Is Michael...(Spoilers)

...real? There's a strong possibility that Maurice isn't really there, it's just Phillip's trauma manifesting in physical form, triggered by his return home. So why wouldn't Michael be the same?

Phillip is an unreliably narrator and has difficulty separating past from present, like when he goes to school to talk to his teacher, who "knows what happened and is coming to the police with me". That must have happened when he was a child and he confided in a teacher he trusted.

What we know about Michael is that he was in a train with a group of boys, who were discussing some events from the marshland ( possibly a crime, as one of them says that his uncle is a policeman, and he told him ) . Michael had a drawing book, same as Phillip, and was quiet.

Another detail to support this theory is that the tv turns itself on with this news of Michael's disappearance. Seamed like a hallucination and not an actual event to me.

And the last detail, in the last scene when Phillip kills Maurice, Michael goes free. The killing of Maurice might be only metaphorical ( if we believe that he isn't real) and represents his overcoming his trauma. And when he does that, his inner child ( Michael) is free.

Thoughts?