She escaped her mummy into my arms. Then she escaped me. She did. She began by escaping my embrace. Same as mummy oh mummy. Horrible to see and countenance: can one bring oneself to that point? One cannot. I cannot. But I, he said, am going mad.

Three, three, of three.

My youngest was not so much escaping other people as seeking solitude. She appreciates and respects solitude. At three and a third years of age – as happens again at the age of fifteen – most people enter and further and rather interesting stage in life, the realisation of the existence of other intellects. I refer to its effect on one’s emotional development. How to be with others. To recognise the pain of another, the hurt. Prior to then children do not comprehend. That incomprehension; we note it in them. There are those who never achieve this stage.