It is very often the signature of exactly what it was in my family.

Trust the discomfort.

Investigate the thing you do not want to be true.

I did not, for six months.

I will not make that mistake again.

There is a particular cruelty in the phrase Valerie had used upstairs, so she doesn’t bother the paying tenants, that I keep returning to, because it reveals the exact logic of what had been done.

My mother had not been sedated because she was ill and sedation helped her.