‘But if you get a job, any job, you’ll still have to leave her,’ the headmaster pointed out. ‘However, I think I can guess what you’re going to say. If you can earn sufficient money to pay someone to keep an eye on your grandmother while you’re at work you would be able to keep body and soul together, which wouldn’t be possible if you stayed with us, since I never heard of any school paying a pupil to study. How about evenings? I’ve heard you mention a Mr Payne . . .’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Payne’s wonderful, but he’s got his own business to run, and can’t neglect it,’ Tess said. ‘He’ll give all the help he possibly can, but he can’t be in two places at once. I don’t imagine we shall find a flat or even a couple of rooms to rent in the centre of the city, near Mr Payne’s shop. We’ll have to move out to the suburbs where rents are cheaper.’

The headmaster looked thoughtful. ‘Have you considered evening classes? Or even a correspondence course? It’s perfectly possible to gain the results you would need for university entrance by either of these methods, though of course it would take longer.’

Tess smiled at him. ‘I wouldn’t go to university and leave my gran completely alone unless she was very much better and more capable,’ she said quietly. ‘But thank you for the suggestion; I really will think seriously about it. In the meantime though, I’m afraid I shan’t be able to come back to school next month.’

The headmaster sighed. ‘A pity, a great pity,’ he murmured, ‘but I feel sure you will make a success of whatever you decide to do, Miss Williams.’ He held out a lean, well-manicured hand. ‘Goodbye, and good luck.’

The following evening Tess made her way to the hospital alone. She should have felt disappointed, even cheated, but as she had walked away from the interview with the headmaster the previous evening she had been aware only of an overwhelming sensation of relief. She knew, none better, that she had had to study harder than ever in her life before just to get her School Cert. Maths had always been her weakest subject, and the thought of having to tackle Latin as well gave her nightmares. When she had taken Jonty to the station the previous week they had missed the train he had intended to catch, with the result that they had had an hour to kill and had spent it in the refreshment room where they had seriously discussed Tess’s future.

She had admitted to Jonty what she would have told no one else, that she had only gone in for the scholarship in the first place in order to make Snowy eat his words, because he had told people that she was just a brainless little nobody who wasn’t bright enough to get it. Also, Gran had told her that no one else in her family had gone to university, and she knew how proud it would make Gran if she succeeded. ‘But I’m not academic, not really,’ she had confessed to Jonty as they sat at a corner table in the refreshment room, sipping coffee and eating rather unappetising station buns. ‘So if I’m honest, I shan’t be a bit sorry to find myself a proper job. I might take evening classes in something useful – business management, for example – but I shan’t even think about university because I’m absolutely certain that even if I did get all the exams and things I’d be completely out of my depth.’