front rows. The year ones knelt up along the front, then the reception children sat right at the front, legs crossed. We teachers formed a frame, along the back and making two neat lines down either side, hemming the children into position. Only Sarah Baldini and John Bickers, the two heads, sat on actual chairs, right at the front, in the centre.
I was one of the last to take my place. I was helping Elaine to shoo the reception and year one children closer together so we had a chance of fitting them all in shot, scolding the children who thought it hilarious to ruffle up the neatly combed hair of the younger children in front of them and breaking up arguments before they had the chance to develop into fights.
I stood for a moment by the photographer’s tripod, scanning the scene to catch any unruly behaviour. It was quite a sight. Nearly nine hundred pupils, from the smallest four-year-old to the coolest, lankiest eighteen-year-old, gathered together for the annual picture, all but the oldest dressed alike in white shirts and blouses, dark blue ties and pinafores, hair short or long, slicked back or tied back with blue and white scrunchies. To the left, the hill was thick with trees, marking the border between the Upper and Lower School. Behind the final row, the Upper School’s main building – the oldest part of the campus – sat squat but imposing.
My mouth twisted as I took it all in. I’d stood in this same spot several times before, marshalling the ranks as the pupils got ready for the final inspection by Sarah Baldini before she took her seat, arranged her legs to one side, her hands in her lap, then signalled readiness to the photographer. There were children now in years four and five, standing with all the self-assurance of eight- and nine-year-olds who were starting to find their feet in life, whom I could remember in previous photographs as small, scared reception children, hunched cross-legged on the grass.
It had meant something to me, once, this mammoth display of the school’s children. It had stirred me. But now, with all that had happened in the past year, without Ralph, I felt empty.
For the first time, it hit me. I’d have to leave. It was killing me, this pretending to the world that nothing had changed. Every day I was here, in these buildings where we’d met, I was weighed down by guilt and fear. More than that, I looked for him, longed for him, missed him. He was everywhere. In every classroom, every corridor, every corner.
How could I carry on here now, without him?
Twenty-One
One Thursday, I was setting up my year three class for a craft activity when I saw Anna race past the classroom windows, down the empty corridor. It was afternoon playtime and the children were supposed to be outside. I dropped my pots of wax crayons on the table and hurried after her.
I found her standing by one of the stacks in the Lower School library, her face blotchy and wet with tears. She turned her large, frightened eyes on me as I approached. Ralph’s eyes.
‘Anna! What’s the matter?’
I pulled out a clean tissue and offered it to her.
She gulped, her breath snagged with crying and running, and blew her nose noisily.
‘Sit down here.’ I sat at one end of a reading settee and patted the empty place beside me. ‘Let’s have a chat.’
She hesitated. Her eyes stuck to her black school shoes, reluctant to meet mine. The leather shone with polish. Whatever Helen was going through inside, she was clearly managing her grief well enough to take care of her daughter.
‘Come on. Tell me all about it.’
She turned and perched as far from me on the settee cushions as she could, twisting the tissue between her fingers.
‘I’m not cross, Anna. I just want to help.’
Silence, broken only by her rough breathing.
‘Anna?’
I was bracing myself for some upset in relation to Ralph’s death. Distress, perhaps, sparked by another child saying something tactless in the playground about his disappearance, as young children did. Mean taunts or persistent questions about what had happened.
She gulped. The tissue was starting to shred now into wet strands.
‘It’s all right, Anna. You can tell me.’ My tone was calm and friendly.
She tipped her head sideways and gave me a quick glance, reading my face. ‘It’s my bookbag.’
I leaned in, wondering if I’d misheard. ‘Your bookbag? Have you lost it?’
She nodded miserably.
‘Have you told Mrs