There is a lesson in that contrast, in the speed of it, that I have carried with me ever since, and it is a lesson about the difference between improvisation and preparation.

Julian and Evelyn were amateurs.

I do not mean they were stupid; their plan was, in its way, cunning, and cruel, and it would have worked against most people.

But it was improvised, in the sense that it relied entirely on catching me unprepared, on the assumption that I had no system, no fallback, no protocol for exactly this kind of catastrophe.

They were betting everything on my helplessness in the face of the unexpected.