Distance spares you. Ten days ago, when a 24-storey block of public housing in West London blazed, we deplored the lives lost, we wrung our hands and we were thankful. Thankful to be far-removed from the toxic fumes of flammable cladding, from the blistering heat of an insufficient evacuation plan. This time tragedy did not touch us, but it served as a warning notice. Adriana Ramirez was at work, cleaning offices at night, when she heard her apartment building was alight. As she raced toward home she received a call from her 12-year-old daughter, Jessica, screaming from a smoke-choked stairwell for her mother.
I left my 12-year-old son home alone the other day for a couple of hours, as I do increasingly casually. He is almost 13, I tell myself, old enough. He knows the drill. But as I went to kiss him goodbye, I thought of Jessica, of whom, at the time of going to print, there has been no word since that terrible call. You know what to do if there's a fire, don't you, I asked. Yes, he said confidently. I ring you. No, before that, I said. What's the first thing you should do? Call 111, he took a stab. No, even before that. Put it out, he offered, more tentative now. No, honey, I said, if there's a fire, you get out.
Have I adequately prepared him? Jessica's mother probably thought she had, but can you ever fully equip your child for what life may throw at them? I took my son to swimming lessons, made sure he ate his vegetables, that he cleaned his teeth. But as he leaves my side, comes out from under my wing, as he hovers, no longer one thing, not yet the next, in a state of transition, of flux, how do I protect him? Scrolling through my contacts recently, searching for the number of one of the local teenage girls we employ when we go out at night, it occurred to me that soon he'll be at high school with some of these girls, that it will likely be too shameful to be babysat by one of his peers.
Apprehensively, I have applauded his burgeoning independence. Armed with his Hop card and phone, he is a man with his own means. However, as he forges his own way, arranges his own social life, he comes into contact with those I don't know; older kids, adults. Last month there was a message from the police in the school newsletter, it stressed that while it is important to discuss stranger danger with your children, it's more important to focus on how they should react to unwanted behaviour; because it may well be a stranger who helps them if they are ever in danger, and, because, more children are harmed by someone they know than someone they don't. So how do I teach him who he can trust, when I don't know who he can? How do I teach him to expect the best in and of people, and yet to be wary, because bad shit does happen?
At a hip-hop gig the other night (yes, we were the oldest by a country mile) I was on the deck, seeking reprieve from the noise, when I became aware of something going on behind me. I turned my head to see one young guy standing over another and punching him in the head, again and again. There was no yelling, no screaming, just a deadly thunk, thunk, thunk. It's been a long time since I've been so close to such brutality and, even after they had been pulled apart, after they had disappeared into the crowd, one bleeding from the eye, the other nursing his fist, the monstrosity of what I had seen stayed with me.
