I flew home to tell my daughter off for wasting the money I’d been sending for five years. I found her at school eating half a bread roll — and then the counsellor told me she’d been registered as a low-income student since the year I left.

Give me that and go home. Well?

I did not give it to her.

That is the entire extent of what I did in that building, and I have been called strong for it about nine times and it was not strength.

I could not have formed a sentence. I stood there holding forty photocopies and looked at a woman I have known my whole life and could not think of one single thing to say to her.

Mrs Boateng ended it.

She came out from behind the desk and said, to my mother, in an ordinary voice: Mrs Falk, you’re not on the collection list for Talise and I need you to wait outside.

That is all she said. One administrative sentence.

And my mother let go of my arm and went, immediately, without a word, and stood in the car park for about forty minutes.

I have thought about that a great deal since.