My sister looked at me for a moment and then held out her hand to my daughter, and Hannah looked up at me, and I said, “Go with Aunt Sam.

You’re not in any trouble at all.

I’ll be four minutes.”

She went.

I stood in that corridor alone for about fifteen seconds and did the only thing twenty years had actually equipped me for, which was to decide what the situation was before deciding what to do about it.

And what I concluded, standing there, was this.