There are some teachers who stay with you for the rest of your life. When I was eight years old, I was sent to a small, private all-girls school, in a quiet, dreamy cathedral close. So private, in fact, that it called itself a preparatory or "prep" school. My parents decided to pluck me from the local primary in order to give me the best chance at getting into Oxbridge, even if that wouldn't be a reality for another nine years. Prep.

In Year 3, you had the same teacher for every class. All-girls was a principle that applied to the staff as well, so my class called ours, as we would every teacher, "Miss". This Miss was impossibly tall, in her sixties, with a penchant for ankle-length skirts and mild humiliation. She took us out to measure trees on the school grounds, using the gaps between our fingers to transfer a centimetre from a ruler to the air, then writing down our findings. My tiny fingers would struggle to hold the centimetre, skewing my numbers. She hovered near me.

"Everyone, this is Emily," she said, before screwing up her face and mocking my efforts. My classmates went quiet. I blinked hard to push away the tears.

But the day I really remember is the one where Miss handed each of us a bar of cheap, white soap.

"Give it a face with one of these," she said, rattling a container of dud pencils.

Soap in one hand, pencil in the other, we dutifully went about the task. We giggled at how tricky this was turning out to be. She shushed us. An hour passed. We shared our efforts with the group, all moaning at how hard it had been. She filed us out for the brief walk to the cathedral. Inside, she pointed up at the figurative sculptures lining the walls and ceiling.

"Those faces are made from marble." A hush of awe descended upon our group. We got it.

Miss's retirement was announced to little surprise. She was nearing that stage. However, the playground whispered that one of the sweetest, meekest girls in the class had been dropped off early by her mother, leaving her alone with Miss. Somehow, in this short interval before the official start of the day, Miss had thrown a box of scissors in this girl's direction. Her retirement ceremony was held while we tiptoed the brink of the summer holidays, on the long, lovely lawn. We wore navy and white striped dresses with sailor collars. The uniform was completed with straw boaters and itchy wool blazers. As this was an event on school grounds in the middle of the day, that formality was done away with. The headmistress beckoned me and another girl to the front, handing us a picture with a heavy wooden frame. She mimed for us to give it to the teacher, who beamed. I must have mumbled why I was picked to be a present-bearer.

"Oh, you're one of her favourites," said an adjacent adult. I blinked.

I didn't even bother applying to Oxbridge. I went to a different university and had a lovely time. While there, I read some philosophy about statues, that they're different from any other art form because of the dimensions they inhabit. That they have kinetic potential, a fancy way of saying they could start moving at any moment.

I can't recall her name. I still think of her as Miss. But when I stand before a sculpture, I flinch.