‘The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing, and renews faith in the world, and defies the scientific hocus-pocus of selfish genes. Not everything we do is for personal gain, thank god, or even because we hope one day that someone will be kind to us in return. Sometimes there is love – a very unscientific emotion that is always surprising.

When I was writing my kids’ book, Tanglewreck, it was important to me that Silver rescues Gabriel out of the Black Hole because she allows for a miracle. Even light cannot escape a Black Hole, though light travels at 300,000 kilometres a second. Travelling at the speed of light is not fast enough to make escape possible, but through Silver, Gabriel travels at the speed of love.

I suspect that love has a number of different speeds. Sometimes it will belt the universe as fast as light or faster. Sometimes it will take a slow train through France.

It may be that love is a good speed selector, and teaches us the right movement for all that we need to do, Maybe love, the most unscientific of criterion, is exactly the yardstick we need to make our judgements.

I don’t know what else can get you out of a Black Hole.’