The Interview Email Landed at 14.31. Panic Resumed at 14.41.

14.40. A second parent’s has landed too: “can relax for a little while at least!” 14.41. The original poster is already wondering what they will be asked. The little while lasted one minute. I have timed my own relaxations, and that is about par.

Saturday. A third parent wonders whether the parents go in at all, and whether their son would answer more readily without a parent there to look at. Sunday, 11.42. A parent whose elder daughter is already at the school says it was more of a chat than an interview, and that yes, the parents go in. Sunday, 16.57. The original poster is relieved. Then: “I need to think about what to wear”.

There it is. Not the reasoning paper, not the scholarship, not the 600. The trousers. A Mumsnet parent in 2013 confessed to a lifetime of displacing worry “into the search for the Perfect Outfit”, and I have never read a truer sentence about myself on somebody else’s thread.

I read all this the week our youngest, Oscar, had an interview of his own, somewhere else, for which he planned to wear his school jumper and talk about Minecraft. He was fine. Monday. I try on everything I own and conclude that I own nothing. Tuesday. My husband’s good suit no longer buttons, and he proposes his five-a-side fleece, which has the team badge on it and a cup of tea down it. I propose a divorce. We settle on the fleece being washed.

Wednesday. I go back to 2013 for guidance. One parent wore their only smart wool trousers while their husband wore jeans, and “I drew the line at him wearing a hat”. The Perfect Outfit parent reports that their husband has bought a new suit, and that “it is machine washable”, which I read twice and found deeply reassuring. I bought nothing. I ironed a blouse I had already ironed on Monday.

Thursday. Charcoal trousers, the funeral court shoes, the blouse (third ironing). Husband in a jacket that buttons, if he doesn’t sit. Oscar in his jumper. We were shown to a corridor and left there while he went in alone, which no thread had warned me about, in an outfit chosen for a room I never entered.

He came out after twelve minutes and reported that they had asked about Minecraft. What was she like, I asked. “Nice,” he said. “She had jeans on.”