Ah, Jesus, I know what she’s on about now. I feel my hands start to tremble, not with fear as they usually do when I’m sitting in this leather chair of doom, but with absolute frustration and bad temper at what’s coming.

I nod slowly. I’ve an urge to roll my eyes and sigh but I remain poker-faced as I’ve trained myself to do by now. This must be the fifth occasion I’ve been called into her office, but this is the most pathetic and insulting reason so far.

‘You brought a guitar into school yesterday?’ she says, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow above her black-rimmed glasses. ‘Is that correct? A guitar?’

I open and close my hands, feeling the fizz of adrenaline pump to my fingertips, and then I breathe through my nose, trying my best to control the string of expletives that are lining up on my tongue.

‘Do you have an answer to my question?’ she asks, drumming her shiny French manicured nails on the pretentious leather mouse mat in front of her. Everything in this hell hole palace is branded with the precious school logo, which is gold, of course, and says something in Latin that nobody even knows how to translate.

‘Yes, I did bring my guitar into school, Mrs Brady.’

‘Miss!’ she corrects me.

Whoops.

‘Yes, I did,’ I repeat, feeling my voice shake. I think of Jack’s words to me when we last discussed my job here. Don’t take any more shit, Charlotte. Not one more ounce of her nonsense. If that witch insults you again, stand up to her and tell her to shove her job where the sun doesn’t shine. You’re far too talented and smart to be treated like that. Don’t take it ever again, not for one more single day.

‘Why?’ she asks me, lifting a pen now to make some notes on her branded, lined block of paper. I have an overwhelming urge to tip the desk and its entire contents over and storm away, but I’d probably end up in jail for assault if I did, so I contain myself.

I breathe in and out, counting quickly the days I have to endure to get to the end of term when we’ll break up for summer and I’ll hold onto a full two months of pay from the pockets of the rich who send their silver-spoon-born offspring here. Ten more teaching days, that’s all I’d have to last if I can just hold back and not react to this nonsense.

‘I don’t have much more time to waste on this matter, so if you don’t mind, maybe you could answer me why?’ she says to me.

I twist my mouth, trying to decide on my reaction.