Suddenly, you will stop, you and me and all of us. Your lungs will rest at last and the electric pulse in your pulse will vanish into the darkness from which it came.

Put your fingers in your ears, lay your head on the pillow, listen to the footsteps of your blood.

You are alive.

It was important to tell people. To let people know that this can happen. Your child's body can stop. Stop breathing, stop beating.

I started to empty the dishwasher and then remembered that there was an alternative to my thoughts and turned on the radio. There had been more bombs in the places where there are bombs. Children had died. No one had started CPR and called an ambulance, no one had rushed to them with adrenaline and oxygen and a defibrillator, no one was piecing together what had happened. There had been bombs and children had died.

I dislike Tolkien, another Oxonian Old Norse obsessive, with his war games and made-up language in a world without women.

It was the best four years of my life. I definitely learned a lot both on-and-off the ice.

In my next life, I'm going to be a rock star. I was a ballerina in my last life.