Within a few minutes of the Year 10s arriving for my next class, the Tannoy asked the year group to go down to the hall.

“This is the one thing that a principal always dreads,” Cecelia told the whole Year 10 group, before confirming the name of the girl who had been killed the previous afternoon.

She asked again that nobody speak to the press, who were at this point being kept at a little distance from the school gates by the police. The school counsellors stood in rows behind the girls, waiting with boxes of tissues.

After the news had sunk in, each teacher took their group back to their classrooms. For 40 minutes I stayed in the classroom with the girls in my set, who said nothing, but all cried, barely making a sound.

The girl had been a close friend of some of them. I had never taught her but I knew who she was, and she had been on the trip to the theatre with us all only two weeks before.

She had travelled to England to escape a war-torn country, and had been, two teachers had separately told me quite a long time before her death, one of the most wonderful girls.

There was nothing I could come up with to comfort the class. I put out paper, and suggested that any who wanted to make cards for her family could use this time to do that.

Coleen asked if she could search the internet for more news. She and Erez sat by the screen looking for information. “Sometimes,” I warned them, “it’s better not to know all the details.”

That day and the few days following passed with the heavy knowledge of a student’s death hanging over everyone. The Year 10 students organised a memorial assembly. I felt aware, as I hadn’t been before, that I was in an inner-city school. Police surrounded the entrance, and all the staff turned out to help make sure that students got on to buses immediately after school and didn’t hang around.

The Year 10s were knocked sideways by the news of the death. On Wednesday I tried to teach them.

“Coleen, please could you sit here.” I pointed to her seat at the front of the class. She went to it.

“Do you need a pen?” I asked her, and instead of telling me to get out of her face she nodded.

During the lesson she raised her hand and gave answers about Romeo and Juliet. She volunteered to read Juliet’s role, and so stood on a desk with Romeo below her for the balcony scene. In the last ten minutes I wanted them to write a paragraph analysing the staging of the scene. Coleen began the moment the task was set.

I rang home. “Hello, Mrs Randel, I just wanted to tell you about all the things that Coleen did right today . . .”

“Oh good, that is good. She told me that she wanted to make a fresh start.”

Hands Up! A Year in the Life of an Inner-City School Teacher, by Oenone Crossley-Holland, is published by John Murray (paperback £12.99). To buy a copy for £11.69 including P&P, call Times BooksFirst on 0870 1608080 or via timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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