I'm on my way back to work after lunch break on a Tuesday in March 2019. It's the week after the revelation that crazy customer man is really an eccentric English professor. My phone rings. It's Jack.

"Can you talk?"

"Yes Jack, what is it?"

"Zio Alberto is coming to get you, you have to come to the hospital with him."

My heart skips its rhythm.

"What's happened, are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. It's Simon."

"Oh my God..."

"He's okay, no injuries..."

What? Where the hell is this leading?

"Then why are you at the hospital?"

"It's a long story, Jill. I'll explain it when you get here."

I swallow dryly, my palms begin to sweat.

"Okay, I'll call Ruben and ask him to take over. Ah, here's Alberto now." I see him walking hastily up the road, crossing the small square to meet me. He's avoiding looking my way. "See you soon - wait, Jack, where do I have to go?"

"It's the juvenile psychiatric unit, at the old hospital, Alberto knows where it is, bye Jill."

My mind is a whirlwind of questions, with impossible answers as I hang up and stuff the phone back in my trouser pocket. Frustrated, I run and meet the breathless Alberto and grab hold of him by the arms. Demanding an answer.

"What's going on?"

Taking my hands, he looks steadily into my eyes.

"Everything is okay. Jack was called into the school this morning and then he took Simon to see the doctor. The doctor sent them to the hospital to speak to a psychiatrist and now they need you to speak to them too. That's all. Let's go, yes?"

That's all! Then why am I screaming inside?

He puts his arm around my shoulder and pushes me into motion, walking us down to where his car's parked in a taxi spot near to a hotel entrance.

"Come on. Jack will explain it to you."

I get into the passenger seat, feeling dazed and light-headed.

"So, you're telling me that Jack has known about this since this morning and he never thought of calling me before now?"

Alberto drives us to the hospital in Bassa, all the while attempting to keep me calm and in as rational a state of mind as possible. I suspect that he knows that if he doesn't bring me to reason as quickly as possible that Jack is really going to get it. My blood is seething.

Why didn't he tell me sooner? Is there something else going on here that he decided not to reveal to me?

After parking up, Alberto accompanies me into the block of the building which contains the psychology unit, in an older, communist-era concrete hospital. He presses the button for the lift in the reception lobby and thrusts one of Simon's rucksacks at me for me to take up.

"Thirteenth floor, Jilly."

He's abandoning me?

"Aren't you coming too, Zio?"

"No. I will see you after. I don't want to go up there. This is between you and your husband, no?"

I step in, the doors close on Alberto's sad expression and I'm alone. My thoughts do cartwheels as the lift slowly blinks its floor indicators on my way up.

What could have happened this morning? Has he been beaten up? No, Jack said he wasn't injured. Has he suffered some kind of fit or seizure? No, Simon's never had one before. Maybe he did something to someone else? Oh, that's it. He must have threatened or maybe even hit one of the other kids. Maybe he even hit a teacher? No, Simon wouldn't do that. So what is it?

The lift arrives and the doors ping open. Another waiting area. I cross the room to speak to the nurse behind the small window of the reception. It's heavy opaque panel showing the kind of protection sometimes needed in this department of expressive emotions. Yhe sight of it fills my heart with lead.

"Can I speak to someone about Simon Firenze? I'm his mother?"

My heart is thumping and I'm surprised it can't be heard by the nurse as easily as I hear it thudding away in my ears.

Hardly looking up, the nurse picks up some folders and motions me to the double doors to the left of the lift. She speaks at me rather than to me in a voice muffled by the window protector.

"Wait there please."

Moving over quickly, I find that this is one pair of two staggered sets of security doors, with notices of 'permitted personnel only' and 'ring for admittance'.

Looking through the sets of glass, I see that there is the usual hospital ward floor plan, an entrance, nurse's station and rooms leading off from the long, narrow corridor. In the doorway of the nurse's room, a female doctor in her fifties breaks off from talking with her colleague on seeing my face at the window and comes over to me, pressing and buzzing her way through the doors as she goes.

"Signora Firenze?"

"Si."

She stands back, holding the door and allows me to enter. Her face giving nothing away. I suddenly get the sensation that I am of no significance in here, a lesser being of very low esteem. I follow her down to a patient's room on the right at the bottom of the clinical corridor, the white walls interspaced with cheerful character pictures between the patient's doorways. The smell of bleach is gratefully mixed with a sweeter perfume of tomato pasta sauce, which must be on today's lunch menu.

The doctor opens the door to the bedroom and I see Simon sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. Jack is standing at the strip of a window opposite the door, his hands on his hips. It reminds me of a scene from the cheesy Australian sit-com 'Neighbours' that I used to watch as a child. The ridicuolous nature of this image threatens to set me into nervous hysterics.

The doctor, in a severe manner, asks Jack a series of very quick questions, to which he replies briskly as she gives me a handful of papers to sign. She then smiles at my son before disappearing back up the corridor.

Throwing the papers on the bed, I rush to Simon. Scooping him up in my arms, trying to absorb his very being. He squeals in protest at me.

"Ah, mamma!"

He pushes me away and sits back down on the bed.

I turn to Jack for answers.

"Well? Are you going to tell me now?"

Sighing Jack waves at the visitors chair for me to sit.

"I got a call from the school this morning..."

"Yes. I know that." I snap at him.

"It was his science teacher, Pirelli, he said it was urgent and so I went straight over. When I got there he was sat with Simon and the headmaster in the staff room. Both of them, Pirelli and the headmaster were really good. Very worried though. Pirelli said that he'd caught Jack trying to jump out of the science lab window. On the third floor."

"It wasn't like that, Papa'." Simon interrupts angrily.

Matching his anger Jack barks back. "Then how was it then, Simon? Did you just decide to see if you could fly?"

"No." Simon snarls, then, returns back to his normal neutral bored tone. "I didn't want to be there anymore."

"Why would you do that, Simon?" I implore him, shocked to the core.

My beautiful child, this poor little angel really wanted to do that?

"You could have told us what was wrong. Or a teacher? Nothing can be that bad surely^"

Simon shrugs, watching my face, his eyes looking straight through me. Jack turns back to the window. Contemplating the steel rods which run across it on the outside, I come over to sit next to my son on the bed. He shifts aside instantly and my soul sinks.

How can I offer him comfort when he pulls away? Does he hate me so much that he won't even let me hold him? When all I want to do is make him feel better, make him smile again.

"What happened? Did somebody say something to you?"

"Nothing new."

"Where was Pirelli? Didn't he hear or see what was happening?"

Squirming, Simon replies. "He wasn't in the room. And it wasn't anything to do with the others. I just didn't want to be there. I told you."

"You can ask him till you're blue in the face, Jill, he isn't saying the truth."

"How would you know, Papa? Were you there?"

"No. But I bloody well wouldn't have jumped out the window for something some little prick said to me!"

"Nobody said anything, I told you."

"Woah, woah boys..." I try to calm them down, the situation needed to be held down with as little amount of drama as possible. "Let's just take a minute to breathe."

I shuffle closer to Simon, this time he doesn't move away.

"What does the doctor say?"

Jack comes over to us and takes the rucksack I've brought with me from Alberto.

"They said he has to stay here overnight. Probably for the next few days. Did Alberto put in his Ipod too?"

"I have no idea..." I answer like a robot, the whole moment is surreal. "So he has to stay here? Can I stay with him?"

"No. They want to do assessment sessions with him tomorrow, to try and get to the bottom of it. Also start some kind of therapy, I guess, in case he tries it again."

Again?

"This is a normal toothbrush right, not electric, they say he can't have an electric one..."

My heart has returned to my mouth once more.

"No, he only has a normal one."

If he tries it again?

"Simon, promise me you won't ever, please?"

Simon says nothing, shrugs his shoulders, takes his bag from his father and rummages through his belongings.

A nurse appears at the door, ushering us to leave. I kiss and hug my son, tears brimming at the realisation that I'm forced to leave him in this fragile state.

"Bye mamma."

He accepts a kiss on the head from his father, then I watch him pull out his earphones and in all casualness settle on the bed to listen to his music.

We are taken to the nurse's station and given the once-over about visiting rules and items that are not allowed. The list is sobering to hear, not only for our son's sake, but for all the young residents in their small rooms.

No shoes with laces.

No batteries or coins.

No belts.

Etc, etc.

Simon spends nine days here. He's allowed to stay the weekend at home with us.

Saying goodbye after having him home again is excruciating.

There's nothing worse than saying goodbye to your child. At a coffin. At an ex-spouse's home. At a hospital door.

I took Simon back to the juvenile psychiatric ward on a Sunday night. We'd been permitted to have him home for the weekend as his assessment was progressing well. After I had left him at the hospital, I sat in out car in the carpark and took a minute to think. Think about what has led us to this point. Think about what we could do to change the future for our first born child. Think about what I had done wrong.

I cried. Impossible to stop.

10 minutes past and still no let up of tears. Rain had started to splash down on the front window screen. Creating stars of wet dust, splattering across the glass. There came a distant rumble of thunder.

Come on. Get a grip.

Grasping the steering wheel for some kind of support, I turn on the radio. A news report comes on. Looking up, I can see the light from the window of my son's hospital room on the thirteen floor.

"....Flood waters have caused a bridge to collapse in Verucchio, province of Rimini, local police report that...."

The car radio crackles. That's all we need. For Christ's sake. Banging on the dashboard of the fiat car, the radio decides to keep on working.

I angle down the rear view mirror and try to clear away the runny mascara under my eyes. The narrative from the radio carries on, I listen and notice a group of teens gathered outside the bar on the corner of the hospital block. Laughing and messing around happily, as kids have the right to do.

Thunder once again, this time closer, booming and rattling the metal of the car. The group of teens squeal in surprise, running inside the bar. I look up one last time at the light - three windows to the left on the thirteen floor.

Goodnight my love.

I turn the key in the ignition and wait for it to kick in.

From then on, he goes to many assessments and sessions with doctors and gets to know his fellow patients. The stories he learns from them help him to achieve a more rounded and less introverted prospective of the world around him. Some of the stories are more shocking than others but all come from a similar age group.

We also go through an enormous learning curve through our own therapy sessions with and without our son. These continue after his release and over the space of the year. We come to see that sometimes just being there is all he really wants from us. Not even to speak. Only to be there.

The school, and especially Sig. Pirelli are very supportive and assist Simon in every way they can.

It's a long, slow and very often painful path that we take from that spring onwards over the year of 2019.

Simon appears to find his therapy sessions at first an annoying and boring moment of his week, but comes round to seeing it as an opportunity for letting go of all the thoughts and pent up worries he has never been able to express before. Especially to us. Probably not even to himself.

Our sessions end a long time before his. The final parent only meeting opens my eyes to the impact of losing my father at a young age and how it has had so much influence on so many of my adult choices. Right down to the way I deal with Simon and his emotions. And Jack comes to terms with how his frustration is rented out in the form of anger.

We first notice the change in Simon on a trip to his still favourite place. The zoo.

Don't get me wrong, there's no skipping around, waving daisies in the air and singing 'zippidi doo dah', not from my twelve year old anyway, but they way he takes his little sister's hand and guides her round the enclosures, reminds me of happier times when he was so much more contented. He even lifts her up to get a better look at the sleepy tiger, while the animal swishes his tail and washes behind his ears like a giant domestic tabby.

I'm taking a break from walking and looking at the flamingos with Jack, when Simon brings Charlie back to us.

"Do you know why they're pink mamma?" His enthusiasm glows from his rosy cheeks.

"No love.Why?"

"It's a pigment in their food. You remember that documentary we saw about..."

And so he continues to impart wisdom of the natural world upon his parents who are in possession of much less knowledge. On many, many things.

He begins to open up about his future plans in life. Zoology being the main aim. He talks about coming to work voluntarily for the park we are in, saying that interns from the university are highly accepted. All the information has been passed on to him by his (and our) favourite teacher Sig. Pirelli.

As they have found a common passion for nature and biology, the young, enthusiastic teacher sometimes asks Simon to help out with the preparation of the third year's scientific projects, taking him along to the occasional university lecture. It all helps to bring him out of himself.

********

Rosanna arrives by train in the early hours of a balmy June morning. It hasn't rained for what feels like weeks and the grass and shrubs are wilting and yellow with the sun. At times like these I could quite happily do a rain dance. Anything to improve our chances of water.

She steps off the train and onto the platform with a long, exaggerated, step. Making sure not to fall into the very narrow strip of a gap between the two. She sees me through the push of commuters and dives this way and that to reach me. I go to meet her, brushing past casually-clothed business men and smartly-dressed business women. She's red in the face and out of breath by the time we make it through to each other.

"Ah, Jilly!" She exhales, handing me her suitcase. "Allora, tutto bene?"

I put down the suitcase and give my little, buxom, mother-in-law a huge and heart-felt embrace.

"Thank you so much for coming, Rosanna." I suprise myself with how much I mean it. I say the words in my best, much rehearsed Bergamasco dialect, causing Rosanna to take a step back in amazement. She then returns my hug and kisses my cheeks before we set off back home. I drive the car we share with Alberto, back to Jack, Charlie, Simon and of course Sissy.