Alex was a really happy baby. Didn’t cry much at all, took to solids well, crawled more or less at the right time and walked a little late but not too late. Looking back, one of the earliest signs I had that something was amiss was his interest in the light on his heater and his fascination with light switches. I thought briefly, ‘that’s odd’. Next came his first birthday and his younger cousins were saying ‘Dadda’ and ‘Mumma’ but he was pretty mute.

The turning point was a TV show about an 8 year old autistic boy. I saw no more than 1-2 minutes of it and it barely registered. I was just drifting off to sleep that night and sat bolt upright.