The Girl Who Hid It in Her Shoe

Do not make a promise you cannot keep.

Say instead what you will actually do, and then do it, because a child who has been lied to by adults is running a test.

Do not supply the words.

Write down hers, including the parts that make no sense, because the parts that make no sense at 4:19 are the parts a prosecutor builds on eleven months later. Because it’s Thursday meant nothing to me and it was the centre of the case.

Call somebody senior immediately, and resist with everything you have the desire to be the one who works it out.

And do not hand a child to anybody, ever, while there is an open question — not to a parent, not to a relative, not to a man with identification and a reasonable explanation and a calm voice — because you can always release a child forty minutes later, and you cannot ever un-release one.