It was something that used to occasionally get me in trouble at school, this need to make the smart comeback, both with teachers and other pupils. I knew that I did it, yet somehow I still never managed to rein it in. This was the first time I’d had a complaint like this though.

While the class had a rare five minutes of quietly getting on with their work, I opened a document and started to make a note of what had happened yesterday morning. I felt uneasy when I remembered what I said to Jackie, that I hadn’t physically touched Tyler at all. Was it too late to say so now? I made a decision. I’d include it in the report and deal with the fact that I remembered differently when I gave it to her.

The other thing I intended to do was find out what sort of car Lee Bennett drove. Because if he was in such a strop that he was prepared to knock me off my bike for it, I might have an even greater problem than I first realized.

At the end of the day I lurked in the playground on the guise of checking an outdoor display of bamboo fencing that last year’s upper school had made. Tyler was late coming out and I wondered if he had been given a telling-off as he crossed the playground, all slouch and sad-sack trousers. His thick, pale ankles with pooled off-white socks ended in a pair of non-regulation trainers. He held his trendy but impractical messenger bag so low that it scuffed along the surface of the playground.

I pretended I was looking around but kept one eye on the gate for any signs of Lee. And there he was. Standing just outside and smoking a fag, which he extinguished and chucked onto the pavement. His expression didn’t change when he saw his son, but he rubbed his knuckles on the boy’s head in a way that looked mildly uncomfortable.

They began to walk off towards a side road and I was willing to bet that was where, like many of the local parents, he parked his car. I hurried across the playground to follow them, ignoring another parent’s attempt to catch my attention. I caught sight of Milly, a reception teacher, who was watching me for some reason, but I ignored her too and hurried out of the gate before I lost sight of them.

I was about to dash across the road when a white Range Rover, driving far too quickly, screeched to a halt by the yellow zigzags outside the school gates, about two feet from me.

A woman with oversized sunglasses and even bigger hair was glowering at me over the steering wheel, as if I was the unreasonable person in this scenario.

‘Hey,’ I called. ‘This is a school! You don’t drive like that on this road. You could kill a child!’