She looked at me in serious surprise, especially as my tone was edgy, challenging. But then her eyes narrowed, like a cat realizing she had prey in her sights. And she pounced – knowing full well what would follow. Knowing I was about to be trapped again in an argument I would never win … but which I was now suddenly willing to wade right into.

‘Maybe they paid him more to work at a place that kills babies,’ she said.

I reached for a spoon on the kitchen table and found myself twisting it between my hands – an attempt to keep my anger under control. She saw this, saw the effect her words were having on me. She smiled.

‘You really think they’re paid more because they carry out legal abortions?’ I asked.

‘Of course they are,’ she said, ‘because they have all that extra money from the pro-choice brigade, all of whom are funding these clinics.’

‘The reasons they have security guards there is because of the threats they receive. You don’t hear of the pro-lifers being threatened by people who are in favor of abortion.’

‘But the people leading the campaign against abortion aren’t engaged in the murder of the innocent.’

‘That security guard was certainly innocent,’ I said.

‘You choose to work in an abortion clinic …’

‘What? The fact that you work there means you deserve to be killed? Like that doctor shot in Nebraska by your pro-life friends?’

‘They are not my friends …’

‘Yeah, they are.’

‘I would never condone violence. I would never engage in violence. Killing doctors is wrong. But working at an abortion clinic is now a risky job. And why are you bending that spoon out of shape?’

I looked down and saw that I had indeed twisted the spoon into a sort of circular sculpture. Nearly snapping it in half.

‘Maybe I don’t agree with you.’

‘So you take it out on the spoon?’

‘The spoon can handle the pain,’ I said, tossing it down and reaching for my jacket, my phone, my car keys.

‘You’re running off because of what I said?’ she asked, sounding thrown by the way our exchange had turned angry and how I was now walking out.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be around your extremism.’

‘I’m hardly extreme. I am just saying –’

‘I know what the hell you’re saying – and I don’t like it.’

‘But you went with me last year to that pro-life rally.’

‘Because you kept on insisting that I had to be there. Maybe I now don’t think that “abortionists” – as you call them – are murderers. Maybe I think choice is choice – and a woman has a right to decide –’

Agnieska’s eyes went wide – as if I had just jumped over to the dark side; what she saw as the immoral side.

‘Tell me you don’t really think that.’