I could feel from the first question of the evening that I had no spare patience left

Dear Delyara, It wasn’t even a difficult question. Just badly timed. I had barely walked in when my husband asked whether I’d remembered to ring the insurance people, and the answer was no, and the immediate heat of guilt plus irritation rose in me so quickly that I had to put my bag down before I answered. Not because he’d done something awful. Because I was already at the edge of my emotional budget. That’s one of the hardest things about evenings. People meet you at the door with practical life as if you are arriving fresh. Often you are arriving used. I answered him normally enough. Then I went upstairs to change and stood in the bedroom for a full minute with my hands on the wardrobe, trying to become less sharp before rejoining everyone. Sometimes the kindest thing I do for the people I love is delay my own re-entry by sixty seconds.