No. He didn’t kiss me back. A cocktail of rejection, confusion and bewilderment welled up inside me and followed me to bed as I sobbed into my pillow. The truth was he had just looked startled. Utterly startled. I think my kiss was genuinely the last thing he expected that night. But why?

I was so relieved when we were able to talk about it the following morning.

Steve explained how he wanted to be friends, good friends, that he really valued our time together but he did not think I would be ready for another relationship; it simply wasn’t on the cards. It was not that he wasn’t attracted to me. Nor did he find me unattractive. He just considered me off limits right now – like someone still in a relationship. And when I came to look at things from his perspective, that made perfect sense. What amazed me more was how gently and eloquently he had told me how he felt – for one so unused to expressing feelings, he’d done remarkably well.

Was he right? That it was too soon? I had pushed those thoughts to one side, desperate for a second shot at happiness. When it first happened, I had believed happiness was over. Gone forever. I felt empty. Pointless. Yet unspeakably sad. Numb and yet bereft. If one of us had ended it, things might have been simpler. But when he left that morning he told me how much he loved me. I expected to see him in a few days. Things between us were not perfect…does that even exist? But we loved each other deeply. We needed each other: together we had found a way of getting through the PGCE year at Brookes, which we had both found so tough, in our different ways. James was getting over the great love of his life and really he’d needed clinical help for depression. I was recovering from a whole host of career failures, among other things that I was seeing the College counsellor about.

But somehow, one day at a time, we had both passed our teaching placements and the final assessments. James had even been offered a job at his main placement school. While I had a job in the languages department of this idyllic school in the Cotswolds. We had been seeing each other at weekends during term time since September of our NQT year. Until that fateful day. He’d kissed me goodbye in the morning and set off. I went to school. At around 11 there was a fire drill and the whole school filed out onto the playing field. As I registered my year 7 class I heard sirens in the distance and thought nothing of it. Later that evening he didn’t text me to say he’d arrived. I tried to call, but no reply. I put my phone under the pillow in case he had forgotten or run out of battery and would message during the night. No text came. No call.

By the morning I was in a state of panic. I called his best friend from his village and as soon as he picked up I knew something was horribly wrong. Mateo broke down…, “He was in an accident on the Burford road…he was overtaking…there was a truck…Claire-Lise, he’s dead.”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. It was time to go to school. What should I do? My lessons were planned. I should go in. I needed to tell someone. I picked up the phone and rang my first reflex person. My poor Mum. I hope she never takes a call like that in her life again…I think I just howled down the phone to her. I’m not sure if she could even make out what had happened. But I heard her say she’d call my sister. That was good.

Then I rang the Deputy Head. I tried to explain what had happened…started to break down…she was amazing and to this day I am so grateful for her kindness. She asked if anyone was with me. She dropped everything and came straight to my house. She stayed with me until family arrived. She did my washing up.

Then my big sister and my Mum were there. They scooped me up off the floor and held me. They said everything would be OK. They promised to stay with me. Libby had the cathartic idea of buying flowers and taking them to the spot on the hill where it happened. So wise was she, she knew I was struggling to process if this was even real. She was so right. I needed to see it. To be where he last was. On the brow of the hill beside bales of hay with the hills rolling out on both sides. And the winter sun was low in the sky – it was easy to see how he could have missed the truck coming the other way as he took that fated decision. But do you know what struck me most? It was so beautiful. It was so, so beautiful, the last view he took in. And I laid down my flowers and said goodbye.

So was it too soon? Was I still grieving? Was I fragile and raw? Yes. On all three points, yes.