She had protested, of course; her initial contract with the school had been for a year’s employment, provided she was satisfactory. And she had been, as at least two members of the committee had told her after the meeting. They had been sympathetic but powerless, and when they tried awkwardly to express their sympathy pride had come to Miss Trent’s aid. She had said loftily that she expected to be given an excellent reference and would doubtless soon find employment more to her taste than that offered by the Peabody Academy.

They had been brave words but she had not believed them herself; a teacher who had been contractually bound for a year would have to grow accustomed to raised eyebrows when prospective employers saw that she had only worked for one term. Indeed, she was bitterly regretting now that she had ever seen the deputy headship advertised. She had been happy enough in the small rural school where she had taught the seven- to eleven-year-olds. The children had liked her and enjoyed her approach to lessons, which she had managed to make fun rather than chores to be got over as quickly as possible.

One member of the board, a woman who had taught at the university in her time and whom Glenys Trent had never much liked, had stopped her in the corridor as she was leaving the building. ‘Nepotism,’ she had hissed. ‘If you need a personal reference, my dear, just send me a letter.’ She had thrust a sheet of paper on which she had printed her name and address at the younger woman. ‘Mr Jenkins and myself voted against the decision to ask you to leave, but the others were like a flock of sheep, so eager to please the chairman that they would have agreed with anything he suggested. But they’ll regret it; it’s not easy to keep lively young ladies happily occupied once they’re old enough to leave school and take their place in the world of work, but you managed it. So if you need that reference . . .’

Miss Trent had thanked her and taken the sheet of paper, noting with a small inward smile that it was a page torn from a school exercise book. Then she had gone to her room and been doubly disgusted by the hypocrisy of those who had only days earlier been congratulating her on her success with the senior girls. There on her desk in a sizeable cardboard box were all her possessions: the fountain pen – a Parker – which had been a leaving present from her former employers, a neat pencil box containing a big squashy rubber and a variety of different lead pencils; even the box in which she brought her cold lunch to school and the teacup with her name painted on it, presented to her by her former pupils, had been put in the box. It seemed suddenly like the cruellest insult of all, that she was being dispossessed in such a public and unpleasant manner. She realised that the chairman had followed her into the room, almost as though he expected her to steal something, and turned to face him. ‘I shall call for my things tomorrow . . .’ she began, only to be swiftly interrupted.