Again Steve you make sweeping statements.... 'June didn't really have time for her daughter' .... I thought June visited her daughter constantly taking food and paying bills. I don't claim June was perfect but she did appear to give up quite a lot of time to help her in a practical way. Trying to help and support someone with PS is tremendously difficult and often thankless. You quote a shopkeeper, the gas man and other people who saw her in passing and dismiss June's obviously concerned discussion with Pamela on the night of the murder. You have no idea how her mood fluctuated that week anymore than I have. Sheila was supposed to be 'stabalised' on her medication but she had a 'vacant stare' apparently at some point that day. I am not saying Sheila wasn't vulnerable, of course she was, she was seriously mentally ill and taking seriously strong drugs with horrendous side effects, she was under massive stress and I feel compassion for her but I'm sure she was far from easy to deal with and probably quite unpredictable in her behavour.
You have to put this in a context of twenty eight years of mother-daughter relationship, where the baby was left with various caregivers, she was packed off to Moira House as a child, then finally moved to Hethersett after damage had already been done to her fragile ego, then the Devil's child remark which did reinforce her image of self-loathing and contributed to her self-harm. Maybe the schizophrenia was congenital and not acquired from June from the
folie à deux phenomenon, but Sheila wanting her independence in London is indicative of their relationship, as was Colin's remark that her mental health always declined upon any visit to White House Farm.
There may well have been a rapprochement towards the end of both their lives as June, possibly from the advice of the local vicar, was bent on affording her daughter a modicum of financial independence in the form of a quarterly allowance, but Sheila would be wary of the strings attached. For Jeremy it was too little too late as the love of his life, Suzette Ford, had been driven away by the actions of his parents, and the temptation to cash in through murder overrode all other considerations.