One of the lessons of parenthood is that you are a coward. Whatever moral fearlessness you may have thought you had in the absence of dependents shrivels and shrinks when the awfulness that the world has to offer is being imposed not on you – fallen you, complicit you – but on them, your children with their smallness and their extraordinary solidity in your arms and their exquisite freedom from the muck and misery that you know humans are capable of.
So I hide things from them, suddenly channel-hopping when a distressing news bulletin starts on TV, or beginning a loud conversation about homework at the breakfast table when the Today programme takes an upsetting turn. To compensate for this ongoing deceit, there’s a parental duty to acclimatise my children to the dark and alarming – but to do it in a controlled, fairy-tale fashion, where the thrill of the bad comes with the emergency exit of the impossible and the magical so it can be safely tidied away at the end.
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