I was hired to sit with a man the doctors said had five days left. One night I laid my teething baby on his chest — and his fingers moved. Then he whispered: don’t tell anyone I’m awake.

If I had rung it in week two, here is what happens — and I know this because I have since spoken to somebody it happened to.

They open a file. They notify the client, which is the family, which is Christo. They put you on paid suspension for two weeks while they look into it.

Paid suspension means no live-in placement. Live-in placement is the room.

So the honest sentence is not I could have lost my job.

It is: my son and I would have been in a hostel by the Friday, with a file open, with a reference that says ongoing matter, and I would have found out four weeks later whether I had been right.

That is the actual price and I want it on the page, because women in my job are told to speak up by people who have somewhere to sleep on Friday.

Because that job is the only one that lets me keep my son with me, and losing it means losing the room we sleep in, and I have been in the other version of that and I am not going back.

I did not stay quiet because I was frightened of those men.