Today I heard something that made me realise how much my husband has affected all of us. I heard a child, not one of mine, break something. It wasn’t anything particularly important and their mother wasn’t particularly upset but I heard the fear in the child’s voice as they said “I’m sorry” and I realised that I’d heard that fear too many times during my children’s lives. It’s the sound of a child that doesn’t know whether what they’ve done is going to result in an overwhelming punishment or not. I can’t tell how many times I said to my husband that if he wasn’t careful he’d make the children afraid of him. He did, of course. It’s days like this that I really struggle to accept that I didn’t get out sooner because I didn’t and it doesn’t make me a terrible person. It makes me wonder how I heard the sound of fear without really hearing it. I must have heard it because otherwise I wouldn’t have recognised it, but if I really heard it why did I let things continue the way they did?