The character of Edith has grown from the glimpses of women I saw as a child: women living alone, often remotely, and scuttling around like peculiar insects. Beetles, stick insects, snails, ladybirds, butterflies and moths; the insects I associate with a child’s peering, microscopic view of the world as they stare at moving things with tiny wings and legs. Small creatures living on windowsills and ledges. Insect life going about its business, not yet caught or trapped; still buzzing or gliding imperceptibly like a snail as Edith does when she borrows her cover teaching role, a role she inherits and disinherits weekly leaving no trail. With no record of ever having been because

Edith has no room of her own. She borrows a tiny cupboard at the end of the corridor called ‘The Music Room’ but it is not a place for hymns. For most of my peripatetic teaching life I had no teaching room. Rooms are not granted to cover teachers; they must carry their stores on their back like a snail. They must pretend never to have been.