Oh, don’t ask me how I knew that’s where they were from, Jack, it’s just that they all have a certain look – the social-worker look – with big coloured earrings and short cropped hair and cheap shoes and kaftan dresses that might have come from Nepal or somewhere. I said to them, ‘Are you police? If you’re not police what are you doing here? How can I help you?’ But they wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

The detective – the one who had addressed me as Sally Narelle – said, ‘How many children are we looking for?’ And whoever those Departmental women were, they either couldn’t bring themselves to say the number or they basically didn’t know, because instead of answering they started burrowing into their clipboards, which is another favourite thing for social workers to do.

I got so sick of waiting for them to answer, I said, ‘We have nineteen children in our care – nineteen State wards. What’s the problem here? I’ve been a registered carer in this house for years.’

But nobody was listening to me, Jack. They were all off down the hall, where the SWAT team had already broken another door down – this time the door to the children’s room, the big one we created by knocking out a few walls, not that they had any idea what they wanted to do once they’d knocked the door down. I don’t know what they expected to find. There were only children in there, most of them on their beds.

‘They’re naked,’ one of the SWAT people said.

‘They’ve got collars,’ said one of the others, as if everyone couldn’t see that.

‘They’re attached to the beds.’

‘Call the lady.’

I guessed they meant me, so I came down the hall and I stood there in the broken doorway with my hands on my hips, looking at the damage they’d done to my door, and I said, ‘What’s going on here?’

‘What are these collars?’ the detective said. ‘What are these numbers?’

I said, ‘What do you mean, what are those numbers? They’re my numbers.’

The detective said, ‘Why are they in collars? Why are there numbers on the collars?’

I didn’t try to hide anything, Jack. I said, ‘The numbers are for identification purposes. The children who come to me, they come with a case file number. I need that number in order to get a payment for each child.’

The detective said, ‘You get paid to have these kids here?’

I said, ‘Of course I do. It’s not something you’d do for nothing! I’m not a free hospital! Of course I get paid. I get an allowance. All foster carers get an allowance. But you wouldn’t believe how often the Department screws up the payments. Every week, there’s some kind of mistake. So I make sure I keep the numbers and the children together, so I can keep track of the payments.’

The detective said, ‘But why do you put the numbers on collars? Why couldn’t you put the numbers on the wall behind the bed, or on a wristband? Why these heavy neck collars?’