After giving birth to my son the nurse told me he didn’t exist.

Can you imagine? The child I’d carried to full term, whose heartbeat I’d heard with my own ears, whose little legs I’d felt kicking inside me, whose features I’d seen at every scan.

At first I struggled to take in the meaning of those seemingly nonsensical words. But, as her tone of voice became more insistent and her manner shifted from one of consolation to frustration, it dawned on me that, for some unknown and utterly incredible reason, she believed it to be true.

I myself was incredulous, as I’m sure you can imagine, and when Michael arrived I begged him to explain, to tell them they were wrong and that there was a baby – our baby – somewhere. There had clearly been a mix up and our son, our Max – or James or Saul, we hadn’t yet decided – was in someone else’s incubator, mislabelled like an erroneous tin of soup in a warehouse.

Once the truth had been uncovered there would be a full investigation, of course. Heads would roll, and we would sue them and set up a trust fund for our son with the payout. In years to come we would laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation, and it would go down in family folklore and be told at annual gatherings for generations to come.

At first Michael agreed it was ludicrous. In fact, he was outraged. How could a woman carry a baby to full term only for it to disappear?

And yet, slowly but surely, they turned him against me, poisoned his mind with vicious lies about my state of mind.

This is my last attempt at freedom, a final bid to unshackle myself from the false accusations that have led to my incarceration, that have stripped me of sanity as I knew it.

I beg you to read my story and decide for yourself who is mad; them, me, or every one of us?

I came across this charming little fellow whilst exploring a temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He was certainly very wary of me!