The students didn't stop talking when Daphne walked in.
Not a pause. Not a glance. The room continued at exactly the volume and chaos it had been running at, with the specific indifference of people who had decided that a teacher entering was not an event worth acknowledging.
Daphne's eyes moved through the room the way they always moved, cataloguing, sorting, and then they found me at the back and something in her face settled. Not relaxed exactly. More like a ship finding a landmark. She knew where she was now.
New institution, I thought. No reputation here. No nineteen years of Miss Brown's credibility to borrow. She has to build it from zero in front of forty students who don't know her name yet.
"Good morning," she said.
Almost nobody cared. The conversations continued. Somebody laughed at something that had nothing to do with Daphne. The red-haired girl at the front kept talking to her neighbor without lowering her voice.
"My name is Daphne. I'm standing in for Mr Por."
