When I was nine I had a schoolgirl crush on a boy called James Clark, who was in the same class as me. I don’t remember if we even spoke to one another, as at that age the playground courting rituals consisted of getting punched, hair pulled, and chased around at playtime. My ‘crush’ went unrequited as one Monday morning while in class there was a knock at the door. It was James’s older sister who informed the teacher James had been killed when, on a day out to the country, he ran across the road to look at some cows and ran straight into the path of a car. I still think of him every now and then.