‘With the passage of time, the awful vividness of what I had experienced, gradually, very gradually, grew less and less traumatic. Every now and then, I reflected on the whole episode. And with hindsight, gained some perspective about life and love, and who I was. I even experienced, for one terrifying moment, the closeness of death. The whole thing had been quite a lesson. A painful lesson. The kind Abe used to say you can’t get from any textbook.’















