Having my home invaded left me anxious and angry, but so did the calls to lock up the children who did it

‘They had taken my keys and wallet as we slept a few metres away, holding a carving knife my child had used to make dinner.’ Photograph: Fahroni/Alamy

I had modest plans for the Christmas just gone: get my family around, crank up the pizza oven, eat a whole box of shortbread on my own. More than anything, I wanted to relax. I hoped to be so intensely calm, in such exquisite respite, that I would simply become an amorphous blob and slide happily into my new life in a nearby drain.

Then my house was broken into.