She’d taught us penmanship, and stepped into the classroom unannounced to drill us on times tables. Her hair was tight with perfect curls and she walked with a rubber-tipped stick which she sometimes thumped on the floor. Once, in Supermac, at her wits’ end with our bad behaviour, my mum had threatened my sisters and me with the idea that our headmistress could be right around the corner. We’d turned into the next aisle, and there she was. I’d been in awe of her for years after that, as if, rather than the force of my mother’s summons, the power to appear had been hers alone.

I hadn’t thought of the headmistress for years. I tried to work out how old she might be. I realised that, by my friend’s logic, I was nearer to her age then than she would be now. If she was still alive. She had retired when we left primary school. I tried searching for an online obituary, though I didn’t know her first name, didn’t know, in fact, if she’d taught and lived under entirely different surnames. No, I realised; that couldn’t have been the case. Teachers back when she started out had to resign upon getting married. I googled some more. I came across a young Nell McCafferty, in the mid-seventies, leading a charge of thirty women into a pub. They ordered thirty brandies and one pint of Guinness. When the barman refused to pull a pint for a woman, they each drank a brandy then refused to pay, on the grounds that their order had not been fulfilled. I 48could still hear my headmistress’s voice. I decided she would have approved entirely of the enterprise.

I closed the little window on my phone. It was time to wake the baby, still out for the count in the hallway, or he’d never sleep tonight. Before I woke him, I cut a corner off the roll of Fifteens. It was too sweet, of course: far too sweet. I thought once more of the headmistress and her theatrical pleasure. Then I ate two or three more slices.