He thought he had frightened me into silence.

What he had really done was hand me the case.

I need to be careful here not to make it sound as though I felt clever, or victorious, or as though any part of that kitchen was satisfying to stand in.

It was not.

I was standing in a room with a man who had systematically terrified my mother, and I was pretending to be terrified too, and there is nothing satisfying in that; there is only a cold, sad discipline.

But I had learned long ago that the moments that decide everything are usually quiet ones, and that the person who keeps their head in them is the person who walks out ahead.