‘Right, Bonnie, enough!’ I say, as I pick her up with my spare hand. I don’t know how I manage it, sheer desperation maybe, but soon she is up and on my hip. She kicks and pulls but I hold her as tight as I can and I storm out of the room. Teachers try to stop me, but I need to get out of here. And I can’t come back. Not now they have seen my legs.

I pick the stroller up with my left hand and carry both Bonnie and it out of the door and on to the street. The split wide open. Why oh why would this happen on the day I didn’t wear tights?

I call Liam. The phone rings out. I call again. No answer. He texts immediately.

Sorry, in Amsterdam at this conference. Everything OK?

Damn it, I forgot he’s away this week. I tell him nothing is wrong. He replies again with a picture of a very unattractive dog he said he saw.

Can you show this to Bonnie? She loves a dog!

I don’t reply.

My phone rings out twice, then rings again. I’d put it back in my bag and am desperately trying to retrieve it while Bonnie screams in her buggy.

‘I want to go back to nursery,’ she chants. I want her to go back too, but I am too distressed to turn around. They think I’m crazy. They saw my legs. I can never go back. Ever.

By the time I find my phone I see that I have three missed calls from my mother. She hasn’t called me in around three months. Why now? It’s like she knows. I am having a disastrous parenting moment and she is right there to rub it in.

I struggle on for a while and we come to the entrance of a park. I push Bonnie in, and let her out of her buggy. She immediately runs off and starts collecting sticks and leaves, happy. I take a seat on a bench and call my mother back, taking in a long slow breath before I do.

‘Who is this?’ she asks when she answers. She is drunk, I can tell.

‘Hello, Mum, I saw that you called.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m in a park with Bonnie,’ I tell her, knowing this mood well, and knowing that detailed responses are pointless. ‘Just calling back to check you’re alive.’

‘Like you care, you little beast,’ she says, followed by a cackle so loud I put my hand over my phone to make sure no one else in the park hears it.

‘Don’t be unkind, Mother.’

‘What did you say?’ she asks, her tone instantly snapping into defence mode.

‘I said, please don’t be unkind. I don’t like it when you call me that.’