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.

What ended it was Vivika Storr, who is head of Year Eleven, who is about sixty and who has worked in that building for twenty-six years.

She did not raise her voice. She came up on Rhoswen’s left and said: Mrs Brann, we’ve got a room down the corridor. Come with me.

And Rhoswen let go of my wrist and went with her, immediately, without one word.

Vivika came back about forty minutes later and sat down in the parent’s chair opposite me, in a hall that had mostly emptied out, and said two things.

The first was: you are going home now and I am going to drive you.

The second was: I’ve put in a safeguarding note and I’ve named you in it, and I’m telling you that to your face rather than letting you find out on Monday.

I said thank you and I meant it, and I have meant it more every month since.

Because that is exactly right. There was a child in the middle of it and there was a member of staff with a personal connection nobody had declared, and it did not matter one bit that I had not known — the note was correct on the day it was written.