She couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter how politically correct you were. How happily you embraced the ideas of gender equality and eventual world peace. You just couldn’t deny that Harald was a man and that with very few exceptions, child molesters were men.

‘No, not Angela,’ howled Siri, who had disliked her since her first day. ‘Harald help me.’ On the other hand, she’d never liked Siri either.

‘I mean, really, I’m fine doing it.’ Harald hoisted the girl up on his shoulders as though the overfed little lump weighed nothing at all.

‘No, I’ll take her. I have to go myself anyway,’ she lied, and she pulled the protesting Siri down from Harald’s shoulders.

No one could tell her she didn’t know what she was talking about. Not after what happened with Krister. And she’d worked with that man for more than five years. Five years, during which he’d been the children’s favourite, always happy to pull out his guitar and sing a song or read a book aloud with intense feeling, unless, of course, he made up his own story. He of all people had done things to the children that were so horrible she still wasn’t over it.

Some of her co-workers had even told her in confidence they couldn’t help suspecting him of the unthinkable. And every time she’d defended him, on occasion taking it so far she’d ended up in a conflict situation with the co-worker in question.

Never again, she’d promised herself after that rude awakening. Never again would she stick her head in the sand without a clue about what the children were suffering. That was why she never left Harald alone with the children if she could help it. Without making a big deal of it, she always made sure she or someone else on the team was present, too.

Harald obviously wanted to know what her problem was and had gone so far as to ask her bluntly in one of their staff meetings. But she had stubbornly denied it had anything to do with him being a man. Instead, she’d referred to her interpretation of the curriculum, which said the children should always be supervised by at least one fully trained teacher, and until he was fully trained, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

As expected, Siri refused to pee. To avoid an accident on the playground, she forced her to stay on the loo until she couldn’t hold it any longer and eventually emptied her bladder. She couldn’t say why, but a nagging feeling of having made the wrong decision was growing stronger with every step she took on their way back towards the playground.