How do you explain to a child who has a wobbly grasp on Tens and Units the notion of five thousand?

"How many is five thousand, teacher?"

A lot, an awful lot. An awful lot of bodies. As the reality of the Manhattan horror sinks in, the questions keep on coming. The talk the day after was all of special effects, an awed discussion of the movie-like nature of two planes colliding with the twin towers. It was still Hollywood at this stage.

By the next day, most of the children had become sensitive to the real human element in what had happened. Part of this was because of the outpouring of shock and horror which they had seen on TV and part was the talk they heard in their own homes. And there were more questions.

"Are the people alive underneath? Will they get them all out in time?"

It's heart-breaking to try to answer questions like that to a child. But they demand as honest an answer as you can give. "Probably not all of them," is honest, but not the answer I want to give or they want to hear.

We tried to focus our feelings in the traditional way. We lit candles and prayed for the dead, the injured, the bereaved, the American President and the rescue workers. It's harder to pray for those who have done this awful thing - but to have intentionally caused such horror, they must need prayers too.

Colleen thanks God for taking care of her American Dad who was flying home from the US. Tomβs has a brother who was working on a building a few blocks from the explosion. Safe too.

We try to channel our feelings into something concrete. We e-mail a primary school in Manhattan that we have found on the Internet, telling how sorry we are for their troubles. We draw a huge dove and colour it in the American colours and stick scraps of paper with prayers for peace on it. And we search for answers to the questions that still keep coming - but fail to find answers.