch from my face, nearly taking my head off.

I don’t even flinch. Just feel a waft of air move my fringe.

I drop my trusty attic-opener, then climb up the ladder until my head surfaces into darkness. I clamber through the square gap and feel a cord dangling into my face. As I pull it, a soft light flickers from the ceiling.

I’ve been up here before, when we’d just moved in, but I forgot how bougie it is. All fluffy beige carpet, freshly painted walls, dark woodwork and soft furnishings. Then I see something. Something that wasn’t here the last time.

There are stacks of cardboard storages boxes lined up in the eaves, perfectly ordered and neat, just like Mum. I notice an armchair tucked into the corner – expensive looking, dark wood, with brass plating and beige linen cushions – a reading lamp behind it, donning a blue flower-patterned shade. Very Virginia Woolf, but the comfortable version.

What’s in the boxes, though?

No time. Need to move. Stick to The Plan.

I look up and see what I need. The window in the slanted ceiling. Bingo. My passage to the roof.

I take off my shoes, pull the chair beneath the window and stand on it. The chair creaks a little like the wood is splitting. Oops . I reach up, push my thumb on to the metal button on the handle at the bottom of the frame and twist it open.

Easy. So easy. When I push the glass, the window tilts up into the grey sky and tiny raindrops tickle my face.

I hoist myself up through the gap and out on to the tiles. I nearly lose my handmade paper tie in the process, but just about manage to keep it in place. I slowly stand and balance on the tiles, trying not to slip. The roof is wet and more slanted than I’d expected.

I am exactly where I need to be.

I look out across the sky and see the surrounding rooftops pointing up into the perpetual grey. But I feel no fear, just an appreciation of the view. London looks great from up here.

Damn it. OK. Terror reminder.

Now, look down.

l turn my gaze to the front garden and the road below, but the world just looks smaller. Not scarier.

Nothing. Nothing .

I conjure up an image – my mangled, twisted body on the grass, shattered bones and brain matter splatted all over it.

And… Is that…? Is that panic I sense within?

I think… I think it is .

More. More .

I picture an ambulance turning up, paramedics, chest compressions as I splutter blood.

Mum crying.

Dad crying.

Yes. Yes . This is it! I feel bad. I feel bad!

Oh my God, this is amazing. I knew this would—

‘ Elias? ’ Oh, bollocks. ‘What on earth are you doing?’