And I think, in the end, it came from motherhood, from the specific and unsentimental strength that raising frightened children builds in a person over years.

Because here is a thing you learn, doing what I had been doing: that when a child is in danger, your own feelings become a luxury you cannot afford, and you set them down without ceremony and deal with the danger, and you pick the feelings back up later, if there is a later, when everyone is safe.

I had done it the night my sister died, when I had to be steady for two toddlers while my own heart was in pieces.

I had done it in emergency rooms and at gravesides and on a hundred smaller occasions when what the children needed was a calm adult and what I had inside was chaos.