I buried my eight-year-old daughter. Eight years later a new student walked into my classroom with her face, and when I finally called that girl’s parents in for a meeting, the door opened and my own husband was standing in it.

Then she said: I am telling you this because you asked me to be straight with you, and because I have watched people spend twenty years on the other version of this question.

I asked her one more thing and I nearly did not.

I asked whether she remembered him.

She said yes. Immediately, without checking the file, which told me more than the answer did.

She said she remembered a father who asked very good questions and who took notes, and who was the one who asked about the tests rather than about the outcome, and that this is not as common as people assume.

She said: I remember thinking he was frightened and coping with it by being useful.

I sat in that chair and thought about a man standing in a corridor with a notebook, asking a consultant good questions about tests, and holding a thing in his pocket that those tests could not reach.

Dr Adisa looked at my face and said: you’ve thought of something.

And I said no.

She let that go, which I appreciated, and which I think she saw straight through.

I believe her. I have read my notes of that conversation four times and I believe her completely.