In our bedroom, Emma’s face was blue-lit by her phone. She looked up. ‘Are the girls OK?’ I got back into bed and stretched my feet into the warmth on her side. ‘Yes. Mimi’s awake. Thinking about death. She was a bit upset.’ ‘She OK now?’ OK, all right, phrases to which we cling, the comfort blankets or blindfolds of our time and place. There is no pre-twentieth-century version of ‘OK’, which may or may not tell us that it is a modern delusion that normality is not frightening, that it is normal not to be frightened. I personally don’t like depressing subjects, people say, as if mortality is a
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