9 May 2026

Lyra went down at seven. The house went quiet and I sat with my phone and thought about the day.

Matilda was up at five. I didn’t hear her go. By the time Lyra and I woke up at ten, she was already at the hospital, already in the middle of it. I came downstairs to a quiet house and a group chat that had been moving for hours without me.

The rest of the day I spent at home. Nappy changes, lunch, the particular focused chaos of entertaining a fifteen-month-old who has recently discovered that everything is either something to climb or something to put in her mouth. The ordinary, relentless, genuinely lovely work of keeping a small person alive and happy and moving through the world.

Meanwhile, the group chat updated in real time and I watched it the way you watch a radar screen. Tracking positions, reading the gaps between messages, calculating what the silence meant.

Mum was discharged at four. The carers came before eight. The hand is in a brace and starting to feel better. Gizmo has been fed and walked and smells lovely after his groom. Matilda and Michelle did the washing up before they left.

It was, by any reasonable measure, a good outcome for a situation that could have been significantly worse.

And yet.

There is a specific kind of helplessness that comes with watching the people you love manage a crisis you can’t reach. Not because you don’t want to help, because you’re needed somewhere else, doing something equally important, holding a different part of the structure up. Lyra needed me here. That wasn’t a choice so much as a fact. But facts can still carry weight.

I am so grateful for Matilda. More than I usually say. She was up before the sun, making decisions quietly while the rest of us slept, and she just got on with it.

Same soup, just reheated. I wrote that last night.

It’s late. Lyra will be up early. Time to sleep.