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.

It says: I told myself every day that I would say it once she was better.

I believe that too. That is the awful thing about my husband and it is why sixteen years of it were possible.

He is not a man who decided to lie for twelve days. He is a man who postponed something twelve times, each time for about two hours, each time with a reason he could have said out loud.

Rhoswen and I have met three times.

We are not friends and we are never going to be, and both of us have been extremely clear about that, which oddly makes it easier.

What she wanted from the third meeting was for me to tell her whether he had ever said he would leave.

I said no. He never did, not once, in twenty-two years.

She sat with that for a while and then she said: right. Well. That’s something.

I did not ask her what she meant and I have decided I do not need to.

Etta is eighteen now.

She sat her exams in a different room from the one I invigilate. She did better than anybody expected and she has gone to do something with history four hours away.