This song is about a mother's willingness to protect her child at all costs.
Kate Bush explained in a 1985 interview: "It's about a mother and her strong maternal, protective instincts, but it's dealing with a son who's committed a bad crime. And to her, her instincts overrule what's right or wrong.
I think that's what's interesting - it's how some mothers will actually overrule their sense of morality because they love their son or their child so much."
Kate said about this song - "Quite often I find synthetic sounds create a coldness, and if the track is lonely or sad or dark, sometimes you want that kind of coldness, that machine-like coldness which is very specific," she explained in a 1992 radio documentary. "With acoustic instruments you get a very warm, human presence and something that's intimate and really there. Something that breathes, not this kind of dead, cold machine, and I feel that both are very useful depending on what you want to say."
Kate added: "The personality that sings this track is very unfeeling in a way, and the cold qualities of synths and machines were appropriate here.
There are many different kinds of love, and the track's really talking about the love of a mother, and in this case she's the mother of a murderer.
She's prepared to protect her son against anything, so it's suggesting that the son is using the mother as much as the mother is protecting him."