At 5pm I took my cold seat in the spectators’ area of the ice rink. My daughter and I could hear a loud yelping – it echoed painfully in such a bare environment.

It was more like the sound of a puppy being tortured. We couldn’t see anything but after a while some intelligible sound could be made out.

“Mummmmy… Mummmy…”

Without seeing, the child had obviously been crying for some time. Most people can tell that. The sound slips into a low, moaning; the words become slurred, not clear, as though the pain takes on the symptoms of drunkenness.

Then I saw the boy. A small, small figure. Clutching a very moist ‘comfort’ rag. No more than four. Leaning against a wall, giddy with his loss. Mummy wasn’t around.

I stepped down and crouched beside him. He responded, turning towards me slightly.

“Where’s your Mummy darling?”

Another slurred sentence, the sound of a child experiencing the worst scenario he can imagine: the loss of his Mummy.

Then a woman stepped towards me. She’d been standing on the stairs just above the child talking to her friend.

“He’s fine. His mother’s training him.”

So his mother was in the building.

“He’s very distressed though.”

“Yes. His mother’s training him. He’s fine.”

They gave each other a knowing smile, mocking, ridiculing, despising me.

Something I know I’ll regret for a long time, I went back to my seat saying he obviously wasn’t fine.

The crying and incoherent sounds of the child continued. For another half hour.

What was this about? What was Mummy training him for?

The little boy, the little delicate fledgling would certainly learn a few things that day.

That expressing his feelings brings no sympathy. That he can’t be sure of Mummy and what she might put him through.

That the people looking after him take part in the cruelty and keep anyone who cares away. That his world is unsafe and unpredictable.

That even when two women are present ‘looking after him’, he’s left alone to console himself. That 'looking after' means this callous and brutal treatment.

That his comfort rag is meaningless.

It's unlikely that this will be a one-off experience in the poor child's life.

Maybe when he's a young man, he'll look for ways to avenge those women who inflicted this on him. Or women like that.

Two days on and I find I'm still haunted by the sound of his cries echoing in the cold buidling.

I hope he's not there next week.