I woke early and alone on the sunny morning of Friday 12 August 2022. I was having coffee at the moment my husband, the Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, was nearly killed in a stabbing on stage in Chautauqua, New York.
This was the last morning, innocent and ordinary, before my life was shattered by the 27 seconds Salman’s attacker took to stab him more than a dozen times, driving a knife into his right eye until it nearly touched his optic nerve.