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.

I have seen her twice since the February.

Once at a distance in a supermarket, where she looked at me and I did the only correct thing available, which was to nod once and keep walking.

And once in the June of last year, deliberately, in a café, with the safeguarding lead’s knowledge and with her mother’s agreement, for forty minutes, at Etta’s request.

I am not going to write what she said. It is hers.

I will write one thing, because she said it at the door on the way out, standing up, with her coat on.

She said: I’m sorry I look like her.

Eighteen years old.

I said: don’t ever be sorry for that. You didn’t do anything. None of this is yours.

And she said: okay. And then she said thank you for the books, which is the wrong way round, and then she went.

I still teach.

I have a Year Ten girl this year who is very good and who reminds me of nobody at all, and that is not an accident, and I check myself about it roughly once a fortnight and will for the rest of my career.

Here is the only thing I have that is worth anything.