We later learned that there was no husband and that she wore a ring to give parents the impression that their child was in safe, maternal hands – which indeed we were, and she stayed as our Housemother until our year left that boarding school.

Of course, she had a name but I don’t feel it necessary to mention it here.

We called her ‘Housemother’ and that is good enough. Although she was a stickler for hygiene, her other main role was taking care of discipline among those in her dormitory, and for the others in our class who left every afternoon to go home with whoever collected them.