I am a woman who was raised to be helpful.

I was wearing a dressing gown.

There were two men in uniform on my step with equipment on their belts, being perfectly polite, and the single most powerful social force operating in that doorway was my desire not to be the sort of person who makes difficulties on her own porch at a quarter to seven in the morning.

So I got my son some trousers, and I got my own coat on over pyjamas, and I put my thirteen-year-old into the back of a marked patrol car, and I got in beside him, and I let two officers drive my child to a location they had not named, to be spoken to by a person they had not identified, about a matter they had not described, with no lawyer, no notice, and no idea on my part of what any of it was about.

And none of it was illegal.