Change happens by chance, by choice or by crisis. Sometimes we are sent life tremors… warnings or bumps in the road; and sometimes we’re sent a lifequake that knocks us completely off our centre.
My family and I were sent such a lifequake on 18 November 2017 at 3 am. Roxy, our dog, was barking like crazy at the bottom of the garden, which woke me up. My husband, Simon, was not in bed. Unable to sleep, he had been watching TV in the family room.
Wide awake but not overly alarmed, I walked up the passage to make myself some tea, and casually mentioned that Roxy was really making a noise, which he hadn’t heard over the sound of the TV. I then closed the passage door and went back to bed to read a few pages of my book. If he was suspicious, I assumed, he would hit the panic button for our security company to come and investigate. We had a clear agreement – having lost a number of friends to crime in this way – that we were not to step outside the house at night: this was what we paid our security company to do.
I will never know why, but he broke our agreement. He stepped out onto the patio and was rushed by
