At the gate, the guard began his usual warm greeting — “Good afternoon, Miss Chamberlain” — and stopped cold when he saw my face, and lifted the barrier without another word.

I saw the shock in his face and understood, in it, how far I had let things go: that a man who had waved me through this gate a thousand times could not hide his horror at what I was arriving home as.

I had grown so used to my own life that I had lost the ability to see it from outside.

His face gave it back to me, for one second, and it was not a thing I would forget.

Whatever I had told myself about coping, about managing, about keeping the peace — the guard’s face said the plain truth of it, and the truth was that I had been being destroyed by degrees, and had almost not noticed.

I had grown up here, in the protected world of an accomplished family.