Every time Veronica told me Hannah was asleep, or at a friend’s, or unwell, and could not come to the video call, I felt a small, shameful flicker of relief, because it meant I did not have to face the possibility that something was wrong, did not have to interrupt my mission with the unbearable distraction of doubt.

I mistook my own relief for trust.

And that is, I think, the most dangerous mistake a person who loves someone can make: to let their own desire not to worry masquerade as faith in the person they have handed their loved one to.

Real vigilance is uncomfortable.

It insists on seeing for itself.

It is not satisfied by reassurance; it wants the face on the screen, the eyes, the proof.

I had been trained in exactly that kind of vigilance for the enemy, and I had switched it off entirely for my own child, because switching it off felt like love and left me in peace, and my daughter paid for my peace with seven months in a pigpen.