When you’re a child and you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of your parents fighting, it might last a minute – or ten - but it feels like forever. You creep out of your bed to the mouth of the stairs.
Then you retreat, then creep forward again, this time bolder, down a few steps. But you run back to bed when you see a stomping figure cross the base of the stairs, bellowing and waving his arms. The sound of your mother being slapped sends a jolt through you. Should you go help her? But you are only five. What if you get hit too? What if he kills her? What if he kills you? These thoughts swim in a circle of anxiety until exhaustion steals you back to sleep. A slamming door makes you stir, but you do not come to the surface.