‘Oh, you used to have tantrums too. I’m sure she’ll grow out of it. And they put them under a lot of pressure at a very young age these days, don’t they? I mean, once upon a time, she’d still have been at home, and you wouldn’t have had anybody poking round paying you visits. She’s not even five yet. Look, Paula, forgive me for being blunt, but are you sure you don’t just want to be let off the hook? Because, you know, if you manage to do this, if you succeed in having Daisy labelled in this way… doesn’t that mean nobody will ever expect anything more of her, or of you?’

‘Screw you, Mum,’ I said, perfectly calmly, and hung up.

I was astonished by what I’d said to her, and I knew she wouldn’t be quick to forgive me – she was likely to be sniffy for months, especially if I didn’t go out of my way to apologise. But when I reflected on it, I was rather pleased with myself. I just didn’t have the energy to spare for letting her get to me.

Somewhere along the line, I’d begun to develop tunnel vision. Daisy and I were in the tunnel, and everybody else was on the outside, and unless what they were saying was helpful to us, I rejected it or ignored it.

I knew Mark hated the way I’d frozen him out. But it was necessary. By this stage, the only way I could protect myself and Daisy was by refusing to take what he’d said on board. He looked as if he felt very hard done by almost all the time. But as far as I was concerned, if he wanted to feel close to me again, he’d have to learn to offload his fear and anger elsewhere, and he’d shown no sign of being willing to do that. He seemed to think it was my job to deal with his feelings, in much the same way that I was meant to shop and cook and clean and weed the garden.

I’d hardened. It didn’t seem like such a bad thing. It seemed necessary. After all, someone had to care for Daisy, and I couldn’t leave much of that to her father… or either of her grandmothers.

It was time to face facts; I might not be up to much, I might not be the best and most dedicated parent out there, but when it came to Daisy there was no one who could be her mum as well as well as I could, however flawed or inadequate I might be.

Finally, in May, Mark came with me to a meeting about Daisy for the first time. It was the session at which we were to discover whether or not she had been given an official diagnosis.

The diagnosis meeting came at the end of a full multidisciplinary assessment at the hospital in Oxford, a series of appointments spread across five days. Daisy didn’t join us; one of the hospital playworkers was looking after her in the nursery across the corridor, which was reserved purely for the use of children going through the assessment process. The meeting took place in a small, bare, tiled room furnished with a circle of chairs. Mark and I sat next to each other, each of us with a sheaf of papers on our knees, waiting to hear what the professionals sitting around the room had to say about Daisy.