Beatrice had wanted a cowed, silent, diminished little girl who knew her place.

And here, instead, was a child who had been handed her own power and was choosing, calmly and deliberately and entirely of her own free will, to use it.

I did not stop her.

It was one of the hardest things I have ever done as a mother, to keep my hands in my lap and let my seven-year-old walk into that moment alone.

But I understood that to stop her would be to do to her exactly what Beatrice did, to take the decision away, to make her small again.