She has one volume and one gear and I had heard her raise neither in about twenty years.

What she said was: “I’m on my way.

Stay exactly where you are.

I’m putting my coat on now.”

Not what do you mean. Not oh my God. Not are you sure. Not a single question about what had happened or why or what his mother had said, all of which she must have been desperate to ask.

She asked me nothing at all, because she had heard my voice break and had made an immediate and correct decision that information could be gathered in a car park and what was needed in that moment was a person in a room.

And then she said one more thing before she hung up, which I did not understand until much later.