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.

I went straight into the guidance office.

I said: I’m Desmond Falk. Talise Falk’s father.

And Mrs Boateng’s eyes went wide and she said: you’re Desmond?

Something in the way she said my name turned my stomach over and I did not know why yet.

She brought the file up on her screen. My name is on it as father and guardian.

The phone number on that file is not mine. The last three digits are wrong.

I saw that and I thought: typing error. I said so out loud. I said somebody’s fat-fingered it.

Then she went through some other documents and her face changed.

She said: Mr Falk, your daughter has been in our subsidised low-income programme for years.

I said: low-income?

She said: free lunches, help with supplies, fee waivers, bus passes.

I laughed. I laughed at that woman in her own office and I have apologised for it twice since.