"In my experience, at moments of extremity, you often become a person you know very well indeed. Whether you’re confronted by a kid who’s choking or by an adult in distress in the water, you follow a pattern, a script almost. Events swoop down upon you, unexpected but somehow not strange. The sudden, skin-prickling proximity to havoc is creepily familiar. And sometimes its arrival is no real surprise at all. Survivors of family violence talk about being able to sense the approach of savagery. Regular victims become hyper-vigilant. They feel the approach of trouble like a sudden change of air pressure. If you’re attuned, whether you’re in a volatile kitchen, a rough sea or out on the open road, you can see things coming unstuck before they begin to happen, and it’s an eerie feeling. The problem is that although you may know how trouble begins, you can’t predict where it will go or how it will end."