As I was standing in Lynda’s office doorway, about to turn away, I looked through her window and saw a delivery man walking across the car park towards the entrance, a bouquet of flowers wobbling in his palm. It was a short, wide bouquet, one of those ones where there is a cellophane bulb filled with water and a dome of blooms – there were peonies and roses, some buds still tight and round, pinks and purples and those hard shiny green leaves on tough twigs that florists get from somewhere at any time of the year, evergreen leaves.

The delivery man looked unhappy with his job. A thick wad of very light grey cloud covered the sky and there was a little December drizzle. The lunchtime bell was due to ring any minute. I had a feeling the bouquet might be for me, and I said goodbye to Lynda and walked back down the corridor, away from reception, where the man would hand the bouquet over to Lynda and she would say, ‘Oh, she was just here right now,’ and bring it to the staff room. Later, I would interrogate my reluctance to take delivery of it myself and save her the walk – I told myself it was because of the embarrassment of carrying a bouquet through corridors teeming with pupils, while knowing that it was something more nuanced. My instinctive reaction to this delivery was not the unalloyed delight it should have been but a strange combination of anxiety and relief.

Sure enough, I had only been in the staff room for ten minutes when Lynda brought the bouquet in and declared, ‘Well, well! Someone’s popular!’ She plumped the flowers down onto the coffee table in between the two rows of low, comfy seats by the windows. The water wobbled in the cellophane and the blooms glowed pink and purple. As the bouquet squatted there, I had the brief and irrational thought that it was animate, watchful. Lynda plucked the tiny card in its tiny envelope from the cleft of the plastic stick inserted into the bouquet and handed it to me with a flourish.

‘Secret admirer?’ said Jenny, in Geography, nodding towards the bouquet, and the other staff members in the room turned and smiled.

Everyone watched me as I opened the envelope.

Thanks for putting up with me. I love you. Matthew x

The messages that come with bouquets of flowers are supposed to be personal and yet are written in the handwriting of a stranger. The two ‘t’s of Matthew were squeezed up tight together and all I could think was, it isn’t his writing, it isn’t him.

Jenny was at my side, peering at the card shamelessly. ‘Ooh,’ she said, ‘aren’t you lucky? Can’t remember the last time someone sent me flowers.’

The staff room had filled up for lunch break.

‘Secret admirer?’ asked Benjamin, the Head of Business Studies.

‘That’s what I said,’ said Jenny.