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 said there has been a mistake. I send my mother between two and three thousand a month for her.

She stopped, and she said: every month?

I got my phone out and opened the banking app and turned it round on her desk and scrolled, and kept scrolling, and she watched five years of it go past.

She looked up at me and said: then we have a very serious situation here.

Then she took me down the corridor to a quiet study room where Talise was doing homework.

Through the glass I watched my daughter open her bag, take out that half roll, break it into a paper cup, and pour hot water on it from the dispenser to soften it.

Mrs Boateng said, very quietly: she does that most days. Half at twelve, the rest about three.

Shame arrived first. Then something else.

I said: has she got tattoos? Piercings? Is she skipping lessons? Is there a boy?