I hesitated a moment. I remembered the photos of me standing at the front door of our old cottage, my mother and father proud behind me. They’d kept the photo up for years, surrounded by newer ones, with each school photo that was taken. Would those photos still be up on their walls?

Of course not.

‘I remember being very excited,’ I said to Lumin now as we stepped outside. ‘A bit nervous too.’

‘Did your mummy walk you to school?’

She sometimes asked about my parents … her grandparents. She saw other children in the village with theirs. I’d told her they were dead, just as I told everyone else. That had been difficult. But what else could I do? I didn’t want her wondering why they didn’t want to see her. Of course, I knew there might be more questions as she grew older. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

‘I can’t remember, darling,’ I said now. ‘Oh, look, some other schoolchildren.’ I pointed towards two children walking up the road towards the small primary school.

‘They have the same uniform as me,’ Lumin said, eyes alight as she took in their green jumpers and grey skirts.

‘Of course, you’re part of the same school.’

‘But they’re big girls.’

I smiled down at Lumin. ‘And now you are too.’

She considered it a moment then smiled with pride. ‘I suppose I am now!’

We walked hand-in-hand down the steep cobbled path. We’d moved up from the flat I’d first rented, and were now living in a small terraced house just ten minutes’ walk from the coast where I did most of my filming. It was also a street away from Steve and Tina. I’d lived in the village nearly five years now but still felt like a bit of an outsider. Tina warned me that was the way it was in villages like this; everyone had grown up with each other. So for someone like me to turn up was a bit of a shock to the system. I’d been determined to integrate myself though, for my daughter’s sake, going to the gatherings Steve and Tina arranged as well as the baby and parent classes at the local community centre. But it had been hard; there was still that distance there.