The Fifth Child

Harriet and David Lovatt’s life is a glorious hymn to domestic bliss and old-fashioned family values: four children, a beautiful house, the love of relatives and friends.

But when their fifth child is born, a sickly and implacable shadow is cast over this tender idyll. Large and ugly, the infant Ben is violent and uncontrollable.

Struggling to care for her new-born child, faced with a darkness and a strange defiance she has never known before, Harriet is deeply afraid of what, exactly, she has brought into the world …