I buried my eight-year-old daughter. Eight years later a new student walked into my classroom with her face, and when I finally called that girl’s parents in for a meeting, the door opened and my own husband was standing in it.

Three weeks later it was parents’ evening.

Thirty adults at tables in that hall. No students — they are not there at ours, they wait in the car park or at home.

I had a stack of Etta’s books on my table because she had left three more on my desk that week and I had not been able to make myself take them home.

Her mother came across that hall.

I had never met Rhoswen Brann. She is forty-five and she has known about me since 2009 and she has known my name and my job and, I have since found out, what I look like.

She took hold of my wrist on that table, on top of those books, and she said it loud enough for every person in that room:

You buried a daughter. Don’t you dare try to borrow mine.

Nobody moved. A man two tables down put a pen down.

She did not let go. She leaned in and said:

Say you’ll stay away from her. Well?

I did not say it.

Not out of defiance. I want to be accurate, because there is a version where I refused nobly and that is not what happened.

I did not say it because I could not work out, in that second, whether she was right.