Reached for: Valium (Tranquilizers)

Alarm is dampened rather than examined, so the day can be completed and the underlying account of things never has to be revised. The manoeuvre began with a mother whose harm was quiet and deniable, producing both a settled distrust of the world and a policy of never letting that distrust be felt at full strength. What it asks for is a measured portion of the fear itself, in company.

I take the edge off and I keep going. Everyone gets through it their own way.

Helen, slipping a drug into the wine so the men at her table could speak of the war without weeping. The form implies a task of letting the evening carry the grief instead.