How long will it take before this is forgotten? Weeks? Months? Never?

Back in my car, I synced my mobile to my Facebook account and found the picture of me being led into Kilburn Police Station. I couldn’t delete it – or the copies that had been made by others who had shared it – but by untagging myself I could at least reduce its visibility just a little. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

A thought came to me. I clicked on David Bramley’s account and checked through his profile. His avatar picture was Hulk’s snarling face from the latest Avengers movie. No information about school, or home town, or relationship status. He had eleven friends, a few of whom I recognised, and had set up his account this year. He had only ever posted once: the picture of me being led into the police station. There was almost nothing that looked genuine about the account, but I needed to know who my enemies were – even though I had a pretty good idea who ‘David Bramley’ would turn out to be. I sent him a friend request.

I drove home and sat in the kitchen, talking on the phone to my union representative. It turned out there wasn’t much that could be done, in the short term, about being suspended. An appeal would take several weeks before the process even got going, for appointments to be made, meetings to be had, second opinions to be given on whether my suspension was legitimate in the circumstances. If there was no further action taken on the suspension, it would be expunged from my record and would not count against me. But that was the best I could hope for.

For the time being at least, I was suspended, and that was that.

It felt weird to be sitting at home on a Tuesday morning during term time, the house quiet, watching the clock tick by. First period, second period. It was just after 10 a.m. and I should have been discussing Coral Island with the children of 7D. Instead I was sitting at the breakfast bar in my kitchen, drinking tea, wondering how everything had got messed up so badly.

A few days ago my life had been pretty good. I just hadn’t realised it. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. It was a cliché for a good reason: because it was true. Now I had to put my family back together again, and it seemed that meeting Ben might not be a bad place to start. Not only to tell him to stay away from Mel – and ensure he got the message loud and clear – but to get a picture of him. Give the picture to the police, get them off my back.

My phone buzzed twice on the kitchen table: two notifications. David Bramley had accepted my friend request, and then messaged me straight away.