Hamnet

by Maggie O'Farrell

She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare.

I do this all the time, whenever my children aren’t directly under my eye. It’s a constant tabulation, not just on their whereabouts, but how they are in themselves, what they might be up to. It gets more abstract as they become teenagers, when you just have to hope they are where they said they would be, doing what they told you they were doing…