I’m telling you I’ve got there, so that you know I’m not spending the next twenty years explaining it to Nell as something my mother did to me.”

I said something inadequate.

And she said, “That’s fine.

I didn’t need a response.

I needed you to know that when she’s fifteen and she asks me, I’m going to tell her the true version.”

She has done that, incidentally.

Twice.

I know because Nell has told me, and because both times what came back to me was accurate.