EVERY THURSDAY

thought is it could have been my son, my daughter, caught up in the crowd. How can this not be the scenario in our heads, when the pictures of those who lost their lives could so easily be the friends of our own sons and daughters – or us?

The holiday snaps squinting into the sun. The selfies taken so self-consciously in a teenage bedroom. These could be in any family album, or on anybody’s phone. And they have become the images by which the world will remember.

For me, the abiding memory will be the mother of 15-year-old victim Olivia Campbell sobbing on television when her daughter could not be found – the sheer visceral pain that only a mother can feel.

We cannot give into this overwhelming tide of sadness, and resolve never to let our own out of our sight again. If we do so, we risk bringing up our children with