‘Oh, stop being such a drama queen!’ she says when she comes out of her fit of hysterics. ‘You’ll get another job, don’t panic. You’ve always been a lucky sod, so no doubt you’ll come out of this one bigger and better too so no need to fret. Teachers need cover all the time and you might even pick up a maternity leave between now and September, or sick leave or something. You did the right thing, sister. Chill out and enjoy – oh my God I really can’t believe you actually quit!’

And then she is off again. The whole morning is basically a repeat of this, and Sophie’s reaction isn’t very different when the news reaches her.

‘My mother just rang me to say you called Miss Jean Brady a witch to her face!’ she howls down the phone. ‘She’s on the board of that school and she is over the moon because she hates her too! High five, Charlotte Taylor Malone! You just said what hundreds of people in Dublin are thinking! But what the hell are you going to do with yourself now?’

I didn’t exactly call her a witch, but Chinese whispers and all that … plus I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do now but I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. At least I agree for once with Sophie’s mother – now that’s a turn-up for the books.

When I ring her that evening to break the news, my own mother is equally as shocked as Sophie, but much less impressed.

I must admit I actually contemplated telling Matthew first to soften the blow, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to hold back on his daily phone call from Loughisland to Galway (my parents call him religiously every evening after the six o’clock news). But I realized that would be unfair and I should really be a big girl and own up.

‘What on earth did you have to quit for?’ she keeps saying, over and over again, no matter how many times I give her examples of how Miss Jean Brady has been treating me since I first set foot in the school. I tell her about my clothes (big mistake, she agrees), my pronunciation (she’s a bit offended because she couldn’t afford to send me to elocution lessons) and finally about my music (again, she doesn’t see the big deal in that one).

‘I just couldn’t take it any more,’ I say with my eyes closed, getting a flashback to when I was a teenager caught skipping school and knew I had to admit it, hoping when I opened my eyes the whole problem would have disappeared and be forgotten. But no matter how much I try and explain, it doesn’t seem to cut the ice with my mother.