The male guest is wearing a shirt in a mushy colour, bad for TV. He clasps Claire’s hand in a damp grip and says, ‘You must be as nervous as me. I mean – I don’t mean …’

Sweat glistens on his forehead. The make-up girl powders it away, obliterating freckles, revealing that without them his face does not make sense. The woman in the blue dress refuses to be powdered: just refuses, with the flat of her hand. Her skin is so clear and dewy that Claire wonders if she’s pregnant.

A crackle. —Back to you in ten, nine, eight …

On the screen Claire sees the school photo looming behind her shoulder, long face, red hair. She pokes the earpiece, then straightens up and sets her shoulders as the text begins to scroll.

‘THE DEATH OF TEENAGER BEVERLEY PARKER HAS LED TO RENEWED CALLS FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITIES OF ADULTS WHO WORK WITH CHILDREN TO BE MORE CLOSELY REGULATED. BEVERLEY TOOK HER OWN LIFE LAST FRIDAY AT HER FAMILY HOME IN BIRMINGHAM, JUST THREE MONTHS AFTER THE CONVICTION OF HER FORMER PHYSICS TEACHER NEAL RICHARDS ON CHARGES OF SEXUAL ACTIVITY WITH A CHILD. IT WAS REVEALED DURING THE TRIAL THAT IN ADDITION TO HAVING SEX WITH THE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS, RICHARDS HAD BEEN SENDING HER UP TO A DOZEN MESSAGES A DAY VIA TEXT AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES. THE COUPLE CONTINUED TO WRITE LETTERS TO EACH OTHER EVEN AFTER HE HAD BEEN ARRESTED.

‘CAROLINE LOVELL,’ Claire says, turning to the woman in the blue dress, ‘your organisation Mothers of the Innocent has been one of the loudest voices calling for increased regulation. What exactly do you want to see happen?’

As if she runs purely off the energy of live television, Caroline springs to life, all lassitude gone.

‘What we don’t want to see,’ she says, ‘are any more cases like the tragic case of Beverley Parker, a young girl taken advantage of systematically by her teacher over a number of months, a shocking sequence of events, which has now ended with young Beverley taking her own life. What we are proposing is that schools insist on all contact between teachers and pupils taking place through school systems only, where it can be properly tracked—’

‘That isn’t the case already?’

‘No, it’s not, not clearly enough. Everyone agrees that social media contact with pupils isn’t a good idea, but teachers are simply trusted to use their own judgement. What we want to see, and what we believe the British public would like to see, are much clearer boundaries about what’s appropriate, so that everyone knows right from wrong—’

‘But Richards did know it was wrong,’ Claire says, glancing at her notes, ‘he admitted as much in court, so how would that—’