Which had me thinking, ‘Honestly, do these people know nothing?’

I tried to be patient. I said, ‘Because the children we have here would chew straight through a wristband and probably swallow it, and how much trouble would there be then?’

What I meant was, I had no choice other than to put on neck collars, same as people have to with a dog or a cat. You have to put their identification tag where they can’t get at it and chew on it. And most of the children we had, they were so oblivious to the world around them, they wouldn’t have known the collars were there!

But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? The detective was appalled. He spoke into his little chest walkie-talkie thing, something about needing a doctor, and probably two, I suppose for the children. To me he said, ‘We’re going to be removing these children from your care today, Ms Delaney.’

Call me an idiot, Jack, but I was quite shocked to hear that. I said, ‘You can’t do that, I’m their registered carer.’ But they were a step ahead of me: one of the clipboard ladies came forward saying, ‘I’m from the Department and we are revoking your carer’s licence.’

So, just like that, after years of caring for children that nobody else wanted. I was out, gone. No excuse, no reason given, they threw me on the junk heap. I said, ‘On what grounds?’ The clipboard lady said, ‘The Department doesn’t need grounds. The Department can revoke your accreditation at any time.’

I said, ‘What am I supposed to have done?’ But they couldn’t answer me because I hadn’t done anything, had I? But of course I knew what was going on. I’d been taking kids for the Department for years, no complaints, and no questions asked. Of course I knew there was supposed to be a six-kid limit, like you couldn’t take more than six at a time, and everyone knew that the Department just ignored that and shoved kids wherever they could find places, and tried to make sure the Minister and the media never found out. And they were supposed to come and check on the kids all the time, and basically never did. And so our numbers had built up and built up, and I don’t believe anyone in the Department knew for certain how many kids we had in the end. They get staff moving through there like crazy, the turnover is massive, you’ve got different people ringing you all the time, nobody knows whether they’re Arthur or Martha, and so the numbers just went up and up, and since we never complained, what was the problem?

But then suddenly somebody had made a complaint about us – I didn’t find out until later that it was that crazy lady, Polly’s mum – and since the cops were looking for any excuse to stickybeak around my house because of Agnes going missing, they jumped on it. And so all the files got pulled and suddenly it’s whoa! She’s got nineteen in there! And that’s way out of bounds! And there’s been an allegation of some kind of abuse or I don’t know what. So let’s raid the place!