Ornate owl with yellow rose on upper arm

Old Mrs Pryce, who had taught the infants for forty years, said it was the owl from the school crest, the one painted over the door before the council scrubbed the wall. Everyone knew the story she told about it: owls keep count of what children forget. So the older ones stood about with plastic cups of squash and waited to be counted.

Dennis Okafor, who had once set fire to the nature table, went first. The owl tilted its head and said nothing. It only pressed a feather onto his sleeve, red as a pillar box, and he understood he was being remembered for the good thing he had done that week, not the bad one. One by one they went up. Some got a feather, some got a long flat stare, and Margaret Hale, who had sworn she would never come back, found a fresh yellow rose laid at her feet.

When the caretaker switched the hall lights back on, the coat stand was bare. On the piano lay the old attendance register, opened to the year they all left. Every name had a neat tick beside it, and beside Margaret Hale's, in pencil, someone had written present.