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.

There was an entire half of a picture that he did not give them.

A second child. Alive. Four months younger than ours. Same father.

With her own health record sitting in a GP practice eleven miles away under a different surname, and a full set of the first four years of childhood in it.

He stood in that corridor for twelve days holding that.

And every single time somebody in a lanyard asked the question, he made the decision again.

He has been asked, since, by a solicitor, whether he ever came close to saying it.

He said yes, twice.

Once on the third day, in the corridor, when a registrar asked him directly whether there were any other children in the family and he said no, and then stood there for about a minute afterwards.

And once on the tenth day, at about four in the morning, when he was alone with Iona while I was asleep down the hall, and he says he had decided to tell me when I woke up.

I did wake up. He brought me a coffee at about seven and asked whether I had slept.

That is the part people miss and it is the whole of it. It was not one moment of panic on the first afternoon.