I blinked, the tears now cascading down my hot cheeks. It felt like I was trying to extract my voice from deep inside the pit in my stomach as I whispered: “Please – my mum will be so angry.”
She glared at me unsympathetically – yet another expression I had seen many, many times on mum’s face, instantly telling me that my pleas had fallen on deaf ears. “Well, maybe you ought to have thought of that before you were so insolent then, girl.” She tilted her head to one side in patronising faux sympathy and said in a sing-song voice: “It’s what I always say to my own children: Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”