When the attacks began I joined a group on social media, a long, scrolling roster of Ukrainian women and children seeking refuge in the United Kingdom. The photos were different, but the messages were always the same.

Now there is war in our country.

Now we must leave our home.

Please help us.

I messaged the young woman because she hoped to join my own profession, a point of connection that might anchor us. Still studying for her psychology degree, she was already counselling refugees with trauma, a subject on which she was now an expert by experience. Her daughter loved ice skating as much as my own child, but in other ways they diverged. The little girl had begun covering her dolls at night with scraps of fabric to save them from explosions, and this my daughter had never done.

The husband could not come with the family to England, she said, but would stay behind in Kiev to do what he could for home and country. Their beloved cats and dogs had been spirited to safer places, but he had promised to look after the solitary pet that remained: a geriatric hamster who preferred goat’s cheese and spiralised carrots when supply chains allowed.

Even as this stranger and I began our conversations, I quailed in the face of such a mammoth undertaking, such a commitment. But, I asked myself, why shouldn’t we offer our home as sanctuary?

Sometimes I like lying in the guest bedroom and looking at the new colour on the walls.

I might tread painfully on the little girl’s Lego. She might like my old nemesis, glitter.

When I’m in early Zoom meetings, the child might make noise as she leaves for school.

Meanwhile, bombs rained down on Kiev, and atrocities were committed in Bucha, and the nature of my hesitations made me feel like an asshole.

They settled in with uncanny ease. We two mothers cooked food for one another and our children. We talked for many hours, in a hodge-podge of English, German, app-translated Russian and Ukrainian. The neighbours brought Barbies and play-date invitations for the little girl, coffees and offers of friendship for her mother. Here was a moment of great beauty amongst so much horror in the world.

I feel like I can finally breathe,the mother said. We are safe.

The weeks passed, and the mother became sad as her little girl’s birthday approached. She described the elaborate parties they’d always held: the beautiful cakes, the colourful balloons, the many friends. This year would be different, so different.

Her own birthday fell in the same month. I hadn’t known before how old she was, but now she revealed that soon she would be 30. Young, so young.

Before the war, she said, she and her husband had not been more than four days parted in a decade. She FaceTimed with him for hours, her bedroom shades shut tight against the bright spring sunshine. Perhaps the darkness helped her see him better. She cried and cried.

More weeks passed. One day, as I searched for an ingredient amongst new packets of Cyrillic-labelled food in the cupboard, the mother entered the kitchen with exciting news. She and her daughter would return to visit Kiev for a fortnight. Planes, trains, and automobiles through Poland and Western Ukraine would bear the little family back to the husband, the father. The trip would be fraught with danger, she said, but the peril would be worth it for them to celebrate their birthdays in their own home.

My thoughts came slowly. I feel worried,I said, noticing my words came slowly too.

Her brow creased, but she smiled to reassure me. If the worst happened, she said, if they did not make it through, would I please give their clothes and toys to other Ukrainian refugees?

I was not reassured.

On the phone she clutched were many open tabs, websites for charting their circuitous and uncertain route home. She swiped through the screens with her beautifully manicured thumb. I nodded dumbly, my smile fixed.

Are you sure? I said, finally.

Yes,she replied. To be at home in Kiev for our birthdays is my dream.

In two weeks’ time they would return to us, the mother said. The little girl would go back to her English school, where she was sometimes lonely because she spoke only Russian, but that would change. She and my daughter would go ice skating again, holding hands, balancing on the sharp-edged blades.

My husband predicted what people would say. If their Ukrainians would rather go back to a war zone than stay there one more minute, it must be really bad at their house. He laughed, miming the twitching of a nosey neighbour’s curtain.

The night before their departure, I attended a friend’s birthday dinner. Eight women, all of us mothers, sat around a table in the garden. We ate takeaway curry and quaffed Prosecco, relaxing in the balmy evening. The guests asked after my Ukrainians. People always used this possessive: they were our Ukrainians.

Fearing their judgement, I admittedthat even as we spoke my Ukranians were preparing to leave us. They were packing more slowly than they had when fleeing the Russian rockets, but the silent questions circling in the mother’s mind were probably largely the same, with one exception.

What do we take? What do we leave behind?

Are we doing the right thing?

Will we ever come back?

Are our birthdays really worth risking our lives?

Message them, someone at the party said urgently, and other voices joined with hers. Stop them. Say we’ll throw a lovely party for their birthdays.

I will,I said.

But I didn’t write the message. I didn’t understand her decision, but I knew there could be no formula. Her calculus and mine were not and could never be the same.

I saw the little girl’s pink balloons and beautiful cake on Instagram Stories. Her mother is very good at Instagram. The little girl twirled in her frilly pink birthday dress. The house looked beautiful, and I envied the kitchen.

Later that day, the mother sent me a message with the video attached. This time, it was unedited, unfiltered.

In the beautiful kitchen the little girl twirled amongst the balloons and cake as the grown-ups stood close by. For the first time I noticed the tightness in the adult’s faces, how their eyes flickered to the tall windows and back again, how they tried to smile while frowning. I turned the volume up.

In the background the air-raid sirens wailed, wailed without ceasing. The sirens drowned out the little girl’s delight at her gifts. They drowned out the birthday song.

We will stay in Kiev,my new friend wrote. If we die, at least we die together.

I did not understand.

I completely understand,I replied.

I wanted to say something different, longed to do something more. But what was there to do? What could I do?

I sent them my love. I typed an x, an o. I wished them many happy returns for their birthdays, hoping for so many, many more.