“And Father said, ‘I love you very much, Christopher. Don’t ever forget that. And I know I lose my rag occasionally. I know I shout. And I know I shouldn’t. But I only do it because I worry about you, because I don’t want to see you getting into trouble and I don’t want you to get hurt. Do you understand?’

I didn’t know whether I understood. So I said, ‘I don’t know.’

And Father said, ‘Christopher, do you understand that I love you?’

And I said, ‘Yes,’ because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.”

—from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon