But, when Father Hughes buzzed his assistant to let someone in, the door opened and in walked a cheerful, middle-aged man with a golfer’s tan, thinning grey hair and a flashy watch. I groaned and slumped down in my seat.

This wasn’t an exorcism – this was worse.

It was my dad.

Nothing explains my feminist rage more than the fact that my very earliest origins were in these privileged white balls. Of course, my molecular rebel self shot out of there like a bat out of Polo Ralph Lauren hell, but still …

‘Hey there!’ my dad boomed, bounding towards Father Hughes for a vigorous handshake. ‘Hughie, my man! Good to see you! Look at you in the big office up here – it blows my mind!’ Still holding Father Hughes’s hand hostage, he turned to me. ‘Hey, Al, do you know your principal and I were both Class of Eighty-Nine? Not only that, we’re both St Francis Hall men! Fourth floor, right, Hughie?’

‘That’s right.’ Father Hughes smiled briefly. ‘You must remember climbing all those stairs to copy my theology homework.’

‘There’s my excuse,’ I piped up. ‘Corruption runs in my blood.’

But my dad didn’t hear that; he was going on and on about the good old days at St Mary’s, and dumb dorm pranks, and some cranky priest who used to make them swim naked in gym class (I’ll need at least a minor hallucinogenic to get that disturbing image out of my head). Other than squeezing my shoulder and kissing my head carelessly before sitting down, my dad basically ignored me, but he did turn to me to say, ‘Would you believe that back when we were students St Mary’s was still an all-boys’ school?’

‘Wow,’ I said drily. ‘It must have been crazy patriarchal back then.’

Father Hughes was not in the mood to bro out with my dad. He cleared his throat and tried to set a more serious tone, even calling my dad ‘Mr Heck’ instead of Wingnut, or Captain Blueballs, or whatever his dorm nickname was back in the day.

‘Mr Heck,’ he said, ‘it is clear your daughter is a strong-willed young woman …’

Pagan she-demon.

‘And an individual thinker …’

Spawn of Satan.

‘But, as I explained over the phone, it has become clear that my disciplinary actions are no longer effective in your daughter’s case. A serious decision must be made.’

‘Righto,’ said my dad. ‘Definitely. Absolutely. Hey, Hughie, is the hockey stadium open? I’d love to see my MVP trophy from Eighty-Nine – do you remember that championship, man?’

From the look in Father Hughes’s eyes, I could tell I wasn’t the only Heck in the room that he considered a pain in the ass.

The principal asked to speak to my dad alone, so I sat out in the hallway, slumped against the wall, staring at the shut door.