Something has gone badly wrong and everybody is looking at you. You:

Do it, because nobody else is going to, and resent it slightly.Have three options ready and know which one is least bad.Make a joke, then quietly do the frightening part.Say the strange true thing that turns out to be the answer.

How you handle a rule that everybody else is following:

Follow it, until the day you very suddenly don't.Follow it loudly. Being seen to follow it is the point.Follow the letter of it, and undermine it completely.Break it kindly, for something small that needed help.

What you were like at school:

Somehow always in the middle of whatever was happening.The friend. Funny, loyal, standing next to somebody brighter.Quiet, anxious, and underestimated by absolutely everybody.Top of the one subject you cared about, difficult about the rest.

Somebody you love is being unfair to you. You:

Tell them exactly why, with examples, in order.Say something oblique they then think about for three days.Say nothing, and take it out on somebody smaller.Forgive it immediately, which is its own kind of problem.

Pick the thing you would find hardest to forgive:

Somebody hurting a person who was under your protection.Being laughed at by people who never bothered to look properly.Being told, again, that you were not up to it.Cruelty to something that could not defend itself.

Your relationship with your family:

You are the first to do this, and they don't entirely understand.Loving, loud, and you have spent your life in somebody's shadow.A name and a set of expectations you never asked for.Complicated, largely unspoken, and mostly in the past.

How you love people:

Absolutely, and by standing in front of them.By doing the work: the research, the plan, the rescue.Quietly, for years, and then all at once when it counts.Badly at first, and then better than anybody expected.

What people misjudge about you:

They think you are the comic relief.They think you are not paying attention.They think it is coldness. It is an old wound, kept warm.They think you are simple. You are just not suspicious.

Pick the job you would secretly want:

Something where turning up matters more than being clever.Something nobody has got a name for yet.Something with your family's name already on the door.Teaching. Badly paid, quietly feared, secretly good at it.

How you handle being proved wrong in public:

Go quiet, go home, and read until it cannot happen again.Laugh, agree, and feel it for far longer than you show.Take it calmly. You have been wrong before and survived it.Apologise enormously, at length, to everybody present.

The thing you would want to be told, and believe:

"You went first, and you were frightened the whole time.""You were right, and you had already checked.""You never once made me feel like the lesser one.""You are not like anybody, and you never tried to be."

The one line you would want in the retelling:

"They turned out braver than anyone would have guessed.""They stopped being who they were raised to be.""They were on the right side the whole time, and told nobody.""They were kind to everything, including the difficult things."